Alright! There are two aspects in which most of today's 2D animation and the 2D animation made in the 30s differ from each other and those are method and purpose.
Method is rather straightforward. I think most people know that cartoons used to be animated in paper, inked and painted on transparent acetate sheets called "cels", and then photographed. This process was somewhat automated during the years in various small ways but, at its core, it remained the same since its invention in 1914 up to the 1990s! Here are a few scenes from a 1938 documentary showing how Popeye cartoons were made, in case you’re not that familiar with traditional animation:
These days, though, you can make cartoons without using any paper whatsoever. They’re made digitally. And it was through animating digitally that a new method of animation that cut back significantly on the amount of drawing needed was created: puppet animation, also known as rigged animation, popularized by the well known digital animation program Flash.
In puppet animation, not unlike in 3D animation, a character is rigged with movable joints and changeable body parts is created. Then, a bank of expressions, hands and certain poses is made for it. After that, the artist only needs to change them around instead of redrawing everything from scratch, as if they were posing a doll. Frame by frame animation never really fell out of usage and there are many cartoons that still employ it, but puppet animation is very popular at the moment due to being an efficient way of cutting costs and production time without a significant drop in quality in the final product. A lot of cartoons nowadays are fully animated this way, especially those aimed at younger children. If you’ve ever watched, say, Peppa Pig or Bluey with a younger relative, you’ve watched something 100% puppet animated!
As you can see, puppet animation doesn’t necessarily look less dynamic than frame by frame animation. However, having to adhere firmly to the character models doesn’t leave much room for stylistic deformation, which can make the movement look a little “stiff” at times, especially if we’re talking about simpler character designs. So, while it’s not a hard rule, if you compare a current puppet animated cartoon to a cartoon made in the 30s, the latter might look more fluid, even if only on account of having been animated frame by frame.
But you’ve probably noticed that even current frame by frame animation isn’t as “bouncy” as 30s cartoons were. Animation made in the 30s had a knack for making things look elastic and rubbery and unable to stay still and that’s where the purpose comes in. Simply put, we don’t highlight the same things we used to do back then in cartoons nowadays because… the public doesn’t watch cartoons for the same reason it did back then!
You see, animation was created in the 1890s, but the 1930s were when it truly blossomed as an art form! Cartoons went from being made entirely by a single person from being made by a group of artists, each taking care of different aspects of the animation process. This allowed cartoons to become longer and the animation more refined. 24 frames per second became the norm. Designs that looked the best on screen were established, which gave us the so famous half-dressed animals with black fur and white masks characters that we still associate with cartoons nowadays. This meant that animation went from looking like this:
Bimbo’s Initiation (1931)
in the span of a decade! Did you ever notice how 30s cartoons usually don’t have much in the way of a plot or dialogue and are mostly mainly animated to a song? Ever wonder why even the background elements were animated? That’s because people didn’t really watch cartoons for the plot back then. They watched them because they were drawings that moved to sound! Both animation and the ability for film to have sound were so new, the appeal was that it existed in the first place! So the focus was on maximizing movement and synchronization with the background music.
It’s been almost 100 years since then, though. The public isn’t AS impressed by the fact you can make drawings move in of itself anymore (unless they’re a little unwell about cartoons like I am, that is), so now animation focuses more on interesting plots and exploring different art styles rather than on just making sure everything is ready to dance. That’s why we don’t see things in cartoons like buildings randomly coming to life as much anymore. A pity.
