Rate animation quality

[Frank]

Rate the quality of animation studio from best to worst:

1 Disney

2 MGM

3 Fleischer

4 Warner Bros

5 Famous Studios

6 Terrytoons

[B Mode]

This is virtually impossible to do Frank. Who's to say what top quality is? Especially when we can't tell what good quality is from those deteriorated toons that have been neglected by many studios.

What time period are we talking about here?

[Cartman]

If you're talking about quality as in fantastic animation, I think I'd go with Disney and Fleischer in the 1930's.

[JDWeil]

I rank them like this:

Disney
MGM
Warner Bros.
Fleischer Studs.
Famous Studs.
Walter Lantz
Terrytoons
Mintz/Columbia Screen Gems

[J. J. Hunsecker]

1920's

1. Sullivan

2. Fleischer

3. Bray (Lantz ran studio at that time)

4. Fable Pictures Inc. (Paul Terry)

5. Disney


1930's

1. Disney

2. MGM

3. Fleischer

4. Warner Bros.

5. Columbia

6. Lantz

7. Iwerks

8. Terrytoons

9. Van Beuren


1940's

1. Warner Bros.

2. MGM

3. Disney

4. Lantz

5. Columbia

6. George Pal's Puppetoons

7. Famous/Paramount

8. Terrytoons


1950's

1. Warner Bros.

2. Disney

3. MGM

4. UPA

5. Lantz

6. Terrytoons

7. Famous/Paramount


1960's

1. Disney

2. Depatie-Freleng

3. MGM

4. Terrytoons

5. Warner Bros.

6. Paramount


I would rate the overall total for the studios this way:


1. Warner Bros. - Mostly because of the wild animation of the Clampett cartoons in the 40s, and the stylish Jones cartoons of the 50s, this studio gets top billing from me.

2. MGM - Mostly because of the exaggerated animation of the Avery and Hanna/Barbera cartoons of the 40s and early 50s. The Harman-Ising cartoons of the late thirties and early forties contain slick animation, even if they do have dull stories.

3. Disney - From the mid thirties until the early forties the work of the Disney artists is astounding and changed the face of animation. However, After that zenith, the animation in the Disney cartoons becomes rather dull and literal.

4. Lantz - The best work is on par with the other great studios of the forties.

5. Fleischer - Their surreal animation from the early thirties put them far ahead of the competion until Disney moved ahead of the pack in the late thirties.

6. Columbia - Dick Huemer's Scrappy cartoons were unique looking compared to the other typical rubber hose animation of the day. Frank Tashlin ushered in a short lived era of cartoons that rivaled Disney in slick animation and Warners in terms of humor. Unfortunately, the studio couldn't hold on to these innovations and the rest of the output of the 40s was troubled.

7. UPA - The animation in some of the best of the UPA cartoons were fluid and imaginaltive. What knocks them down lower for me was the other cartoons that contained dull and limited animation.

8. George Pal Puppetoons - I always like these stop-motion shorts. They used stretch and squash on carved wooden puppets!! Think of the work that was involved to achieve that!

9. Famous/Paramount - This studio started out alright, and their animation was on par with the other studios of the forties. But they fell from that quickly and their cartoons started to look cheap.

10. Terrytoons - Paul Terry only cared about grinding out as many cartoons as he could without regard to quality. The only mitigating factor is that he had Jim Tyer who did some funny and interesting animation.

11. Iwerks - Once the best animatior of the thirties, Iwerks sort of froze in time while others passed him by.

12. Van Beuren - I always thought the Van Beuren cartoons were the worst of the lot and that their animation was crude even by the standards of the early thirties. Only a few of the Burt Gillett cartoons from the mid thirties could compete with the other major studios.

[duck dodgers]

disney
mgm
warner bros
famous studios
fleischer
terrytoons

[duck dodgers]

[QUOTE=J. J. Hunsecker]
1920's




with the only exception of the 40s(i consider mgm the best)i agree with your monumental post which consider best animation by decades,well job!!

[J Lee]

A lot of it back in the period when studio animation was at its prime depended not just on the budgets and the skill of the artists, but what the studio itself was trying to do.

In terms of pure artistry, there's no question that Disney sunk the most into its cartoons and had the biggest budgets and deepest pool of artists, while of the other studios, MGM spent the most money on their cartoons. But by the early 1940s, a lot of what went into MGM cartoons would have been useless for the style that had developed at Warners. The WB characters were crafted, thanks to the Clampett influence, to be "light" and fast, so that touches that survived into the 40s at Disney and MGM, such as facial shadows or extra detail on the characters, only served to give them more weight, which worked against quick movement.

That's why even after Avery came on board at MGM and more physical slapstick became the norm, that studio's cartoons just have a "heavy" feeling for much of the 1940s, compared to the stuff Warners was putting out. Over at Disney, Jack Kinney was the first to start "streamlining" his cartoons with the Goofy sports shorts, so that intracate detail took a back seat to action.

Going back to the 1930s, for what the Fleischers were trying to do, much of the trend towards more realistic animation that Walt was doing on the west coast was besides the point (though it did help Max and Dave as the animatiors became better at drawing human characters like Betty and Popeye). In the 1940s, Jim Tyer probably did the worst-looking animation at Famous Studios, but as things turned out, it was the most alive animation at the studio. After Disney's best animator, Bill Tytla arrived and Tyer departed, Famous' drawing style looked more fluid and uniform by the end of the decade, but stiffened up to the point that looks, physical reactions, walks, etc., were all standardized and bland (probably more Seymore Kneitel's doing than Tytla's), so that the gags had to entirely carry the picture.

So in terms of pure animation, I'd put the studios in the order of Disney, MGM, Warners, Famous, Lantz, Fleischer, Columbia, Terrytoons, but there's no question Warners got more bang for their buck out of the animation they were doing in shorts than the two studios ranked ahead of them.

[Tintin]

That's my ratings:

1. WB
2. Disney
3. Lantz
4. MGM

[B Mode]

J.J. - nicely done, perfect breakdown!

[J. J. Hunsecker]

Thanks for the compliments, Duck Dodgers and B Mode!