5 responses to “Quote of the Day”

1. 

   Billy

   10 June 2015

   The animation for this episode has always seemed off for some reason.
   Was it, like, done digitally before people had figured out digital animation completely? It looks pretty bright.
   Otherwise, great episode. All time classic.

   1. 

      Dick Steele

      10 June 2015

      Yes this one is done with digital animation and it doesn’t reappear until season 12 “Tennis the Menace” and then finally in 14 when they make the permanent switch.

      Mr. Burns: “Yuck! Too cold and sterile. Where’s the heart?”

      1. 

         Bleeding Gums Murphy

         10 June 2015

         The 138th Episode Spectacular’s non-recycled segments were done digitally too, and it has far, far worse animation than Radioactive Man: The Movie. Troy McClure has very few frames, and his body movement is more robotic than earlier (and later Season 7-8) episodes.

         BTW, in an unrelated note, it seems next Season’s premiere will have Homer and Marge be legally separated, and Sideshow Bob will kill Bart in a ToH segment. I wonder what people here at DHS think. Are they bad ideas, or BAD ideas?

         1. 

            Disenchanted Viewer

            10 June 2015

            I read about those episodes. I think that the ratings clearly show people don’t give a shit about The Shitsons anymore and Al Jean & the writers are desperate to keep their job & pay checks. Those are terrible ideas but they are not able to come up with anything better.

2. 

   Victor Dang

   10 June 2015

   Yeah, this was the test-bed for digital animation with the show (but with regards to coloring, I think it was still hand-drawn, but then scanned), but on the contrary, I’m one of those people who never really had a problem with the digital animation here. In fact, I feel they could’ve been a real pioneer had they made the switch in full right after this. This was a season after the Simpsons moved away from that classic fluid look in its first 5 seasons (after ironing out the funny-looking stuff in the first 2) in favor for a more rigid and “on-model” appearance, and I feel had they made the switch permanently after this, it could’ve given the animation quality a boost, send it right back to the early days where they were still willing to experiment and mess around. After all, this was still the point where the people working on the show still cared about it, as opposed to S12’s “Tennis the Menace” where at that point they (a different set of people, mind you) couldn’t even be bothered to do anything beyond minimum effort.

   IMO the digital coloring gives it a more “modern” look that doesn’t date it (compared to the other animation-cel stuff in the same season, and this isn’t a blight against the other stuff) and allows it to stand with other later shows that went through the same “hand-drawn/scanned/digital coloring” process, like the first couple seasons of Family Guy, or maybe even Futurama. Obviously it’ll look rough next to the HD-made stuff now, but as far as early digital animation goes, I think it gives it quite a “late-1990s/early 2000s” sheen, far beyond when this was made.

   (I also suspected the 138th was digitally animated in the non-clip stuff, so it’s nice to have some sort of confirmation. Though I also notice everything has a slightly duller quality to it, not counting the clips where it’s deliberate, compared to this episode. Some SD conversion in between instead of direct-digital capture?)