Animation Day Overview (Last Semester)

Fun fun fun. I have no problem admitting that I still love cartoons. I’ve always been fascinated by the process of animation itself (still wondering how they get the characters’ lips to match with the voices) and many cartoons still make me laugh, and I’m not just talking about The Simpsons or South Park. Just the other day I watched an early Mickey Mouse cartoon called “Haunted House” (very similar to “The Skeleton Dance”), and many times when I visit home, I still love to sit down watch some Looney Tunes (in recent years, I’ve bought some of the DVD sets for my mom’s birthday and Mother’s Day). Hell, just last night I was roaring while watching Ren and Stimpy (the kind of “kid’s cartoon” that neither Nickelodeon nor any other network would ever broadcast under “children’s programming” today). For whatever reason, animation has flourished even further with my generation into more “adult” territory, as programs like the aforementioned South Park, Family Guy, and almost every show under Cartoon Network’s late-night Adult Swim banner. Filmwise, audiences still seem to see animation as a children’s medium. There have been some degrees of success, like South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut and the highly-overlooked Beowulf, but there’s still some way to go. Maybe more progress will be made within the next few years, as films like Sin City and James Cameron’s forthcoming Avatar begin to bridge the gap between live action and cutting-edge animation.
Anyway, Winsor McCay, Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop made for quite an afternoon.