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Evolution in animation (Niceklodeon version)

posted 13 years ago by vnisanian2001
2 replies | jump to latest

I thought the Nickelodeon version had an interesting evolution in animation. Here are my thoughts on the animation in the original show over the years:

Season 1/pilot: The original "Doug Can't Dance" pilot was animated strictly by Jim Jinkins' Jumbo Pictures, and it shows. It was famous for its incredibly sketchy animation that Doug was originally identified by. While not the best animation ever, it was good for the time.

When the show was picked up by Nickelodeon, South Korean studio HanHo studios was hired to do the overseas animation, and they did a great job. Not much to complain about here. Solid. For the record, HanHo studios handled the overseas animation for the entire Nickelodeon run.

Season 2: As much as I liked the episodes from this season, I really HATED the animation here. It turned out that Jumbo/Nickelodeon hooked up with French outfit Ellipse Programme (who was also around for the last two seasons), and for some reason, Ellipse saw it fit to telecine all the episodes to 25fps (PAL/SECAM). Awful! I despise PAL/SECAM!

Season 3/4: It was in the last two seasons that I thought they finally perfected the animation, and not only that, but thankfully Ellipse telecined all episodes from those final two seasons to 23.976fps (NTSC).

[–] jptf2 13 years ago

I've noticed the art seemed to shift from more of an abstract style with a lack of sharp lines in seasons 1 and 2 to sharper, more detailed/realistic imagery in 3 and 4. In 1 and 2, it seemed they drew fewer details in the background images, unless they were in more immediate sight. They also seemed to get more liberal with using the more intense bright/dark colors in 3 and 4, whereas in 1 and 2 those colors seemed to usually be reserved for specific objects they wanted to pop out against the duller background colors.

There are good things about both styles, and I kind of like the fact that there's something to distinguish the earlier episodes from the later ones because it demonstrates an evolution and kind of mirrors Doug's journey to settling into his new life in Bluffington.

[–] jptf2 12 years ago

So what was Ellipse's role, exactly? Did they also do some of the overseas animation (which I guess mostly entails drawing "in-between" frames to fill in the gaps between the "key frames" Jumbo drew and sent them), or were they just responsible for other post-production aspects?