Buckle up, kids. Shit's about to get real.
The first generation of animators spent decades working out the best ways to draw something that was appealing, "solid' (volumetric) and easy to move in three dimensions. In the 1920s and 1930s, this started with the "pears, spheres and tubes" style (think "Steamboat Willie") but by the 1940s had evolved into much more complex drawings and forms (think "Golden Age" Bugs Bunny). By the later 1940s and 1950s, the now mature animators started to get more experimental and stylized, while still maintaining the same basic fundamentals they had refined over the previous decades. The two styles that seemed to get really popular were either "modern" and angular or purposely amateurish looking (think of UPA, early H-B, Avery's and Jones' later shorts or "Toot, Whistle, Plunk & Boom"). This stuff is deceptive, because while it looks stylish and minimalist, that's just the surface, at their core they still use the same techniques as the 1940s stuff. Unfortunately, this first generation retired (or died) in the 1960s and 1970s without passing on their knowledge (this coincided with the general rejection of tradition in that era). You then had a new generation who didn't want to bother learning the fundamentals of drawing and simply copied the superficial aspects of the later, stylized stuff. Cartoons never really recovered from this. Now it's difficult to convince young cartoonists to sit and learn
>>94636101 because 1) it's a lot of hard, tedious work and 2) they think that it will force them to only draw in a "1940s style". They don't realize that it's simply providing a tried and true foundation for them to build off of. It's the equivalent of learning how to hold and play an instrument, not learning what to play. There are other issues affecting the medium, but I think this one is the most pressing.
