“It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”
And this adage certainly applies to the world of animation.
Of course, animation is an art form; and like any art form, it’s subject to harsh criticism.
It’s also expensive, there’s a lot of competition, and it demands only the very best talent and technical skill– expense be damned.
And indeed, major studios spare no expense when it comes to dazzling audiences with stunning visuals and detailed worldbuilding.
But when it comes to animated storytelling– whether YouTube or explainer videos or big-budget Hollywood blockbusters– are we missing the forest for the trees?
What’s more important, good writing or good animation?
Obviously, you want both. But if you absolutely had to choose, which one is more important?
Another way to ask this question is: Which one dooms an animated story more, bad writing or bad animation?
Let’s do a deep dive, shall we?
Consider the following handy chart:
|
Bad Animation
|
Good Animation
|
|
|
Bad Writing
|
Terrible
|
Can good animation overcome bad writing?
|
|
Good Writing
|
Can good writing overcome bad animation?
|
Excellence
|
We can safely ignore the “Bad Animation + Bad Writing” square and focus on the other three, which is where things get really interesting.
Next, the best way to sort this out is to consider a broad mix of examples that fit into these categories as evidence for each argument.
To that end, we’re going to look at a swath of animation, from big-budget Hollywood productions and television shows to humble animated YouTube channels, for example.
And to kick things off:
So can excellent animation really make up for poor or mediocre writing?
Let’s look at some notable examples.
Some of you might not have even heard of this one.
Disney’s not known for putting out box office flops, but this was certainly one of them.
And the fact that it was Disney spearheading this project only further underscores the point that even incredible animation, made with a bottomless budget and the best talent in the industry, still cannot make up for mediocre writing.
Strange World had a level of imaginative visuals and world-building of a caliber not often seen in Hollywood.
The level of artistry and creativity is impressive even by Disney’s own high standards. We dare you to check out the trailer and not be blown away by the eye candy.
So why did it fail? There’s a myriad of complex reasons, from political issues releasing the film in countries unhappy with LGBTQ character representation, to simple bad timing, being released alongside bigger draws like Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.
But as much as critics praised the beautiful visuals and animation, they were universally unimpressed with its writing, calling out its all-too-familiar tropes and almost one-dimensional characters.
We all love the nostalgia of Saturday morning cartoons from our childhood.
And the goofy “Scooby Doo” shows were a mainstay of enjoyably cheesy wholesome entertainment, spawning a lasting subculture and fandom that exists to this day.
So it would seem like a no-brainer for studios to dust off the old IP and greenlight an obvious cash cow. The announcement at the New York Comic Con 2022 unanimously delighted fans.
However, the excitement turned sour once the animated series dropped. The show has since gone down in history as one of the most universally disliked animated shows of all time– an almost impressive feat.
So what went wrong?
To start with, the animation was fine. The creators went for an art style that was respectfully reminiscent of the original look and feel from its broadcast television days, while updated just enough to be at home on modern screens.
So there was nothing really wrong with visuals.
And even harsh critics pointed out that the terrifying sequences that depicted Velma having PTSD-inspired panic attacks were imaginative, clever and well-animated.
But that’s where the good news ends.
Velma’s catastrophic failure was the result of many glaring mistakes and factors. But almost all of them involved bad writing decisions:
All in all, careless and directionless writing choices turned a beloved franchise into one of the most universally despised iterations of itself in television history.
Now don’t get us wrong, we’re not being artsy hipsters who are too cool for school.
The Avatar franchise is a multi-billion-dollar juggernaut and veritable money factory for everyone involved– and it’s not hard to see why.
The animation wasn’t just really good, it shattered paradigms on what is possible, pushing the most modern animation technology to its absolute limits.
To say the visuals blew away audiences worldwide is an understatement. Even 15 years later, it holds up against the best productions out of Hollywood today.
All that said… it wasn’t entirely perfect. Some critics pointed out the uninspired, bland storylines almost as an afterthought once they were done praising the visuals and effects.
Yes, Avatar was absolutely a commercial blockbuster if we’ve ever seen one. But if we ignore all the eye candy, we’re left with a story that’s about as formulaic as they come.
So do the visuals make up for the writing? The answer to that boils down to whether you measure its success in terms of box office profits, or on decidedly more philosophical and artistic merits.
Hence, we have to tentatively add it to this list.
The Emoji Movie was the physical embodiment of the “How do you do, fellow kids” meme by Hollywood.
We can picture it now: A boardroom filled with aging Boomer executives, brainstorming about how to cash in on kids’ and teens’ addiction to cellphones– ideally using something that doesn’t have an existing expensive IP, but that’s already wildly popular and instantly recognizable (and therefore, cheap or even free to use).
