The Canadian Bear

Is this the same bear? Believe it or not, it isn't. It's 2 different characters. It's the Canadian bear that appears in countless Canadian model sheet packs on sundry ultra boring shows meant to punish Canadian children who are too unique or lively.
Where did the Canadian Bear come from? Let us trace its roots...

Well first of all, probably 90% of animated cartoons around the world can be traced back to Disney. Disney cartoons had more influence on the world than any other more creative cartoons from the same period and earlier. It's gotten to the point where most animators can not even imagine straying from what they think the Disney rules of design and motion are (after 7 generations of copying and forgetting what the reasons for the style were in the first place).

Even Anime is a direct descendent of Disney design style. But the funniest imitation of Disney's blandness is Canada's. It's like a caricature in reverse. Canada has taken the weakest aspects of Disney and emphasized them, while leaving out all the useful and appealing parts.

Disney invented a particular style of cuteness in the late 30s and early 40s. Its pinnacle is the 1942 film Bambi.

This style serves 2 purposes:
1) Functional for animation

The characters are made of simplified forms that rotate well in space. They are very solid and at the same time organic. Two seemingly contradictory concepts perfectly combined into one design style.

When animated by experts like Frank and Ollie, Milt and the rest of the great Disney animators, it makes for a beautiful and almost magic visual experience.

When people copy Disney, they miss this aspect of Disney's design. - that it has construction and flow.

This is not the only way to design solid flowing characters, but it's the one that worked for Disney, and Disney convinced the world that they were the only animators who had any reason to exist.
2) To make Moms go "oooooooooooH!"

Besides being well designed for movement, they are also emotionally designed to be ultra cute.
Almost every character is the exact same character design. It is a generic but perfectly balanced set of huge cute eyes perfectly mapped onto a perfectly solid egg shaped head. A huge head compared to body size with a huge cranium relative to muzzle size.


Baby proportions, and thus cuteness to Moms.

The only real variance in design from character to character is the length of the muzzle and what kind of ears it has.

It's the same face on different types of animals. They all have rounded triangular eyes, that are mirrored by a light shape around them. Big-ass pupils that take up about half the space of the eye itself.


Here is the Disney formula character design and construction at its apex. This is where Cal Arts eyes degenerated from. The textbook animation design is right here and obvious for all to copy. More modern copies of these characters do not quite get it.


Here it is again. Exact same design; different beast.

As the decades wore on, the characters got less and less construction, and less cuteness - even drawing the same characters.
They added angles to the same designs in the 1950s and the pupils started to shrink.


By the 60s, the heads got much smaller, the proportions got blander, eyes got smaller, they lost the framing rings around the eyes and the construction started to melt as the animators got older and shakier. The angular style was still there, but a much milder, less daring version of it.


This eventually led to the tiny head Bluth style as the cartoons got less and less cute. You still see the same Disney construction formula. They are still the same designs they used in the 1940s - just way toned down.



Father and farther away from the source; still copying, but copying the previous copy, instead of trying to understand the original.



same same same same same....

From Disney Bears to Canada. A Journey towards blandness.

I've always wondered why when before they start animation on a Disney movie, they spend tons of money experimenting with variations on their stock design style.

All these preproduction drawings are much more interesting than the designs that finally appear in the movie. These are all still based on the stock Disney formula, but they experimented with the proportions at least.

Technically they are all beautiful animation drawings. They have all the fundamentals and some artistic flair on top of them.

In the end, of course they settle on everything in the middle:
Even though this is pretty generic and sappy, I still love the Bongo film. The animation and backgrounds is just so stunningly expert and at times beautiful, that it sucks me right in.

Song Of The South is the same way. Disney has a small bear design and a grown up bear design, with some slight variations here and there along the way, but basically recycling the same designs for decades.

ENTER WINNIE...

In the 60s, Disney took Winnie The Pooh and animated it
They combined their own cute style and construction with E.H. Shepard's quaint and charming style.

This eventually did serious damage to Disney's style in the 80s. It ushered in blander small-eyed bears by the hundreds.

THEN CAME THE 80S


By the 1980s, the drawing skills were gone and so was the cute appeal. We had a super bland even more generic version of Disney with none of the good things about the studio left. Now you think this is ugly?

Here is the Canadian copy of the bland 80s Disney.

No construction, no line of action, no silhouette, no animation functionality and really tiny unappealing eyes - yet this was sold on its "cuteness". And there's nothing remotely cute about it, except that it sort of reminds you of Disney from long ago. We've been trained to think even crummy 7th generation imitations of what was actually cute once, is still cute now.

Here's the same design in another show, only even lousier.


My gosh, aren't these adorable?




A great irony is that the success of these fake Disney shows in turn influenced Disney to steal from us Canadians.When characters are this generic and faceless it's impossible to sue those who steal from you.

So now you know how we got from here:





To here:
Imitators think that by imitating the superficial aspects of a 10th generation of other imitations, they will somehow absorb instantly the quality and appeal of the original.



That means this:



equals this:



This is the basic Canadian entertainment thinking. Whatever America does (or did 60 years ago) we will copy the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy, until there is nothing left. - Instead of actually trying to entertain with skill, knowledge, varied individual influences and experiences from our own lives and personalities.

Here is the modern insincere animation look. Just as we've seen the Disney character design style copied and mangled for decades, now we have spent almost 2 more decades copying (without knowing why) the Nickelodeon/ Cartoon Network "style".

Who do they make this look for? Each other? Certainly not a regular audience of humans.
I don't even know what these are, but it's obvious where they came from.

Postscript: I don't want other Canadians to thinking I am bashing them. I'm proud to be Canadian and there are many unique and wonderful things in Canada.

I also realize (as most Canadians do) that we copy American culture. And don't do it very well. And do it too late.

I'll do another post about this in more detail, but I find it ironic that Canada wants so bad to distinguish itself as having its own culture, but in the process destroys any chance of letting it happen.

The government has crazy complicated bureaucratic rules that stifle creative competition, skill and originality in entertainment and art, while thinking it is encouraging it.

I can say from lots of direct experience in both countries that if say anyone with money in Canada actually wanted to seriously compete with American animation, we would kill all competition. Not in a year, but easily within 5. The talent is there. We could be known as the leaders in quality creative money making cartoons all over the world and force everyone else to imitate us. Instead the whole business is set up to stay way behind America's own backwards business model and to badly imitate its every mistake and awful trend.

More on this later...