Talk:The Millennium Age of Animation

There's an edit waiting in the Moderation queue that assumes the Millennium Age of Animation is over. I don't recall any discussion anywhere about that. Is the assumption accurate?

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I would think not. If anything, it's accelerating.

Edit: I wouldn't accept that the Millennium Age has ended until it is manifestly clear that we are in a new age of animation. What's different now about animation that explicitly and clearly demarks it from the animation of the Millennium Age? If there's no real difference, there is no new age. What justifies saying it's over?

I think it's close to ending, but not quite over yet.

We're reaching a point where the old, industry veterans who made a big name in the 1990s are being replaced by new ones. Studio Ghibli and Pixar were absolute powerhouses during the 2000s, but both certainly aren't their old selves any more. Pixar's new releases aren't as special as their old ones (they're still good, though, just not transcendently good). Studio Ghibli, who I have been following closer, has an uncertain future. We're getting How Do You Live? in classic Ghibli fashion, but after that no one knows where they are headed next. Hayao Miyazaki is retiring. Isao Takahata is dead. In this decade Ghibli released Earwig and the Witch, which is commonly believed to be their worst movie. Blue Sky studios shut down after Disney's acquisition. People are starting to get tired of Disney and Pixar's films, seeking refuge in Dreamworks and Sony films, with a newer style of animation.

You can make an argument for the Millennium Age ending, but I struggle to come up with a new era to replace it. The newer stuff simply isn't distinctive enough for this to be considered a new era. Studios come and go all the time. We still need to wait to see where Studio Ghibli's future leads. Plus, all I've mentioned so far are the mainstream stuff. There's plenty of indie animators innovating and continuing the tradition from the Millennium Age, such as Cartoon Saloon. There's no distinctive "end" to this era to me. Even if there is an "end", we still need to be patient to observe how the industry will move forward in the future.

Allow a note that says this era might be ending, and things are rapidly changing. I don't think a black and white "The Millennium Age of Animation is over" edit should be here because we can't clearly see what the future would be like.

Let's take a look at what we currently have in the way of ages of animation. Highly abridged, we have:

• Early Animation: "Look what we can do!" Cave paintings, Zoetropes, Magic Lanterns.
• The Silent Age of Animation: "Look what we can do for more than a second!" Animation is used to tell stories. Winsor McCay is the best-known animator from this era, and it's where Walt Disney learned most of the tools of his trade.
• The Golden Age of Animation: "Talkies!" Just like live-action, animation took advantage of synchronized sound. Walt Disney and Leon Schlesinger built empires in the early days of the Golden Age, Ub Iwerks showed off what short animated films could do, and in the middle of the age Disney proved the medium could be used for serious feature-length movies. Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and others also proved the medium could be used for comedy.
• The Dark Age of Animation: "Cut corners and make money!" Limited Animation ruled, along with the static background and Merchandise-Driven works. The Flintstones, Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner, and Scooby-Doo are three of the best of the age. Fans of avant-garde and big-budget animation had to look elsewhere, particularly Canada, the UK, and (near the end of the age) Japan, but their output was small compared to the juggernaut that was the US animation industry.
• The Renaissance Age of Animation: "Why did we stop telling good stories? Look at what the Japanese are doing!" Animation companies on both continents figured out what the live-action film studios knew all along: it's possible to have a good story in an inexpensive production that doesn't look cheap. Don Bluth and Hayao Miyazaki lead the way, and Disney released all ten of their "Disney Renaissance" titles. Computer animation reached the level where audiences could take it seriously, with ReBoot being one of the pioneers on that side.
• The Millennium Age of Animation: "Look what we can do with our home computers!" Everybody could make animation, and Sturgeon's Law made itself known - for every animator/storyteller at the level of Genndy Tartakovsky, Hideaki Anno, and Lauren Faust, there were a dozen or more at the level of... well, me. (No, I've never made anything worth keeping, let alone presenting to others.) And YouTube made it possible for everybody to see the mediocre works along with the good ones, whether they were mainstream or avant-garde.

What's the one-sentence next big thing that ushers in the next age of animation?

Honestly? Conformity is the rule and not the exception in animation since 2008.

Changes to the industry's management are to blame as far as I can tell. I'm not going to base it on the quality of New Tens media, only on the rationale behind it, and only in that it is very different from that of the era of ReBoot throught to The Fairly Oddparents.

The defining factor seems to be that other than industry vetetans like Faust, those involved on creating new works are not only a lineage leading back to the writers and artists for The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack - which on it's own is not enough to define the new era - but also that with rare exceptions the animation industry is not making animation for children but for all ages, which you would hope would be a good thing.

