Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

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Lago_AM3P
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Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by Lago_AM3P »

I don't like saying this, but entertainment in the 21st century only holds its audience's attention for a finite amount of time. Shows that have staying power like Simpsons and American Idol are RARE, no matter how good they are. You should plan on your series being popular for a finite amount of time. I don't have an exact time frame but I estimate that most popular series only hold audience attention for 2 to 3 and a half years. This includes non-cartoon/anime series like 24, Lost, the Shield, etc.

I don't think anyone's done this because most people tend to be surprised by a series' success. Still, if you have a manga series that you think is anime material, like Full Metal Alchemist, I think that holding off on television production until the work is almost done has its merits. That way you can finish it off in this timespan and everyone moves on with their end.

Going with the above... all series should have their end clearly defined. Seriously, deciding on how your series should end is more important than deciding what's going on in the middle. Dragonball Z and Inuyasha and 24 are routinely mocked because the plots become too convulted and characters have too much staying power. It's also next-to-impossible to pace your plots properly if you don't have a defined end. That's why the fifth season of Teen Titans feels so unsatisfying on the whole--it was tacked on after Glen Murakami already had an end in mind.

Sometimes the end of a series doesn't mean the end of that universe. They made a Justice League Unlimited, after all, but that was after clearly defining the end of the original Justice League.

While there are a lot of shows that have cross-generational appeal, remember that your key base are horny computer-savvy geeks ages 14-25. I was going to say men but as modern anime shows women are increasingly catching up to men as the proportion of people who watch 'geeky' shows. In some cases, like Inuyasha, the majority of fans are female. That said, appeal to your base. Not all of the characters have to be hot, but at least half of the main crew need to be. And they should also be of sufficient age. The amount of people who fantasize about having sex with Naruto characters is disturbing, especially considering that the characters in this series are TWELVE YEARS OLD.

Be careful at the rate you expand the cast. By necessity, the bigger your cast is the less time you'll have to spend per person. If you build up an interesting secondary cast like in Bleach or Dragonball or Naruto but then don't include them as the series goes on, people are going to get pissed off. One solution is to market ahead of time a dynamic secondary cast and make it clear that some characters will only get one chance to shine in the limelight (like Justice League Unlimited) or keep the size of the main cast constant throughout the series (like Full Metal Alchemist).

This goes with the above, but, for God's sake, if your series constantly has the characters powering up, be sure to spread the love around. One is that giving only a handful of your cast power-ups pisses fans off because it smacks of favoritism. Two is because it limits the adventures and storyline involve the other characters can get. Dragonball pretty much only had Vegeta and Goku capable of doing anything by the Cell saga. Characters in Yu-Gi-Oh constantly update their decks even if it's in the background.

Character death. Some series, like One Piece, shy away from killing ANYBODY, even loser background characters. Other series, like Fist of the North Star, kill off every single person except for the main character. I'm not going to get into a debate about which end of the spectrum is better because my opinion is just an opinion. But you should make it clear at the outset which method you prefer. Doing a Transformers and suddenly nuking large parts of the cast makes people upset if that's not what they were expecting.

I can't believe this happens at all, but that smouldering romantic relationship you're planning between two characters? If it's an important feature to the story, have it end definitively. Either one or both characters dies, they hook up together and live happily ever after, or they break up. Do not leave things in limbo unless you're doing to avoid pissing off a large portion of the fanbase. Like, unfortunately, in Teen Titans.

Fillers. Unless you're doing an anime on, say, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure which requires you to actually CUT material, knuckle down and accept this eventuality. Production gets held up, the writer gets into a car accident, the series is more popular than expected, whatever. What made Teen Titans/Justice League such a good series was that only a third of the episodes each season were actually related to the main plot. Otherwise the episodes were 'filler' and the production team planned for this in advance. Rather than slapping something together to prevent the momentum from grinding to a halt they sat down and planned quality filler episodes. How do you make quality filler episodes?

I don't have all of the ideas, but here's what I know. In anime, filler episodes seem to be very reluctant to relate to the main plot for fear of contradicting the source material. So what we have instead are dumb side-adventures no one cares about because they're intentionally trying not to have it relate to the main plot. If for some reason you have to do this, here's some ideas to make filler episodes more palatable.

A) Have it expound on a canonically related subject that the source material doesn't have time to talk about. For example, talk about the history of a war in the series past and shows how it effects stuff today.

B) Use it to showcase characters who haven't had a lot of love lately. If for some reason the 'A' plot necessitated sidelining well-loved secondary characters then this is the perfect time to get them some showtime.

C) FANSERVICE. Ignore the minority of people who complain about fanservice. Trust me, fans love it. It doesn't have to be cheesecake, though that always helps. Sometimes the fans want to see two well-liked characters engage in a battle of wits or brawn. Use this time to change up a character's clothes or habits.

D) Most importantly, don't churn it out at the last minute. I don't know how many months of pre-planning went into making the One Piece or Naruto fillers but I bet it wasn't very long.
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Re: Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by Catharz »

Lago_AM3P at [unixtime wrote:1189868514[/unixtime]]If you build up an interesting secondary cast like in Bleach or Dragonball or Naruto but then don't include them as the series goes on, people are going to get pissed off.

That's what spin-offs like Angel are for.
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JonSetanta
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Re: Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by JonSetanta »

Leave my fantasies about Temari alone dude :screams:

You have some good points tho...

