And talking about how the new frizz her is her niece, allow me to do a direct side by side instead
These are STILL not the same woman. Where is the icon fashion, the earrings (the chameleon, which might be in the new show idk I havenβt watched it), the prominent hooked nose, the broader shoulders, the volume to her hair, the LIFE IN HER EYES
This frizzle looks like sheβs been called into the school board for inappropriate behavior and dress one too many times and has been broken.
Also others have said it before me but I couldnβt find it in the scroll backs but they whitewashed all the kids too. They same face syndromed everyone to either be easier to draw or be more ambiguous so as not to offend or both or something, and it just makes me sad
Fuck it I did the digging cause Iβm still mad
And thatβs not even to mention what they did to the bus itself.
The old bus had a personality and life and fun and now itβs justβ¦ a bus.
HOW DO YβALL WHITEWASH A BUS?!
Itβs gives βanti abortion Jehovaβs Witness cartoonβ now
Vector puppet animation and a shocking drop off in investment in kidvid is largely at fault, but international marketing is also to blame.
Whatβs important to remember is that the whitewashy approach to character design in kidvid is a backslide.
Representation in cartoons had generally been on an upswing since the 1980s, even though efforts were often minimal, clumsy, or badly executed. Diversity helped sell action figures in the lucrative US/Canadian market and it was recognized as a prosocial value on the production side.
βProsocial messagesβ are a major part of kidvid TV pitches and development, nearly every show has specific prosocial lessons the narrative themes are intended to work around, even if its an action-figure ad. These range from sincere expressions of the creatorβs intent (Gargoyles, OG Magic Schoolbus, OG He-Man (no, for real)) to the entertainment equivalent of carbon credits.
Slight aside. Actual ink-and-paint animation tended to lock characters down into more distinct tones because there were only so many standard paint colors. Which is why Kwame from Captain Planet, Roadblock from GI-Joe, and Tim from OG magic schoolbus all use essentially the same pantone.
Ralphie gets skinny because not only fatphobia, but I suspect because he would need slightly different rigging and would add just a teensy bit to the budget adjusting his animations when they could just copy-paste from one of the other identically built kids. If they need to put them all in spacesuits or diving suits or whatever, they just make the one body and slap the heads on, eazy-pezy.
Decals on the schoolbus mean they have to be tracked, they have to use different versions of the bus in flipped shots, same with Mrs. Frizzleβs clothing patterns. Wouldnβt want to spend time flipping Ralphieβs βRβ around.
And with the marketing for everything now being global, thereβs an impulse to average everything down to appeal to all markets to a general degree. Making stories oversimple makes them easy to translate. Humor varies culture to culture, keep it slapstick or quick quips that can be localized easily. Everything that makes the Chinese censor boards happy also makes US reactionaries less likely to kick up a protest, the incentive is to keep everything:
ALSO:These characters have the same face. They probably use the same eye and mouth parts for character animations.
Itβs all to do it as cheap and broadly appealing as possible, as determined by business weirdos who know nothing about art and care nothing about kids, and theyβre more than willing to leverage racism (or just ignore that its happening) for the promise of a tenth of a percent more profit.
And whatβs galling is that this kind of animation software doesnβt have to make crap. It can be used to make amazing stuff and still be vastly cheaper than traditional hand-drawn, but the same quality at 60% of the cost is never going to beat Β½ the quality at 5% of the cost for the money-men.
The path of least resistance rolls over a lot of people.
Haven’t seen anyone talking about it here, but vocal transfeminist and writer Tara Knight has been sent a threat from the fbi insisting that she stop speaking about “radical gender ideology” and get rid of the past 3 years of her work.
A black trans woman is getting personally threatened by the fbi for being a transfeminist. What the fuck. Hopefully this gets more reach than my usual posts so that people who are able to can support her.
Here’s her latest post about it.
[Transcript: So as you all have likely heard I was forwarded a letter from the FBI informing me that my work and my platform and everything I’ve built over the past three years has to go, um, for propagating what they are calling ‘radical gender ideology’. Um, this comes from Trump Executive order, um basically saying I’m a propagandist for domestic… september eleventh… thing. Um, I would… I— I’ll just say, point blank, short period. I have no intentions of stopping anything. Maybe to my detriment but I’ve never been the smartest one. That’s— all I’m gonna say on this.]
Just as I was writing that transcript she posted this—
[Transcript: So I was told and informed that it’s probably in my best interest to tell all of you where you can find me in the event that I get deleted because having a platform is probably the only thing that will keep… everything okay, if you will. So I will provide the links and ads to my TikTok, my Substack, my Bluesky, the like. You’ll be able to find me there in the event… y’know. Y’know.]