This sword cuts both ways; in film, animation for all ages has generally led to innovation and financial success, while on television - or later, streaming services - it more often than not led to creative stagnation and has even resulted in unprofitable works continuing while ones with great financial potential are abandoned (like how marketable Glitch Techs was compared to Infinity Train). The same seems to be true of anime.

Most importantly, current writers in many industries - most visibly in animation - are usually sticking to tropes like Draco in Leather Pants or Isekai in a formulaic manner rather than an explorative one.

If that doesn't qualify for a new age of animation then I understand, it's just that I'e more than noticed that most cartoons haven't felt well-written since Steven Universe became popular, and since that's subjective I'm instead trying to base it on the root cause of it all.

I get now that maybe I should have proposed that before trying to alter this entry. Feel free to make changes on the observations above or to dismiss it all. I don't really feel like this place is what I'm looking for in a trope wiki now that I've seen its limitations and that censorship is still in place if a work just so happens to be NSFW. I might not have use for porn, but being an asexual deprived of a way to find escapism for the past 6 years has made me realise that if I want ideas for how to subvert speculative fiction tropes in an era of trope wikis that ban content based on US law or Google ad revenue, I've literally had to deep dive into some places I've got no other business being in. Making a NSFW subpage for tropes would be fine, but ATT doesn't seem willing to do that so I don't plan on remaining here for long.

Conformity is the rule and not the exception in animation since 2008.

What, just 2008? That's been true at least since 1942. What people conform to changes, but they still Follow the Leader.

Changes to the industry's management are to blame as far as I can tell.

That was certainly the case in the 1970s. Now... I think with no firm evidence that things aren't as bad now as they were then, but they aren't as good as they were in the early-2000s.

Most importantly, current writers in many industries - most visibly in animation - are usually sticking to tropes like Draco in Leather Pants or Isekai in a formulaic manner rather than an explorative one.

That's Sturgeon's Law making itself known. It's been around for over a century, with the particular memes changing; it just hasn't been visible because of the cost of keeping works in circulation before the arrival of YouTube and similar sites.

Making a NSFW subpage for tropes would be fine, but ATT doesn't seem willing to do that

From the relevant policy: "it's okay to talk about pornography and violence on the wiki. It is not okay be pornographic or violent on the wiki." From the same policy: "The wiki is not rated G."

We're willing to discuss NSFW works and tropes. We do have to follow UK laws in the matter, though, so we need to word the Sex Tropes carefully - that's one reason why the Trope Workshop exists.

"That was certainly the case in the 1970s. Now... I think with no firm evidence that things aren't as bad now as they were then, but they aren't as good as they were in the early-2000s."

This I have to disagree with now that I've had time to thing about it. Cartoons are not making money, not even when corners are cut, and that's what I was alluding to with "change in management". It's not even greed alone that's changed the age, it's the attitude of the writers.

The Second Dark Age of Animation: "Put a chick in it and make her gay, every time, or we'll say you're a nazi and sic the witch-hunters on you."

To be clear, I'm not conservative either and don't want to bring politics into this. It would be just as awful if everything in Western Animation was "The Adventures of Bibleman" in some way, as my point is that agendas, rather than the computer adoption of the Millennium Age, are what defines the contemporary age of Animation and have since ~2008.

In short, the 1970s treated animation as a Circus. The 2010s treated it as a soapbox.

There isn't one. Maybe AI-generated footage might become this in a few years, but it's no way near mature enough to qualify as the next evolution of animation. Nor do I think "look what we can do to real people with deepfakes" counts, either. We need a visible sea change in the medium, and until we have that next new thing, you can't say the current thing is over and done with.

I'd say that the difference between the original Ben 10 or Spongebob Squarepants, and Twelve Forever or The Amazing World of Gumball is what I'm trying to express, and I don't mean stylistically.

The phrase you'd be looking for is "Let's make it look like the social issues behind animation went away!"

Basically, ever since Adventure Time went on the air, the animation industry feels gentrified.

I don't get the feeling that there's been some kind of revolutionary transformation in animation that marks a shift to a new age. I know we don't normally require sources, but this is one of the times I'd prefer to have some authoritative backing rather than just somebody's say-so.

That's fair. I'm no authority on the matter, it was just based on my observations. You've probably noticed I've stopped editing purely out of fear that my edits are no longer welcome.

This is going to be a pretty ambitious project for a page image. Here we go.

The Renaissance Age of Animation has File:Renaissance 6935 6462.jpg, sampling some influential animation from the era. Why not do the same here? We'll copy the format exactly: six panels, filled with work from different animated works.

It is important that all countries and studios are represented. The image over at the Renaissance page has quite a lot of American animation. Here, let's try to get other countries going as well.