But the best use of fanservice is when it's appropriate. Sometimes Japanese cartoons go too far, even when its a kids' show, and that tends to be a problem when a 7 year old likes something and boobs are suddenly flyin everywhere.
A Western-culture parent would have to watch an entire series from beginning to finish if they wanted to prevent that kind of sneaky 'easter egg' from burning their childrens' eyes out (tho the young boys might love it, such a thing may be hindering sales and releases of certain shows from Japan to other cultures)

While I don't mean it's 'wrong' that Japanese censors are Nazi about blocking the cocks and beavs but totally lax about the boobs, their censors and our own (American, that is) really should reconsider what is truly harming our cultures and stick with that, rather than fuss about some ancient tradition of regarding the female body as the root of all evil.
Yeah that latter problem has got to go if we're evolving to a higher level any time soon.

Personally I love boobs and I love cartoons but sometimes feel a little nervous when, for instance, watching a Slayers movie with my lil bro and my girlfriend, suddenly it become all about comparing breast size and jealousy.
And it's a kid's movie.
That ain't right.
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Crissa
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Re: Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by Crissa »

That's why we have censors and ratings, sigma, assuming you have children and don't share the same cultural sensitivities as the source material.

Honestly, man, 'boobies'? What are you, twelve?

Do you even know what the target audience for Slayers is?

-Crissa
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Re: Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by shirak »

Crissa at [unixtime wrote:1189922726[/unixtime]]That's why we have censors and ratings, sigma, assuming you have children and don't share the same cultural sensitivities as the source material.

Honestly, man, 'boobies'? What are you, twelve?

Do you even know what the target audience for Slayers is?

-Crissa


There is a very widespread belief that anime are "children's shows". They are not. Naruto has as much blood as Rambo, Ikkitousen shows more flesh than Basic Instinct. Anime are aimed at teens and higher. And sexually aware teens at that.

Now, I'm perfectly OK with that but a lot of people aren't. There is a lot of cultural programming flying around that deals with this and most of it is subconscious. It'll take a few decades to overcome it. And anime can be a tool for that. So all hail fan service says I.
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Re: Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by Leress »

sigma999 at [unixtime wrote:1189921151[/unixtime]]

Personally I love boobs and I love cartoons but sometimes feel a little nervous when, for instance, watching a Slayers movie with my lil bro and my girlfriend, suddenly it become all about comparing breast size and jealousy.
And it's a kid's movie.
That ain't right.


*checks Slayers DVD box* umm this is for teens.
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Re: Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by JonSetanta »

Fine then I revise my stament: I like fanservice and I wish more baby-boomers (my parents, most of our parents, largest generation in America at the moment) would relax about sexualized cartoons.
It ain't as bad as Fox News, yet they watch that?

Yes Crissa, boobies. And I'm not 12.
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Re: Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by technomancer »

Boobies! (I'm 24)

Oh, and I totally second needing to have an ending. Of course, the problem with having an ending is that the network may dump you before you get to it. I'm looking at you, Jericho! The fans had to send literally tons of nuts to the network to get just one more season out of the show, and from what I understand, there are two seasons left.

And Farscape, same deal, they had an ending, and the show cuts it before it can be made.

However, there is one more thing I would like to add: Intentionally annoying characters are actually annoying. I basically can't watch the last parts of Ranma 1/2 because Happosai is so annoying. So, if you're making a character that is supposed to be annoying, DO NOT MAKE HIM A MAIN CHARACTER. Ideally, they get maimed or killed, and otherwise have to leave after everyone gets nice and annoyed with them.
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Re: Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by Lago_AM3P »

Honestly, man, 'boobies'?



I find that the most erotic part of a woman is the boobies.
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Re: Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by JonSetanta »

Yes! Endings! Big problem with anime.

There's one in memory that really stuck out as just plain stupid IMO, and that was "SoulTaker".
It's about a futuristic setting with a demon-changing boy and his split-up sister's soul-bits into various other forms, and a lot of cool fights (or maybe I was only paying attention to the fights) and the color work is just superb, but the ending...

He has to decide between incest, or exterminating the human race. His own sister puts him up to the choice because she wants him and has demigod powers by the end.
I'm spoiling this cuz it's a lame plot, and even with weird stuff like some badass bountyhunter with cigarette turning into a twig of grass at the most random times, it's still not really worth seeing other than a few scattered Tekkaman/Eva-like battles.

Incest or genocide, peoples.

That has got to be one of the many animes that needed just one more opinion before the script went to production, just to say "Wait wait wait... they do WHAT!???"
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Re: Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by Cielingcat »

It's from Japan.
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Re: Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by tzor »

Crissa at [unixtime wrote:1189922726[/unixtime]]Honestly, man, 'boobies'? What are you, twelve?


Yes we mean "boobies"! Boobies sell!

Image

Wait, these are not the boobies we are looking for. Move along now.
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Re: Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by JonSetanta »

Cielingcat at [unixtime wrote:1190026508[/unixtime]]It's from Japan.


Ah yes how silly of me to forget.

Things like 4chon remind us.

I was present during the 'melonfuck' escapades of /d/ this summer, btw...
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CalibronXXX
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Re: Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by CalibronXXX »

Why would you willingly expose yourself to that?
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Re: Creating your own cartoon/anime series: Lessons Learned

Post by JonSetanta »

Calibron at [unixtime wrote:1190146885[/unixtime]]Why would you willingly expose yourself to that?


Boredom, I guess. It turned out to be a lame 'doujin' release and since everyone stole it, the guy made almost no profit online (as he had hoped by leaking it to 4chon in the first place).
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