1.2 THE OLDER AUDIENCE: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MIDCENTURY ANIMATION, CHILDREN’S PROGRAMMING, AND CONTEMPORARY PREFRENCES
For the purposes of this paper, the “older audience” will refer not only to the baby boomer generation (birth years: 1946-1964) but broadly to the generation born before 1971, due to the landscape of animation’s steady predictability until landmarks in the animation industry emerged after that time and thus changed public opinion drastically; specifically, the lifting of the Hays Code in 1968 (Lawrence, 2020), which allowed for the introduction of adult themes in animated media, as well as the demand for 24-hour television content in the beginning of the 1980s (Marques, 2021). Therefore, the elder viewership in this case refers to audience members over the age of 50 years old.
Famously, animation owes its roots to features intended for audiences of all ages, with adult themes explored and satirized in the early days of Betty Boop and Felix the Cat (Lawrence, 2020). As Walt Disney gained domination of the industry in one long, methodical monopoly, television was also gaining ground on the forefront of daily entertainment, and as the world became smaller, religion began slipping from its hold on society, and people grew more and more curious about the shifting culture around them, so the aforementioned Hays Code was instituted to dictate what constituted morally correct content permissible to broadcast into the homes of millions. Consequentially, as animation gained prominence, it also found itself stunted by a strict set of regulations, and cartoons were reshaped to utilize unwaveringly family-friendly humor, with pre-existing characters and concepts forced to undergo a rapid reformation. This was the first contributing factor to the older audience’s perception of animation as solely a form of children’s entertainment.
The nail in the coffin was Hanna-Barbera. Before William Hanna and Joseph Barbera arrived on the scene, the animation industry was dying; a budget simply didn’t exist for such an expensive and time-consuming art form (Coleman, 2017), and the entertainment industry is a business just like any other, so regardless of public opinion on the resulting production quality of barebones budget cuts, their success speaks for itself. Their technique of limited animation involved creating shorts with fewer frames per second, running the same cel repeatedly while animating only certain components (for example, the head turning, mouth moving, and eyes blinking), and looping a previously completed animation repeatedly. Subtle consequences took form in recognizable threads poking from the seams of this cheaply stitched shamble, such as a collar, necktie, or beard placed on all characters to prevent the audience from noticing a head separated onto its own cel to turn independently from a character’s body. As disparaged as Hanna-Barbera is among the community of animators and artists, once again, financial figures always speak for themselves, and Hanna-Barbera was awarded seven Academy Awards and reached a net worth of $300 million U.S.D. at its peak performance.
Nonetheless, cheap animation cemented the idea that cartoons were poor quality, churned out only as mindless drivel to fill the Saturday morning slot as an easy cash grab. To this day, many adults over the age of 50 continue to view animation as a medium that exists only in this capacity, and thus are an easy group to accidentally drive away when utilizing animation in media directed towards a broad demographic. Mowe Studios, a motion graphics studio of Hallendale Beach, Florida, advises in their article, How to Market to Different Generations with Animation,that “Baby boomers are naturally more inclined to think of animation as children’s entertainment…. Overall, they prefer things that look simpler and natural. They aren’t so inclined to represent human characters with unusual colors or limb proportions, like longer legs or tiny heads. And if your story has a character that isn’t human, be aware that adding life to an object can look childish for them, depending on how it looks, acts, and moves.” (Marques, 2021)
Therefore, the eldest audience of an animated feature is arguably the most important to research when considering the artistic style employed in one’s work. Unless intent on focusing solely on a separate demographic due to absolute certainty that lack of viewership in the older generation will be compensated for by another, it is crucial, if one is indeed planning to release media that is intended to appeal to a wide audience, to ensure that this group does not consider one’s work to be unprofessional and immature.
1.3 THE MIDDLE AUDIENCE: MILLENNIALS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CGI
Though Steven King’s name hasn’t budged from its lofty throne as legendary master of horror novelists, Michael Crichton may not forever be remembered as the 1980’s icon of the science fiction thriller genre. Playing on the technology explosion and scientific advancements in the field of medicine, RNA splicing, and artificial intelligence that made his contemporaries so uneasy, Crichton approached his stories with a Mary Shelley approach: What if we took it too far?
Within the world of Crichton’s wildly successful work arose films that necessitated the most realistic and heart-stopping of visual effects. The audience needed to feel the abject terror of the characters as a twenty-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus Rex bites a Ford Explorer in half with one crush of its mighty jaws, the uncanny glare of unstoppable, heartless robots bearing the faces of trusted human companions. True to his inspiration, not a dollar was spared on the latest in cutting-edge technology to instill fear in the hearts of his fans, and, in 1976, with Westworld came the first 3D computer-generated imagery in film. As the entertainment industry raced to catch up, Crichton broke barriers again with Jurassic Park, in which four minutes in total of pure dinosaur-inflicted peril are completely computer generated (Semlyen, 2010).
Though both films were created for an adult demographic, the first full-length computer-generated film, Toy Story, was decidedly for children, though it continues to appeal to all audiences to this day. Toy Story in itself was a remarkable feat, as half of its crew, a meager 27 animators, had never even used a computer before (Semlyen, 2010). Yet, remarkably, it pulled in a box office smash of $373 million, a number which tripled as Pixar continued to release sequels to the saga (Nash Information Services, LLC, n.d.). Immediate was the boom in 3D computer animated films marketed towards children, with traditional hand-drawn work now considered massively passé by audiences, while other studios battled to replicate Pixar’s financial success.
