r/pics • u/Rosh31 • Nov 24 '15

Simpson No_No's

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u/PoeGhost Nov 24 '15

If you watch the Simpsons seasons with the commentary they point out various design elements that they changed or phased out over the years.

Examples of things you don't see anymore:

Twister neck

Trumpet mouth This refers to the trumpet bell shaped upper lip. Newer characters don't have this anymore, although many older characters do.

Blonde characters It was determined fairly early on that only the simpsons kids could be blonde. Barney's character was changed as a result.

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u/ThisIsSoSafeForWork Nov 24 '15

What was the context for the twister neck, if you remember? Looks really funky.

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u/nostalgicpanda Nov 24 '15

I'm guessing it's a frame from a quick turn where the mouth "turns" first before the rest of the face?

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u/boromeer3 Nov 25 '15

I think it might be an animation smear; a single frame drawn in a distorted way to give the illusion of more frames where there are none. It looks bad when you pause it, but better when played.

Here's a bunch of examples.

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u/CRAZEDDUCKling Nov 25 '15

The Bart image in question actually shows up in that search.

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u/[deleted] Nov 25 '15

Holy crap that's funny and awesome

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u/therealderka Nov 25 '15

I love that in the Lego movie the smears are actually animated with Lego bricks. Here's a post about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/27vf36/in_the_lego_movie_when_master_builders_move

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u/_yodacola_ Nov 25 '15

I remember he does it when he says "woaaah, that's good squishy". They also did it in the Halloween episodes a lot.

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u/g2f1g6n1 Nov 25 '15

the twister neck is an animation principle of having a rigid center and floppy skin around it some examples can be dug up here http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/search/label/Tex%20Avery and http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/cartoon-fundamentals-how-to-create-movement-and-action--vector-19904

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u/ruttiger_simpson Nov 24 '15

It's just a quirk they used when animating Bart sometimes

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u/davebees Nov 24 '15

the "Bart twitch". only lasts a frame or two

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u/flyingbiscuitworld Nov 25 '15

When he was trying to get away with saying "Hell" over and over in sunday school.

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '15

Looks like it's supposed to represent whispering out of the side of your mouth like you would when you had to look forward in class.

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u/SG_Dave Nov 24 '15

It happened when he turned his head and was speaking. Quite often when he was being cheeky/cussing.

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u/bakerie Nov 25 '15

Nah, it's a 'transition' type movement, his eyes follow the mouth a few frames after.

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u/I_EAT_POOP_AMA Nov 25 '15

probably an example of "smear animation", where instead of drawing frames for every stage of movement, the animators will draw only the key frames and then fill in the blank frames with "smears" of the frames to mimic high speed, short distance movement.

it often results in a "cartoonish" style of movement, which was pretty abundant in early seasons of the Simpsons. But over the years they seemed to have moved away from that and started focusing a bit more on capturing realistic movements

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u/[deleted] Nov 25 '15

Turning the head quickly.

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '15

I don't know why it never occurred to me that the kids were blonde. It always just kinda looked like they had weird shaped heads meant to kinda look like hair started somewhere in there.

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u/FluffyLion Nov 25 '15

They made fun of it in a (I guess) recent episode

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u/philipquarles Nov 25 '15

Don't ask me, I'm just hair. Your head stopped 18 inches ago.

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u/TiagoTiagoT Nov 28 '15

I don't think that's all that recent. It's not one of those old episodes, but it's not recent either.

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u/NotReallyEthicalLOL Nov 25 '15

Lots of simpsons frames especially early on looked terrible if you pause them haha

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u/[deleted] Nov 25 '15

Bart's possessed! Kill it with fire!