Wednesday, March 25, 2020

80s Cartoon Nostalgia

Here's a bunch of sketches recalling many of the types of cartoons we worked on in the 1980s.
 
I remember that all the characters in the humanoid shows had flesh-colored eyes.

I once asked my supervisor why. He explained that it saves money because it takes 30 seconds longer to open a bottle of white paint.

That gave me an idea I eagerly shared with him. Why not save even more time by painting the whole character flesh colored? Maybe even the backgrounds.

The model sheets in the 80s were very expressive too. You didn't have to make up any because they came up with all 4 of a character's expressions for you and all you had to do was trace them.

Styles and trends appeared and went. One trend was to save ink by instead of drawing 2 complete eyes you could meld the 2 eyes together kind of like a simple cell in the middle stage of reproducing itself. They also had to have the name start with 'S'.


One thing that many shows had in common whether they were action-oriented or comedy laff-riots was an evil villain. The villain was always pure evil and lived his life just for tormenting or devouring the main characters. When I worked in HB's development department helping create new shows the writers always stressed that you had to have a foil - or as they referred to it in their professional lingo - the 'Reggie Character'.

Another trend was the "lumpy-style" show. Claymation was popular in the 80s so the Saturday-morning cartoon studios tried to emulate them in 2-d form.
These lumpy stars had to have a dim-witted sidekick - preferably something slimy that you see on the sidewalk after it rains.



Good times, good times....

To see some more click here:
80s Classics