And just to be absolutely sure, they threw in an all-star A-list cast, with Sir Patrick Stewart, T.J. Miller, James Corden, Anna Faris, Christina Aguilera and more.
Surely, there’s no way this recipe could fail. They’ve thought of everything, right?
Everything, that is, except a decent concept and an actual story.
While the animation and visuals were arguably top-tier Hollywood, it didn’t really matter when the characters were so one-dimensional– they were, after all, emojis that each had literally only one expression to work with, by definition. There simply wasn’t a lot to work with here, story-wise.
The Emoji Movie swept The 38th Golden Raspberry Awards (aka the Razzies, the polar opposite of the Oscars that shames the worst movies of the year); and the Rotten Tomatoes score of 6% and their critic's consensus review consisting entirely of the emoji “🚫” says it all.
So what causes this to happen? There are many complex reasons, including:
Creating a true work of narrative storytelling art is no easy task. Like a chef crafting the perfect dish, all the ingredients must be right, and every step of the process needs to be flawless and detail-oriented in execution.
And finally, storytelling is an art form– and there’s a reason we say it’s an art, not a science.
There’s no one “magic formula” that you can apply to every animated story and get it to work perfectly every time.
Each story is unique and different and has to be crafted in its own way that works best for that specific story.
It’s possible to do everything technically correctly and still fail!
What if we flip the script and consider the opposite: Good writing combined with comparatively mediocre or poor animation?
Let’s dive in.
The average animated show (like The Simpsons or Family Guy) takes about six to eight months to animate one 22-minute episode, using dozens or even hundreds of animators working on multiple episodes simultaneously.
How, then, does South Park manage to cover real-world topics while they’re still in the news, with a crew of just 70 people in total? It doesn’t seem mathematically possible!
For example, their season 7 finale covered the capture of Saddam Hussein. The finished episode aired on television a mere three days after the actual capture– an unthinkable turnaround time for an animated show.
If it’s a hot news story in the media right now, chances are good this week’s episode of South Park will cover it within the fortnight, and mock it savagely to fans’ delight. Episodes are usually created in under three weeks, sometimes even in as little as four days.
The not-so-secret answer lies in South Park’s unique animation style.
The pilot episode was conceived, scripted, voice-acted, and animated by Trey Parker and Matt Stone alone, using construction paper cutouts to form the flat shapes that make up the characters and world of South Park.
This method is closer to stop-motion animation than hand-drawn cel animation, except stop-motion usually employs intricately detailed three-dimensional models and elaborate miniature sets.
But by using this cut-out paper method, the animation time was slashed to a fraction of what it would have been in any other style.
Every episode since the pilot has used computer software, but the brutal simplicity remains intact, enabling the team to pump out a finished episode in a shockingly short amount of time in comparison to every other animated show on the screen.
While the show has earned numerous awards and a legion of die-hard fans for its razor-sharp satirical writing and hilarious but offensive humor, you’ll notice nobody really mentions the animation itself.
The point we’re trying to make is that people watch this show for the writing and humor, and the art and animation are merely a brutally functional vehicle that delivers it.
This unlikely YouTube channel is probably the epitome of “bad animation plus good writing.”
This inconsistently updated channel features a crudely drawn stick figure host explaining various topics on science and history. And when we say “crudely-drawn” we’re not kidding or being mean– the stick figures are not even animated, but rather play like a series of static images like a PowerPoint slideshow. The art doesn’t even feature backgrounds most of the time, just a blank white space.
Despite this, creator Sam Miller was nominated for a Shorty– the YouTube equivalent of an Oscar– and is currently closing in on 5 million subscribers.
This is simply because the channel is so entertaining. Facts and information are delivered in a snarky, casual style, almost like having a few beers with a friend and listening to them go on a hilarious angry rant on a topic, as opposed to the very serious and formal narration you’d find in a typical NatGeo documentary.
So on one hand, perhaps this channel is proof that bad animation can be overcome with excellent and entertaining writing.
But on the other hand, one could take it further and argue that the bad art actually enhances the writing and gives this channel its own unique style, making it stand out from the oceans of highly-polished productions crowding YouTube.
Either way, it’s clear that Sam O’Nella’s rough and starkly simple animation style is no hindrance to its success.
We’re going far back in time for this one.
The Star Trek franchise has always been one to shatter paradigms and boldly go where no film or TV studio has gone before.
In the mid-1970s, animation was almost unrecognizable compared to what it is today.
It was exclusively the domain of children’s entertainment, painstakingly hand-drawn, run on tight budgets, and voiced by total non-celebrities.
It was certainly not a realm of creative experimentation, neither for artists nor writers. In a way, cartoons back then were almost the equivalent of internet brain rot content today.
