I'm struggling to find the right words for this, but I've been watching Superman (1996) and Justice League (2001) and it's fucking insane to me how they're like night and day in terms of animation quality.

In Superman, everyone is beautiful, even the nothing side characters.

In Justice League, it's not enough that all the background characters and uglier, they even made Superman's face uglier. It's almost like they thought it was very important to... what? Age him up 5 years? When I was much younger, I vaguely remember Superman showing up in the futuristic Batman Beyond era (not sure what actual show it was an episode of, since I know Justice League and maybe others had its share of time travel episodes to that era), not through time travel, but just by continuing to exist without aging.

Drawing quality is different from animation quality, and both of those things are different from color quality, but they all just seem so much worse in Justice League.

AND IT'S A FUCKING FIVE YEAR DIFFERENCE.

Justice League probably isn't as bad as Young Justice, but it's incredible how early we can already see the rot of capeshit.

Superman is so relentlessly beautiful and well animated in even the most banal and worthless filler episodes, but Justice League couldn't pull it together and WOW me with it's first episode.

Does anyone know any actual DC business history here? One day did Warner Brothers look at their profit margins, and get some computers and were sufficiently impressed, they fired off 90% of their animation staff and hired a bunch of overworked teenagers to replace them or something?

What in the fuck happened IN FIVE YEARS?

Even the soundtrack. Superman TAS is so good it's actually displaced the John Williams score in my mind, I find it difficult to remember how it goes, and when I try to hum it, I just get derailed into humming Superman TAS's theme.

Justice League sounds like a discount royalty free ripoff of the National Anthem.(cont'd)

>>213436536 (OP)
Go to /co/ you weirdo

>>213436536 (OP)
You should look into all the animation studios that Tiny Toons went through. Some episodes are extremely off-model.

>>213436536 (OP)
Stop being a fucking manchild.

>>213436693
>You should look into all the animation studios that Tiny Toons went through. Some episodes are extremely off-model.
Tell me more, anon.

I'm sure he only looks like that in a handful of episodes
they eventually fix it and make everyone look young again

>>213436760
>I'm sure he only looks like that in a handful of episodes
>they eventually fix it and make everyone look young again
I went ahead to the second-to-last episode of the final season to grab a screenshot of Superman's face.

It ain't much better.

>>213436693
I'm actually curious about this, I recently watched a small documentary about all the creepy fans and letters/fan art they used to get. They even had a wall of people they used to make fun of/banned with all the creepy shit they sent in.

>>213436536 (OP)
Superman’s face is fixed a bit in the second season. But the animation quality never returns to the same highs as the 90s. Justice League Unlimited is still a phenomenal show, probably second only to BtAS

>>213436714
People would call that image ai these days because their bodies are "fused" or some shit

>>213436536 (OP)
They just wanted him to look older

>>213437091
see >>213436866

Vaxx status

>>213437098
They changed their mind

>>213436714
>>213436987
>n order to complete 65 episodes for the 1st season, Warner Bros. and Amblin Entertainment contracted several different animation houses. These animation studios included Tokyo Movie Shinsha (now known as TMS Entertainment), Wang Film Productions, AKOM, Freelance Animators New Zealand, Encore Cartoons, StarToons, and Kennedy Cartoons. Tokyo Movie Shinsha also animated the series' opening sequence. Warner Bros. staff disliked working with Kennedy Cartoons due to the studio's inconsistent quality, and episodes that they animated were often subject to multiple re-takes. In other cases, such as the debut episode "The Looney Beginning", portions of Kennedy-animated episodes were re-animated by another studio.

I can't find a larger version of this comparison image but you can see why they didn't like dealing with Kennedy Cartoons.

IIRC Kennedy was just a husband-and-wife team working out of their house.

>>213436536 (OP)
so capeshit he watches crappy old cartoons no one cared about when they came out

let capeshot die forevere

>>213437037
>Justice League Unlimited is still a phenomenal show, probably second only to BtAS
Is that true?
I'm looking at the first episode. This faggot looks like an English teacher self-insert character.

>>213437194
Wow! Very good, Bry-bry. Next time, you might try including basic punctuation, so the rest of the class can understand what you wrote.

>>213436658
fag

STAS is infinitely superior to Justice League but I never felt it was solely because of animation, more writing and villains

>>213436536 (OP)
They fix it in JLU

>>213436536 (OP)
>it's fucking insane to me how they're like night and day in terms of animation quality
All the well animated episodes have a japanese staff (and that's mostly season 1 with some of season 2). Notice how they weren't allowed to touch the apokolips/darkseid stuff and all these episodes look like ass in comparison to the more mundane stuff the japanese handled (the batman crossover arc is probably the peak the of the show).

>>213437883
>All the well animated episodes have a japanese staff (and that's mostly season 1 with some of season 2).
Fascinating that you say that. Some shit like the bomb Superman drops into the pit while saving Rudy Jones looks like Studio Ghibli-tier shit.

Anal sex with Superman.

