>>103693764>>103694005>>103694694>>103694743The real answer is because none of it was actually done in the west. They sent the scripts over to japan and told them "okay, make a cartoon for us", and when it came back they patted themselves on the back and acted like they did it.
The only cartoons that had their key animation done in house back in the 90s were comedy cartoons like ren and stimpy and rocko's modern life which didn't require as tricky draftsmanship. Every action show and even a sizeable number of comedy shows were pretty much entirely done in japan and korea.
Nowadays, studios do way more work in house. Thing is, american boarders/animators (in america storyboards often double as key animation now) had nothing to build off of.
Japanese animators are mentored by other japanese animators and as a result each generation gets progressively better at art. accumulating knowledge from the previous generation
In the west, we haven't done much serious inhouse animation in a long fucking time, and as a result we pretty much had to start from square one.
Give it some time and things will get better
