... so I'm working on an animation project that may one day see the light of day (yes, it's as slow as it's rumoured to be) and looking for inspirations and things I might not have seen. I know there's been a flotilla of shows of late from the Cartoon Network et al that I haven't kept up with (NZ being not exactly on the cutting edge).

Some stuff I have seen (besides the SIMPSONS/SOUTH PARK/FUTURAMA/FAMILY GUY prominent quartet):

THE VENTURE BROS.: I've watched the first few episodes of season 1 and am not anywhere near as impressed as I hoped to be. It shares something in common with too much animation in my opinion, which is where the vulgarity is in and of itself the joke. (See also: DRAWN TOGETHER, AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE, and CLONE HIGH, all of which have their moments but from what I've seen share the same problem, although ATHF has an extra-dadaist edge at points.) But I hear it picks up as it goes on, and I can listen just for Jim Thirlwell's music and be quite happy.

FOSTER'S HOME FOR IMAGINARY FRIENDS: Just picked season 1 up the other day, and I loved the first episode - imaginative and glorious design without leaning on cheap jokes. I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

SAMURAI JACK: Have only managed to get a couple episodes into this. Not sure why. It hasn't fired me up very much, though I have endless respect for the artwork of course.

You're probably stumped because modern American cartoons are horrible! Some of those shows have good moments in verbal gag-writing, but the animation is horrible. Except SAMURAI JACK has great color scheme choices, and good animation timing, so it's pretty to look at. Otherwise, they are "writer" shows, not cartoons.

As cartoons, they would ruin a child forever, and turn them into a robot. And not the kind of robot with feelings and/or superpowers, but the boring kind! SOUTH PARK, THE SIMPSONS and FAMILY GUY are made by people who can't draw and seem to HATE drawing! They look ugly and sick and joyless on purpose as a choice or a joke or something. This should make everyone angry.

I get bored by a lot of the repetitive, unsound design choices in anime, but the most thrilling deluge of cartoon craziness in the last ten years has been: FLCL. FLCL just has a surplus of ideas, it's beautiful looking, the story is cool, and the narrative technique is both brainy and involves the shortest attention span in the world. It makes some missteps, but at least it isn't stale or dull.

Really you should just watch those new POPEYE and WOODY WOODPECKER sets though.

I agree about the visual ugliness THE FAMILY GUY and SOUTH PARK, but while I don't laugh all that much at THE SIMPSONS anymore, I think the design and animation are quite lovely, and that FUTURAMA is positively gorgeous. The only TV animations I've seen that can compare, although of course the aesthetics are very different, are SAMURAI JACK and FOOLY COOLY.

Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends I find lough-out-loud funny even though it's geared towards kids.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force has terrible animation but is simply one of the funniest things I've ever seen (Hand Banana, No!).
Home Movies: A delightful, whimisical and often funny programme that reminds me of the Charlie Brown cartoons for some reason.

Besides THE SIMPSONS and FUTURAMA, my favorite animated show of the last decade is probably the aforementioned HOME MOVIES, which I find to be frequently brilliant and often heartbreaking. The PEANUTS comparison strikes me as quite apropos.

I still like SOUTH PARK, though it's admittedly hit and miss, but no more so than it has been since the very beginning. Like THE ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE SHOW, it's also a case where the 'poor' animation actually works as an aesthetic on its own terms, and Parker and Stone are really much more expressive within the limits of their technique than FAMILY GUY has ever been.

I actually don't completely despise FAMILY GUY. The random, near dada-ist aspect of some of its humor works for me, and when the dog and baby do their occasional Hope/Crosby imitations, I positively like the show. But it's extremely uneven, the poor animation is really inexcusable, and it does lean too much on sheer shock value to get by.

And yes, THE VENTURE BROS. gets considerably better as it goes on, and it's now one of my favorite animated shows.

Also, the short lived MISSION HILL is well worth checking out.

