Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/990677
SPRING/SUMMER 2018 35 The Powerpuff Girls (1998-2005) Emmys Cred: 2 Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation wins (2000 and 2005); 3 Outstanding Animated Program nominations The three super-powered sisters from Townsville starred in their own series on Cartoon Network in the late '90s and early '00s, which spawned a feature film, a Japanese remake and a 2016 reboot. Chris Battle, who worked as a character designer on the original series, remembers being excited that, while in the early stages of his career, he was able to work on a show as good as The Powerpuff Girls. "It wasn't … doing something based on some toy that you didn't care about. We were all deeply excited to be working on shows of quality like that," he says. Robert Alvarez, a veteran animator and director who wound up working on both the original and the rebooted versions, liked how different the series felt—and how funny it ended up being. "I really liked it because I thought the show was really different, new," he says. "It was a lot of fun to go to the storyboard pitches, because some of the people that worked on the original series were very, very funny." But Thompson says one of the show's most important contributions was that it showed girls they could be superheroes too. "It did kind of give a vocabulary to the whole idea of girl power, which was significant. You had these little girl superheroes," he says, adding, "we didn't see a lot of that back then." 2018 35 SPRING/SUMMER The Simpsons (1989-present) Emmys Cred: 16 nominations and 10 wins in the Outstanding Animated Program category alone (from 1990 to 2017); an additional 22 wins and 41 nominations in other categories After debuting as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987, Fox commissioned a series that would focus solely on what longtime background designer Deborah Peterson calls "a plain old ordinary, nuclear family." Says Peterson, who began working on the first season of the show straight out of college: "They may have the most ridiculous adventures, but at the core it is just a family living in middle America. They're not super poor, they're not super rich, they go to church, they go to school, they go to work, they take care of the house, they have dogs, they know their neighbors." The Simpsons' appeal also owes to the fact that the writing is layered for audiences of all ages. Says Syracuse University's Thompson, "A little kid could like The Simpsons because Bart said things like, 'Underachiever and proud of it,' and a PhD in comp literature could enjoy [it] because of its complex literary and political references." While The Simpsons' influence can be seen in the many adult-oriented and pop culture-savvy animated shows that followed, it is also itself a prime example of how TV animation has changed in the past three decades. Every job on the show has gone through a process evolution from analog to digital, and the level of detail in each frame continues to increase as the years go on. Batman: The Animated Series (1992-95) Emmys Cred: 1 Primetime win (Out- standing Animated Program, 1993); 3 Daytime wins and 9 more nominations This take on the caped crusader's adventures took inspiration from Tim Burton's 1990s Batman movies for a slightly darker, noir-esque series that geek haven website IGN.com voted the best non-comics version of the character. Peter Ferk, who worked on the series as the overseas background layout supervisor, says it still inspires his work today. "When I look back at some of my draw- ings ... there's something about the look of the show that changed my natural drawing style. When I'm drawing human characters a lot of Batman still jumps through," he says. "The designs were fantastic and the storylines were so different." Plus, like The Flintstones and The Simpsons, it too appealed to people of all ages. "All of a sudden when they started airing it on Fox it cut right across all the demographics," he says. "It became one of the shows where the parents were engrossed just as much as the kids." some of the of the of people original series were very, But Thompson says most important contributions it showed girls superheroes did was significant. You had these little girl superheroes," he says, didn't see a lot of that of that of back a PhD in comp literature could enjoy of its of its of complex literary and references." Simpsons' influence can many adult-oriented culture-savvy animated shows it is also itself a itself a itself prime TV animation has past three decades. Every job on the show has gone process evolution digital, and the each frame increase as the SPRING/SUMMER 2018 35