Honest Slug said:
What was so bad about that episode's animation? Haven't seen it in awhile but the color palette, facial expressions, and monster design make it far more visually appealing than about 95% of season 6, and most of 5-9a.
Oops sorry this slipped by my notifications. Every Episode of SpongeBob Reviewed is a nuisance. :P
While I don't really find the animation "bad", as it's still above average due to the color palette being great, the monster's design, various background shots, and the outstanding facial expressions from SpongeBob, Mr. Krabs and Squidward, it's missing a lot of what makes SpongeBob animation really expressive.
What seperates it from most of Season 6 is mainly that it's in the same location, leaving little room for
any dynamic movement. Even Season 6 managed to do this well--even stagnant, one-location episodes like "The Splinter" at least gave interesting shots, whether it's SpongeBob precariously climbing to the ceiling, or close-ups to emphasize important parts, and heck, even the actual Splinter's a well-designed drawing that would work in a more fitting show like Ren and Stimpy. Same with other episodes in Season 6, we get to see lots of walking motion, and locations that move with the story.
In "Mutiny" the direction is uninteresting--the closest to any "movement" is lazily rotating the shots diagonally when the storm hits. It doesn't help that the "storm" is represented by Cerulean Blue acrylic, not mixed with any other color, that's just stroked onto the sky with no detail, or an attempt to blend it.
Another problem's the character designs. Once again, even in Season 6 I could tell the character's personality just by looking at them--Craig Mammalton, the wrestlers in Krusty Krushers, Grandpappy the Pirate, the lodge Cephalopods, even the worms from Pet or Pests are cartoonized enough to give me the idea of what they're like. With Mutiny the designs are light, the most interesting thing they do is add some bowlcuts to stock fish, with the only "original" design (the obese one) being really disporportional. Once again, when the episode stays in the same location, we're kind of stuck with these bland characters.
Also, there's one thing I have literally
never seen from the show before: reusing animation assets for
entire scenes. Take a comparison of a shot from about two minutes in the episode:
https://www.sbmania.net/pictures.php?img=IB3kb3Glt55SAPmoOm2x3df8s1du4D4VBMS8LtPcqns%3D
And now that same scene about five minutes in:
https://www.sbmania.net/pictures.php?img=rnZLMsLHny6%2BLTsCr7ZU0docIE4fH1SdUyNvWvlWjY4%3D
While this isn't the best representation, if you watch the episode again you'll notice something key:
IT'S IDENTICAL. I didn't even need a side-by-side comparison, I found that so obvious that I caught it
on first viewing. This is a
low for a show like SpongeBob to make such an obvious cut in corners given how much money this show makes.
Once again: it's not bad, it's actually quite good. But it cuts so many corners, and offers so little interesting, that it's up there with the show's weakest animation.
