Squiggle Vision

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Style of animation pioneered in the USA by Tom Snyder, which uses animation done so crudely that, paradoxically, it looks like a lot more is going on than really is. A very similar animation style was used in chidren's animations in Great Britain as early as 1974. This is not to say that Snyder "stole" this animation effect, known to its originators as "boiling": it is so technologically simple and easy to reproduce that he may well have stumbled on it independently without knowing it had been used before.

Rather than the mostly-static scenes uses by other cheap animation methods (especially those used by Filmation), five similar but slightly different drawings are run in loops. As a result, everything in the frame seems to vibrate, giving the illusion of hyperactivity of motion, even though nothing in the scene is actually moving. The psychological effect on the audience is similar to that of the Jittercam.

Examples of Squiggle Vision include:

Advertising

• Red Bull commercials. But British viewers will invariably make a mental association to Roobarb and Custard and not to Dr Katz. (a show largely unknown outside the USA)
• The Pop Tarts commercials.

Anime and Manga

• The first ending to Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is in this style.

Film

• The biography portions of Sita Sings the Blues, one of the 4 art styles in the movie since the creator didn't want the audience to lose interest.

Literature

• Freelance cartoonist John Caldwell, whose work has appeared in Mad, draws in this style.

Music

• The music video for A-Ha's "Take Me Home."

Video Games

• All the character portraits in Hotel Dusk: Room 215.
• Dialogue boxes in Okami.

Web Animation

• This menu page on the Homestar Runner website.
• Grey Gerling (BarfQuestion)'s style of animation.
• The more recent installments of the Eddsworld series.
• The Another Day flash series.
• The "Baman Piderman" shorts.
• The segments focusing on Bob from Weebl and Bob.

Western Animation

• Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist
• Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, at least the characters. Lampshaded in "Smile for the Ed", with Edd's line "Eddy actually thinks he can pass off a crayon drawing as a school photo? I mean, the lines are all wiggly." Since it was not a Tom Snyder-Soup 2 Nuts production, it did not use the Squigglevision trademark.
• First season of Home Movies (later seasons use non-squiggly Flash animation)
• Science Court (which itself was later renamed Squigglevision and slightly reformatted)
• Stickin' Around
• The pilot episode of Rocko's Modern Life (Trash-O-Madness) featured an unusually squiggly line.
  • Likewise, another Nicktoons, Doug, had squiggly animation in the pilot episode Doug Can't Dance as well.
• Arguably an old British cartoon called "Roobarb" ( And its second season/sequel "Roobarb and Custard Too"), upon where everything (Including the colouring!) wobbled.
  • Which is interesting, as the "Roobarb" cartoons date back to 1974, a full twenty-odd years before the American version of this cartooning style. (described as "Wobblyvision"?) So no longer "arguably" but "definitively"?
• The PBS Kids P-Pals.
• "The Cat Came Back"
• One episode of Arthur featured a parody of Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, with all of the characters drawn this way.
• Most of the shorts on O Canada which included Boband Margaret that later became its own show.
• The Killing of an Egg