The live-action Star Trek TV series had been on the air since the late ‘60s, battling the constant threat of cancellation, struggling to depict futuristic sci-fi on a shoestring budget, and courting constant controversy by platforming then-radically progressive utopian ideas like racial harmony, equality, and world peace.
This show dared to depict a crew consisting of a black woman, an Asian, and even a Russian, all working together peacefully in a post-scarcity, post-capitalist future– which doesn’t sound that crazy until you remember that this aired just after racial desegregation and during the heights of Cold War paranoia.
Star Trek’s often uncannily accurate vision of the future may have extended to the creators realizing that animation was capable of much more than shallow entertainment for children.
Animation also afforded them the ability to depict more imaginative science fiction concepts that would be difficult to impossible in live action due to technological and budgetary constraints.
The showrunners were also fascinated with the idea that a cartoon could potentially appeal to adults as well as children at the same time. Notably, almost all the animated characters were voiced by their corresponding live-action actors.
While this is a common practice today, this was unheard of at the time.
Animation wasn’t nearly as slick and polished back then. But even by the standards of the time, it wasn’t exactly the most stunning thing on television screens.
This wasn’t merely because of the limitations of the era, but a painfully tight budget that necessitated numerous shortcuts to cut down on the animation workload– and it shows.
However, these shortcomings didn’t stifle the wonder and creativity of the franchise, or dampen its positive reception and success.
When it comes to truly stunning animation TV shows, it’s hard to top Netflix’s Scavengers Reign.
The 100% approval score on Rotten Tomatoes is a testament to not just the incredible animation, but its imaginative worldbuilding and impressive writing.
The show follows the scattered survivors of an interstellar spaceship that crashed on a planet bursting with strange and bizarre lifeforms.
Their struggle to survive and make it back to the ship is paired with their individual battles with demons of their past choices that haunt them in flashbacks.
Critics point out that this show achieves what most science fiction aims to achieve but often falls short: creating a truly alien world that feels unlike anything we’re familiar with.
Pairing this with the often philosophical nature of the writing ultimately packs a powerful one-two punch, a feast for the eyes as well as the mind.
Archer, an adult animated show about a secret intelligence agency centered on a chaotic, irresponsible yet highly talented spy, has always had a distinctive and striking graphic-novel-like art style.
The art of Archer has only improved from the more humble earlier seasons into gorgeous, cinematic shots with the decidedly retro look and feel left intact.
Some scenes are almost photorealistic and three-dimensional in their detail and quality.
But it’s not just the visuals that put it on this list. The bizarre, dysfunctional yet lovable characters, brought to life with some of the best voiceover talent we’ve ever seen in animated television, are paired with razor-sharp writing and dialogue so good that it spawned many internet memes.
No surprise, then, that it has earned both a fiercely loyal fanbase as well as widespread critical acclaim.
YouTube has come a long way since the days of random everyday people uploading shaky amateur footage of their lunch in 144p.
It’s not a controversial argument to say that it has slowly become a veritable platform of its own, standing in parallel with mainstream film and television.
As such, the platform has seen the rise of insightful documentary-style channels with more cerebral content and a highly polished professional finish– and the healthy competition that comes with it.
Mustard is one of these lesser-known documentary channels, covering mostly the history of aviation and transport. While this isn’t too unique on YouTube, it’s the way they’ve done it that makes it stand apart from the rest.
The animation is simply gorgeous and detailed on a level you don’t see often on the platform, and the topics covered are fascinating and often unique.
Notably, this channel doesn’t employ anything in the way of flashy gimmicks or tricks to get your attention– just high-quality documentary-style content, narrated steadily and naturally by its host, with long, undramatic shots that show off some beautiful animation and illustration.
Similar to channels like Lemmino, Mustard goes the “quality over quantity” strategy, taking its time with videos that drop, on average, just twice or thrice a year. But you can rest assured it’s always worth the wait.
While this is a subjective take on our part, it’s safe to say that we can complete the chart like this:
|
Bad Animation
|
Good Animation
|
|
|
Bad Writing
|
Terrible |
Still terrible |
|
Good Writing
|
Still enjoyable |
Very enjoyable |
Or to put it another way, poor animation can still be overcome with really good writing.
But bad writing cannot be saved with even the best eye candy slick visuals and graphics.
To create truly amazing artistic content, you must aim for both. Which is no easy task, but highly rewarding and satisfying when you pull it off!
Creativity is like a muscle. The more you practice and exercise it, the better you get at it with time. There are no shortcuts, but the more you enjoy it, the less it feels like “work.”
So what did you think? Do you agree or disagree with our list? Are there notable examples we missed?
This blog post was a diversion from our usual content, where we’re trying to branch out to other more interesting and lesser-discussed topics. We hope it was a fun and interesting read for you.
Until next time, don’t stop creating!