But when it did, it launched a generation of contemporary classics that thrived by reimagining old styles and structures, from The Adventures of Ren & Stimpy to Dexter’s Laboratory and the show that was arguably the apotheosis of this looking-forward-by-looking-back model: Animaniacs, which returns this week to Hulu under new showrunner Wellesley Wild, after 22 years off the air. It took the American animation industry until the 1990s to come back from limited animation sitcoms and adventure shows to the creator-driven humor of the classic theatrical shorts. But the comedy isn’t solely dependent on banter.
In fact, employing music from the catalogs owned by their respective studios was fundamental to the generation of cartoon shorts in the Golden Age. They do wonderful things with words and music, of course.
Whereas later cartoon comedies, including Hanna-Barbera’s The Flintstones, turned to talky live-action sitcoms for structure, the great shorts were inspired by silent films from the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. The vast majority of these shorts have a timeless feel today, precisely because their basic premise was so tight. But by and large, the comedic cartoon shorts produced by Disney, Warner Bros., and the like during the Golden Age of American animation achieved classic status by dropping iconic characters with clear-cut motivations into loony but easily understood stories that unspool visually over the course of seven gag-packed minutes. There’s more to it, of course, as any animation professional would tell you - there are 12 basic principles of animation, after all. The foundations of animated comedy are simple: memorable character animation, an emphasis on visual storytelling, and impeccable comic timing.
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