- I love THE VENTURE BROS. I think I said this in an earlier VB thread - there was a revisionist Doc Savage comic series from DC in the late '80s that dealt with the diminishing returns for the offspring of a super-scientist/adventurer type - the idea being that Doc Savage's son would have trouble living up to his father's legacy and would never feel secure with his place in the world. And then that son's offspring, in return, would be completely incapable of leading normal lives and have only a tenuous grasp on how the real world works. THE VENTURE BROS. takes that germ of an idea, runs with it, plows into the endzone and spikes it.
- I'm also big on FRISKY DINGO - which challenges the privelege of being called "animation," of course. I'll admit the idea of a billionaire playboy/super hero being a shallow douchebag isn't very promising, but in execution, I find it terribly funny. I like seeing super hero storytelling conventions being treated with such disregard. By the end of the first season, our hero had been reduced to a naked, half-blind male prostitute through his own incompetence. And we didn't even learn the meaning of the title until the last few seconds of the last episode!
- Put me down as the only fan of STROKER & HOOP - a hyper-violent "wunza" cop show parody. Stock characters, and plenty of crude humor and spurting bodily fluids, but the plots are so deliciously convoluted, they collapse inward on themselves. Their X-mas episode involved a CHRISTMAS CAROL-style tale wherein the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future were using their respective places in the space-time continuum to run a lottery ticket scam - it ended with a lot of bullet-riddled bodies, naturally. Too bad there'll be no second season - and no DVD release either, it seems.
As for SOUTH PARK, THE SIMPSONS, FUTURAMA, and FAMILY GUY - I lost interest in SOUTH PARK early on and I stopped watching THE SIMPSONS after a string of atrocious episodes in the '90s. I find FUTURAMA to be a beating; a clever and well-animated beating, but a beating nonetheless. FAMILY GUY is the Screwy Squirrel of cartoon sitcoms; all gags, no character. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

In our house, we are really enjoying NARUTO and alternate episodes of that with KING OF THE HILL and GHOST IN THE SHELL SAC2. NARUTO is hugely enjoyable with a variety of styles popping up throughout. There are frequent abstract "asides" when characters "step outside themselves" to vent anger, joy and secret admirations that are invariably hilarious. It's very Japanese and has to be seen in original language (subbed) to appreciate.

KING OF THE HILL is pretty ugly and deliberately so. I don't notice because it's so engrossing. I'm a big FAMILY GUY fan BTW.

Victor

I can second - third? - the recommendations for HOME MOVIES. They have taken incredibly simple animation and imbued it with incredible heart & humor. And the characters are just wonderful -- Brendon, Jason, Coach McGuirk are all classic creations. We own all 4 seasons and just finished rewatching the whole thing in order.

SOUTH PARK still has much to recommend it, though the batting average is sinking. Another case of making a plus out of cheap limited animation.

BTW, almost all the major principals behnd HOME MOVIES (excluding Brendon Small) are involved in a new adult swim project called LUCY, DAUGHTER OF THE DEVIL. Just watched the 2nd episode (we missed the pilot episode) and found it to be delightfully odd. You can probably find 1 or both episodes (that's all there is so far) on the internet.

Let me throw in votes for some of what I think are great animated series (forget country of origin): JLA/JLU, Teen Titans, and especially Invader Zim while it lasted.

Eddie Murphy's shortlived THE PJ'S won me over in the first episode when the crackhead character quips, "Gotta go... crack don't smoke itself!"
Will Vinton's the "most underrated successful animator ever".

How about THE OBLONGS? I saw a boxed set on sale when I visited the US, but I had never heard of it.

Invader Zim is my favorite. Johan is a brilliant writer and artist. If you ever get the chance track down his comic book Johnny The Homicidal Maniac. Very similar feeling in both Zim and 'Nny.

Every so often, when I am feeling like I need to, I give King Of The Hill a chance. Then 5 minutes into it the voices, accents, art, all get to being too much for me and I start getting the desire to throw myself in front of a bus. Then I turn it off and I start to feel better.

Invader Zim is definitely worth a look. This October I'm going to revisit the Halloween episode, "Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom", which I liken to FROM BEYOND/HELLRAISER for tweens.

All of Timm & Dini's DCAU shows are worth visiting:
Batman: The Animated Series
Superman: The Animated Series
Batman Beyond
Justice League
Justice League Unlimited
and yes, even Static Shock and perhaps, The Zeta Project (which may never see the light of dvd).

I'll also second the Teen Titans. It did take a little while to warm up to it. The current Legion of Superheroes started promisingly and looks to hit the ground running this season.

Venture Bros gets very good once it settles in.

If you can check out Avatar: The Last Airbender, an ambitious martial arts fantasy epic from Nick. Very nice to look at too.

I've always liked Sponge Bob & Fairly Oddparents. The artwork may be not that great, but the writing usually fun.

You can find British Animation Award dvds full of animated shorts here:

BAA

If you can actually find any, check out Reboot. It's cgi, but nevertheless a class act and lotsa fun.