I propose we take images from the following works:

• The Incredibles (first Pixar film to have human characters)
• Spirited Away (need I say any more? In case you don't know, Wikipedia best sums it up: "The first Miyazaki feature to be shot using a 100% digital process; the first film to gross $200 million worldwide before opening in North America; the film to finally overtake Titanic at the Japanese box office, becoming the top-grossing film in the history of Japanese cinema; the only anime and traditionally animated winner, so far, of an Academy award for Best Animated Feature"). See proposed image here
• The Owl House (LGBTQ+ representation)
• Wolfwalkers (samples Irish animation)
• When Marnie Was There (film) (Ghibli's last film before restructuring). See proposed image here.
• The first Shrek (many a source of Memetic Mutation)

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I understand Spirited Away but if we're going to do this, but I would like some representation of Japanese television animation. I would suggest Fullmetal Alchemist:Brotherhood since it was released right between the 2000s and 2010s and it is a very acclaimed adaptation. If it needs to be original then Madoka Magica. I like Marnie Was There but I'm not sure is what I would put on the page image.

I stuck to works I'm familiar with, stuff that I won't completely butcher because I took a bad screenshot unrepresentative of the work, but I am fully supportive of using Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Can you please find me a good image to use, along with the licensing information?

The very page who we use for the manga is actually a promotional image of the anime. It is a problem here, our manga pages constantly conflate with the adaptation, something we inherited from TVT.

I prefer a screenshot from the work rather than a promotional image. I'm quite fond of this one (page the image lives at) from IMDb's absolutely insane list of 2,500 images for the work. As a bonus, its higher quality and larger file size gives me more options while creating the final image.

I am curious if we can add something from stop motion animation like from Coraline for the image?

In that case, which work do you want to get rid of? I'm thinking The Incredibles, because American 3D movies is already covered by Shrek.

This would make our list:

• Coraline
• Spirited Away
• The Owl House
• Wolfwalkers
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
• Shrek

• Coraline
• Spirited Away
• The Owl House
• Wolfwalkers
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
• Shrek

seems reasonable to me, but I'm not all that informed on this to be blunt.

"The Owl House (LGBTQ+ representation)"

And? Literally two animation genres, one of which is very popular in its own right with multiple works in it that wound up being mainstream successes, beat it to any claim of this by well over a decade decade.

I think The Last Airbender is far more deserving of any placement. It shares a name with one of the highest grossing movies of all time (which, frankly, qualifies as an "Animated" movie for 90% of the film), but "everyone thinks of Aang" when they hear the name because it's that influential (and Cameron's thing so totally forgettable past the spectacle, but that's beside the point).

Ah, that's why I put the topic up for discussion!

I knew that, because I'm very much the embodiment of Small Reference Pools, there will be so many notable shows that escaped my radar, because I haven't seen it. The initial list I proposed are stuff I have seen which I really like. Clearly, that is biasing my decisions.

Do you think this image (page) is a good representation of the series as a whole?

Oh the other hand, are you sure you want The Last Airbender to end up here? I won't touch that thing with a 35 mile pole.

Do you mean: Avatar: The Last Airbender?

New list:

• Coraline
• Spirited Away
• Avatar: The Last Airbender
• Wolfwalkers
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
• Shrek

Yes, Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The very mention of "The Owl House" means it's an instant NO. Way too controversial of a topic.

Not controversial here. Vote yes.

My understanding is Owl House did mediocre in ratings overall, it just has a very loud adult fanbase. It's also currently ongoing, which brings me back to (blue) Avatar: Even if something is successful now, is it really illustrative of an era of culture if one can't say for sure it will even be remembered a year after its concluded? TLA is still well remembered and continues to influence.

Exactly, hence why I switched.

Last chance to comment before I make the image!

Also, when I upload the image compilation, would the license be "I created the work myself" or "fair dealing"? While it is true I made the image, the images I select are almost all fair dealing. Personally I'll say the image as a whole is "I created the image", while each individual image used will have their respective licenses noted and written down.

A composite image, like File:Great walls.jpg, is a derivative work, and is copyright by the person who created it. You would choose the "This file was uploaded by the photographer or author." option under licensing, along with whatever license you want to grant ATT. (Unless you choose to place it in the public domain.) You might want to consult what I did when I uploaded that image as a model for what you do. You don't have to give the rights to ATT as I did with Great walls.jpg -- you can dictate your preferred terms.

I don't know whether that's accurate - my works don't suddenly fall into the public domain just because somebody sampled them in their works. This might be an oddity of US law that doesn't apply in the UK.

I'll use that image as an example. I cannot stress enough thank you very much!

I am fine with the Owl House and that list for looks good except that Avatar the Last Airbender should be Avatar (film).

No, they're talking about Avatar: The Last Airbender, not the James Cameron film.