The Evolution of The Simpsons

It was just released yesterday that negotiations between the voice actors and studio of Fox's longest running, prime-time comedy, The Simpsons, had come to an end after a week of major discrepancies that led the public to believe the hit show was abruptly going to end. The actors were asked to take a 45% pay-cut and in response, claimed they could take a smaller pay-cut if they could have a share of the show's considerable profits. However, a deal was made and everyone's favorite dysfunctional family will be back for not one, but two more seasons.

This news got me thinking, if The Simpsons has been on the air for 23 seasons (and I don't watch the show enough to really take notice), the quality of Matt Groening's original animation must have changed drastically over the years. It wasn't until I looked up The Simpsons 1987 until I realized just how much the show has improved since its creation:



I also found this chart, that not only shows the improvement in the design, but also outlines the character development everyone but Maggie has gone through since the shows beginning.

Finally, I found this video that is seemingly unrelated, however I found it to be pretty interesting, not only because it offers an insight into Homer's life before his family (that we very rarely get a glimpse of on the show) but because I think it would be fun to make in after effects. I couldn't embed it without it telling me I had to download Adobe Flash, so I just put it up as a link.

The Emmys 2011: Outstanding Animated Program

In light of the recent Emmy Awards I thought I would look into the winner of the Outstanding Animated Program category. I often tend to overlook this category in favor of best comedy series or lead actors/actresses so it was interesting to look more into the winners and nominees of this category. This year’s nominees for Outstanding Animated Program were: The Cleveland Show, Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III, Futurama, The Simpsons, and South Park. I am not a regular viewer of any of these shows but I have seen a few episodes of a few of them. One that I have never seen an episode of is the winner of the Category Futurama.

Futurama is an animated science fiction sitcom that since 1999 has aired various seasons on Fox, Cartoon Network, and now Comedy Central. It was created by Matt Groening (who also created The Simpsons) and David X. Cohen (who has written for The Simpsons). The story follows Phillip J. Fry a present day pizza delivery boy who is frozen for 1,000 years then becomes a Cargo delivery boy for Planet Express in the 31^st Century. Aside from winning in the category of Outstanding Animated Program, Futurama also won in the Category of Outstanding Voice over Performance (Maurice LaMarche who plays Kif Kroker on the show). The show has also been nominated/won in a number of other categories in past years.

After I learned that this show had won, I decided to look into a little bit about how it was made…I mean the makers of it must be doing something right if they won an Emmy for it. After looking around I found 2 interesting videos which, I think explain the basic process and timeline of creating the show from start to finish really well. The two videos go over similar ideas at times but each touches on some different ideas as well so I posted one of the videos below and the other HERE (it would not allow embedding).

Futurama

I found it interesting how in the video the producer mentions how they like to record the actor’s dialogue with the entire cast there instead of individuals doing it line by line alone. I definitely agree with him and see that as a much better way to get more natural sounding dialogue-I think it would be quite difficult to get the right amount of feeling or right reaction when you are not interacting with the character you are supposed to be reacting to. I also liked how in the second video, the creator explains how he created the characters along with some professional designers. Next time I’m in the mood for a good animated series I will have to give Futurama a try!