Wow, I love KING OF THE HILL (a qualified love, perhaps, but still. Hey, it's the only animated show I know that's currently doing water color backgrounds)) and yet this is exactly the reaction 2 seconds of GILMORE GIRLS evokes in me - except I never have (or would indulge in, if I ever had it) a desire to turn that hideous show on for even a second. You want to see me break the land speed record, let GIRLS show up after some rerun I had on for noise.

Different strokes and all...

I haven't replied to this thread until now because everyone else has pretty much said everything. OBLONGS is an excercise in sick humor with quirky character designs (as the main family lives in a toxic waste dump of a town) and plots that generally revolve around class war or the hugely flawed characters (Mom's an alcoholic, etc.). Will Ferrel did the dad's voice. Make of that what you will.

I also have to recommend HOME MOVIES for all the reasons listed above, and have to add its "parent" (in a way, sharing some of the same cast and initially using the same animation style) DR. KATZ, PROFESSIONAL THERAPIST. While DR. KATZ used fairly threadbare (though ridiculously funny, especially as the series progressed and the team found its rhythm) plots on which to hang "therapy" bits with stand-up comics (which works much better than it sounds, trust me), HOME MOVIES drops the stand-up and focuses completely on the quirky characters and their dynamic (the improv talent in the cast is notable -- they recorded improvised character interplay, edited it, and would then animate to the results -- and adds to the naturalistic back-and-forth between the characters).
HM's creator, Brendan Small, has also created what I think is one of the funniest things on TV today, METALOCALYPSE, which comprises the animated adventures of the world's most successful Extreme Metal band, Dethklok (seriously -- they are just behind Belgium, I think, in annual GDP); and also details the efforts of a group of shadowy, powerful men who must stop the band before they bring about the Metalocalypse. It can only help one's enjoyment, of course, if one is halfway familiar with the Metal scene (James and Lars from Metallica have done voices, as have King Diamond and Cannibal Corpse's George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher), and it helps to watch at least a couple of episodes before giving up, since it takes about that long to be able to figure out what the guys are saying. But when it finally clicks, it clicks like crazy. (Season 1 DVD out Oct 2, Dethklok's DethAlbum out Sept. 25, and Season 2 premieres Sept 23!)

Eh, I just feel it's me that is all goofed up. My wife and I can't stand King, but almost eveybody else I know of enjoys it. So it is something screwy with me.

Oh, it's understandable. My sister likes the show but hates the character of Peggy so much that she can't stand to watch it. Also, I enjoy watching it because it's 180 degrees from my politics but for others the major league liberal caricatures could be extremely grating (they make me cringe at times)

Plus, they've started repeating themselves these last two seasons.

I'd add Dave the Barbarian which reminds me a lot of Bullwinkle and Fractured Fairy Tales.

...And while it's completely juvenile, I forgot to mention another of my favorites: the Seth Green-helmed ROBOT CHICKEN. Not only does it play to my inner geek (kee-ripes, I wish I had the toy collection Seth has) while simultaneously kicking him in the nards by viciously riffing on Beloved Cartoon and Sci-Fi Characters From My Youth, I'm also consistently amazed at the people who come in to do voice-overs on this show. From Dom DeLuise and Burt Reynolds re-teaming to tonight's Robert Culp appearance in a GREATEST AMERICAN HERO parody (get yer DVR ready, McKee, and you might have something to watch besides MANNIX reruns :D ), I *always* have to still-step through the end credits to see if "that voice" is *really* who I think it is. And it pretty much always is.

I'll have to join the choir with Invader Zim. The only animated show where I felt obliged to buy the DVDs.

It's too much of a cliché to say that it was too good to last, but there you go. It was.

Any HOME MOVIES fans who live in LA owe it to themselves and all loved ones to check out the "Tomorrow Show", Saturdays at midnight at the Steve Allen Theater ($5, cheap!). Brendon Small, Ron Lynch, and the mighty Craig Anton host a music/ comedy/ inexplicable weirdness variety show, usually improvising host segments at long, long length between acts. If you haven't seen Ron Lynch do his "man who can't figure out a folding chair" bit, you haven't maxed out your laugh-capacitor.

Good as HOME MOVIES is as a sitcom, most of the standups wrangled in as voice talent are far more fun to watch live. The result at "Tomorrow", is like listening to the unedited dialogue improvs from a Small show, plus sometimes play in a rock band. Also you should sneak booze into the theater.

Infos: Tomorrow Show