Simultaneously, an interesting new phenomenon was blossoming in forefront of the animation industry. The Simpsons had begun to sink its hooks into mainstream culture as the first successful adult animated series. Funny, edgy, and clever, Matt Groening promised a whole new dawn of storytelling for animators and artists, but unfortunately, somewhat of a failure to launch instead took place. Studios placed utmost importance, as always, on consideration of guaranteed financial success rather than pushing forward new- and risky- ideas, and for well over a decade, the only television programs that reached the popularity of The Simpsons only pounded the same concepts into the dirt, to greater and greater extents, searching for a breaking point: a barrage of sitcoms revolving around the American nuclear family, all 2D animated, all with the same round-eyed style, all featuring shocking, offensive, raunchy and violent humor (Aitchison, 2019). This coincides with a revolution in censorship, particularly, a sharp increase in the acceptance of profanity and vulgarity in media, with a study conducted by San Diego State University finding the prevalence of swearwords to be 28 times more likely to appear in books published since the mid-1950s (Flood, 2017). Simultaneously, adult themes have quickly become more openly addressed in televised media, though strong variation in censorship of this exists across Western countries, for example, European countries often permit nudity more frequently whilst the USA is more lenient with graphic violence (UKEssays, 2017) (Head, 2019).
While children’s animation embraced 3D animation in both film and television, exploring a diverse portfolio of genres, styles, and characters, adult cinematic animation stagnated in 2D television programming only, with 3D animation only flourishing for adult audiences in the video gaming industry. For this reason, somewhat of a disparity exists in the way millennials, or the “middle audience”, views animation. Many millennial viewers choose to welcome children’s animated films for their own entertainment, accepting the somewhat simplified plotlines in order to enjoy the bold ideas and artistic opportunities, found only rarely in the often lifeless mold of adult animation. Simultaneously, a similarly significant number of adult audiences continue to only view overly violent or raunchy animated work as fit to consume, carrying the same prejudice as the older audiences- the concept that all animated work is inherently juvenile, and requiring that it break boundaries into shock-value territory to prove itself.
This generation is the trickiest and most interesting to study in their response to animated content as a form of entertainment, due to opinion being so divided. Much of it may be influenced by whether this person is willing to consume children’s entertainment, such as contemporary releases of new Disney movies, in which case the theory may be posited that they would hypothetically enjoy a more cartoonish style of animation, or whether this person enjoys video games, in which case it is possible that the viewer may prefer a more realistic style of animation. It is this exact matter that shall be further discussed in the personal investigation conducted for this report, delving into what components of 3D animation interest or disinterest the “middle audience”, as well as whether there exists a trend in whether these viewers consider animation style, particularly cartoonish or realistic animation, as a factor in whether they assess the medium to be more or less juvenile.
1.4 THE YOUNGEST AUDIENCE: THE MOTION GRAPHICS ARTISTIC RENAISSANCE IN CLICKBAIT CULTURE
Gen Z is commonly mocked for their purported social media dependence and short attention span, but with the popularity of video streaming platforms like TikTok converging with the normalization of video game culture, visual artists find a platform for their work to flourish. Young animators have found a place in TikTok culture, with some amassing up to five million followers, and some even claiming that being active on the app has taught them more about animation than art school ever could (Kastrenakes, 2020).
This could perhaps be traced back to the popularity of CGI integration in live-action videos taking hold in the dawn of Snapchat, and the rise of looping animated filters, or even to the hold that anime, the art of Japanese animation, has finally taken upon the Western public. Once a genre considered nerdy and niche, a huge cultural shift has occurred within the last decade or so, and in recent market research conducted by anime streaming site Crunchyroll, it was discovered that only 6% of Gen Z participants never heard of anime, compared to 27% of the general population (Morrissey & May, 2021). While this paper will focus only on Western animation, due to the vast differences in historical and cultural context relating to Eastern animation, it is essential to note that the acceptance of anime as a widespread source of entertainment among Gen-Zers may easily have led to the current upswing of interest in animation and new, different, and artistically-driven animation in young adults.
Gen Z is a platform that is, without a doubt, the most accepting of animation of all the adult audiences. One difference to note, according to Mowe Studio, is that “Millennials are more inclined to cleaner, ‘pixel-perfect’ aesthetics, while Gen Z prefers more rough, organic, and natural styles.” This description lends itself best to 2D animation, but the question remains as to whether it holds true for 3D as well, because, currently, there is a noticeable, gaping lack of 3D-animated films and television shows created for an adult audience, presumably because, between the younger and middle audiences, studios aren’t sure what adults will respond best to, and thus are not willing to take a financial risk.
While children, as always, prefer stories that they can relate to, with characters that act like children, bright colors, and engaging, interactive themes (McPherson, 2020), there is little surprise in the fact that they still, as much as ever, prefer animation to live-action, and tried-and-true methods of marketing to developing minds hold as fast as ever. For this reason, 3D animation has almost exclusively been explored with its youngest audience in mind, and, despite one or two exceptions, the industry has held back, timid, from roaming into the territory of young adults, eagerly awaiting animated work made with them, for once, in mind.
Addendum: After reviewing this segment, feedback was given to change the emotive tone and downplay objective, opinionated, baseless statements. Much of this was changed, before ultimately being cut for time anyway. This is the original version.