>>213437936
This is canon btw.

>>213437973
>Anal sex is canon btw.
Can I see your sores?

>>213436536 (OP)
animation quality definitely declined from TAS era going onward. i always hated the batman redesigns, especially of joker.

>>213438145
>animation quality definitely declined from TAS era going onward. i always hated the batman redesigns, especially of joker.
It's weird that right as this thread's going on, I happen upon an episode of Superman where Jimmy shows him these self-aware newspaper comics. Especially the one at the bottom.

>>213436536 (OP)
Superman TAS is still my favorite dcau show

>>213438086

>>213437186
Startoons staff really wanted to fuck blinky or whatever female rabbit's name was

>>213436536 (OP)
You went from hand-drawn cel animation to early 00s digital animation. It was an awkward period everywhere and it didn't help that the executives gave the later DCAU shows less funding than BTAS ans STAS because it was more profitable to license and dub anime for cheap.

>>213437930
Ghibli staff actually did work on STAS. I believe it was on the World's Finest crossover.

>>213438621
Gilbert Gottfried has an ONSCREEN ERECTION for Superman.

>>213438621
Hot

>>213438911
35 year old boomer here wasnt it Buster and Babs? What was the ducks name i dont think ot was daffy

>>213439167
You're right it was babs. The duck was Plucky, I remember him for sure. 33 year old boomer here

>>213439089
>>213439118
>90s Superman had this
>00s Batman wasn't even allowed to have guns for the police

>>213436536 (OP)
If just a few years blows you're mind check out the original Superman cartoon from the forties. Top notch.

Justice league was great, wonder woman was at her hottest ever in that cartoon

>>213439333
Well trips don't lie.checked'em. Praise KEK

>>213437260
Green Arrow is a pompous libtard, so your first impression is pretty accurate.

>>213439643
>Green Arrow is a pompous libtard, so your first impression is pretty accurate.
Tell me more. Is he canonically a libtard in the comics? Was his writer more of a libtard than the other DC characters? Are there any interesting shitlib whining behind the scenes in DC around that time?

I remember liking Static Shock.
Virgil was one of the good ones.

how fucking clueless do you have to be to not know who Green Arrow is

>>213436536 (OP)
>In Superman, everyone is beautiful, even the nothing side characters.
/co/ is over how tired TMS-glazing threads are, but yeah its thanks to TMS and their sister company Telecom before they priced out of overseas work. This was also one of the rare western shows of the time that allowed TMS to handle storyboards and even had japanese director credits.

Justice League before the Unlimited seasons look really crusty in particular. It did even out over time.
>they even made Superman's face uglier. It's almost like they thought it was very important to... what? Age him up 5 years?
One of the directors James Tucker wanted him to look more like Curt Swan-drawn Superman. They toned down how old he looks after season 1 of Justice League.

>>213437194
retard

>>213436536 (OP)
>on the left:
>a millenial before the 2008 crisis, a teenager full of hope for the future
>on the right:
>a millenial on 2025, dead inside
Who would've thunk, superman is literally me.

>>213439726
>Is he canonically a libtard in the comics?
Yeah, he's been that way for decades. He used to regularly butt heads with the GL, Flash, and Hawkman since they were canonically conservative back then.

>>213440215
>GL, Flash, and Hawkman were canonically conservative back then.
Really? I never knew this.

>>213436536 (OP)
>capeslop
grow up

>>213436536 (OP)

STAS is the reason cartoons became shadeless slabs with no detail.
Its no coincidence the anime boom happened right after this came out.

Superman: The Animated Series in turn looks worse than Batman: The Animated Series, and when BTAS redesigned itself to look like STAS in The New Batman Adventures seasons it was universally despised.

>>213436536 (OP)
Not as bad as what they did to my boy in 2007….

>>213441844
What the fuck?
I wouldn’t stick my penis anywhere near that lmao.

>>213441514
>STAS is the reason cartoons became shadeless slabs with no detail.
Were cartoons better before this? What are some prime examples? I'm curious.
>Its no coincidence the anime boom happened right after this came out.
Are you saying that people tired of awful STAS slop and the high quality of anime succeeded where Western animation failed, or are you saying that sloppy STAS introduced audiences to lower standards and made sloppy anime seem more acceptable?

>>213442398
>What are some prime examples?

What do you think?

>>213442516
I thought you meant before even DC/Marvel?

>>213436536 (OP)
It was made by white people
>>213439089
>>213439118
Japanese people made this

>>213436536 (OP)
Alien fuck has the most soulless dot eyes

>>213439726
well hes a classical libtard from the early/mid 2000s, so hes basically altright by todays standards

>>213442749
he was always written as a straight up communist, like the type of crazy leftist that Sean Penn or the Rage Against The Machine dudes used to be, not the ones obsessed with identity politics that claim to be anti-capitalism but also praise black CEOs

>>213440828
Hawkman especially had a hard set identity as a conservative. With GL he had a naive kinda respect for authority thing going on but wasn’t really a dyed in the wool conservative