When I was a young boy...I tried to listen......

Read.

I must say. That is one of the most perfect rants against the current animation industry I've ever seen.

So much has changed. Even in the last decade or so. When I think back 10 years ago to around 1995/96 there were great things occuring. Ren and Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life were popular programs watched by many. Batman: The Animated Series was on and kicking ass. The "What A Cartoon" show was treating me to a new glorious spectacle every time I watched it and the Disney Channel was expensive and people actually wanted it around.

Nowadays, the original cartoon-cartoons are all gone except for the wonderful and wonderfully animated show Ed Edd n Eddy which, God willing, will remain on TV for as long as possible. And while a few great shows HAVE been made by the hands of the people who made great content ten years ago (ala the new and wonderful Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and Teen Titans and Camp Laslo), there is so much despiseable crap on television it makes me wince. Krypto the Superdog, Baby Looney Toons, and the majority of anime make me depressed whenever I see them on.
Gone are the days when independent animations filled up holes in time schedules.
Gone are the days when pushing the boundaries was a good thing.
Gone are the days when cartoons were mostly made in here in the states.
Gone are the days when funny cartoons got popular.
Now it's all choppily rehashed anime-esque barely-drawn barely-colored barely-moving crap made by some person overseas with photoshop given directions by some "team" of writers and execs.

It's very sad.
It seems the internet is one of the few places to find good independent animators these days.
Flash8 is out, for those of you who live in caves.
From what I've heard thus far the general opinion of it is "meh"
And that besides the drop shadow and motion blur, there isn't much in it worth caring about.
So I'll probably be steering clear of it for the time being.
The cartoon I'm making about the bored kid is turning out fantastic thus far. I've really upped the quality of character design. Not so much detail as much as making the characters fun to look at. Combining some odd art styles too. And I am very pleased with how it looks so far.

As some of you know Micheal Gagne put up some really nice versions of his film "Prelude to Eden" for viewing. He took them down the next day due to horrible bandwidth costs. I managed to grab a nice quality Quicktime one before he did. You can still see the film on Atomfilms.com but it's blurry there, even as a quicktime file.
Goldenrusset.com, by the way.

Once again I find myself out of things to write.
But only 3 people read this anyway, so who honestly cares.