A show like The Simpsons—a show that’s aired more than 700 episodes over 32 years—is bound to change in all sorts of ways over the years. Some of these changes have resulted in distinct eras that people love and hate with equal enthusiasm. Others, as a video about the evolution of its animation style from Insider details, are just reflections of changes not just in The Simpsons’ creative process but also to animation techniques and technological standards.
The video follows The Simpsons’ art style as it moved from the loose interpretations of Matt Groening sketches used for The Tracey Ullman Show’s shorts to the more familiar look that continued to develop over the show’s early years. For a while, the basic look of the characters was in flux as its animators experimented with different concepts and trained new colleagues.
During its first season, though, model sheets were created that solidified what kind of attributes each member of the cast needed to have in order to be portrayed with consistency. By the second season, an “almost 500 page style bible” had been created with very specific instructions for how the characters should look and move.
Aside from small changes, it wasn’t until The Simpsons’ began transitioning into digital animation in the second half of the 1990s and early ‘00s that its style noticeably altered again. Over time, digital techniques allowed for a crisper look that culminated in the release of the 2007 movie, which featured a blend of 2D animation and CGI along with an expanded color palette meant to make it look better on theater screens. The approach taken for the movie ended up helping with the move to high-definition resolutions, which led to animation and direction choices still in use today. (Though the video notes that its showrunners are still playing around with various aspects of its look.)
For more on the history of The Simpsons look, watch the full Insider video.
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28 Comments
From bizarre and grotesque, to charmingly imperfect and elastic, to soulless and inert–much like the show itself.
The changing technology has a lot to do with it. The early shorts were cheap and hand-drawn, looking much like the Life in Hell comics in underground/alternative newspapers. The art isn’t great but it’s charming like something you’d see in a self published zine from the time. Klasky Csupo did a few seasons and they kind of imparted their quirky Rugrats/Nickelodeon style, then Film Roman took over and it got more and more professional looking with the popularity and budget. The biggest shift though was when it really became feasible to go all digital and that affected animation everywhere. The hand-drawn feel instantly disappeared for a monoline style, the backgrounds rendered in Illustrator instead of drawn by hand… It’s not inherently worse but there’s still something lost.
Well, I still say the show is great. I recently re-watched Season 25 on Disney Plus, and it was awesome, highly creative with beautiful animation direction. Episode reviews on this site, when they still existed, were borderline exploitive. Reviewers had arguable personal vendettas with the series as a whole, and it bled over often into very unfair, far-fetched, and harsh reviews.
Or maybe those reviews reflected the fact that a lot of people do NOT think the show is still great?
Agreed. I did a binge of the whole thing over the past few months and I was impressed at how much better the show got after that really rough dip around s11. Sure it never hit quite the same highs as before, but it was consistently enjoyable. It reminds me of the commentary from “Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie” where they were adding in commentary on critics because the writers had noticed just how many people seemed dead-set on wanting the Simpsons to fail just so they can write about it.
The animation is definitely getting better again, too. The past few seasons there’ve been quite a few moments that really stood out for me in the way a character was moving or dancing around, because it looked a lot more like the fluidity of the earlier seasons, while still keeping characters completely on-model.
There’s a distinct quality dip in writing around season 12 that doesn’t really pick back up again until after the movie. But after the movie it’s solidly a different show with a different sense of humor than the “golden years”. It’s not as “funny” but it’s as affecting. Mainly, at the start it was mining the character archetypes for humor. When that was all mined out, it became gimmicky. It got a second wind with the movie in that they realized that technology and culture was changing at such a fast pace that they could show how the character archetypes now react and adopt.
It’s gotten better from that decline from say seasons 15 to 20. I still watch it, and while you’re not going to get the golden years episodes every once in a while, they’ll surprise you.
I think (with a few exceptions) The Simpsons got pretty darn good again for a while maybe 8-3 years ago. The last two seasons the writing has felt a bit tired to me but honestly it’s good for a laugh and that’s more than can be said for quite a few network comedies. It’s simply not fair to compare it to the first 11 seasons, and in particular Seasons 3 through 8. Those seasons are the sitcom equivalent of The Beatles releasing Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt Pepper over the course of two years; IMO there is NOTHING that cane really compare to those seasons.
I think it’s still a good show, and I enjoyed season 32 as much as any for a while. I agree that the reviews on this site were pretty harsh, but I accept that other people have other tastes. Other sites have been kinder to the show’s golden years.
I agree! I’ve been going through the whole series on Disney+, and am up to season 25 now. There’s a noticeable dip in quality after about season 5 (and my pet theory is that season 5’s Deep Space Homer is where the rot really began), but “dip” is a relative term. The first five seasons are almost perfect. The rest is still frequently very good. Certainly frequently enough to be worth watching.
The first 5 seasons? That’s a new, bizarrely small window for “golden era Simpsons”, even JUST looking at the season six episodes.
Yeah, for me the show dropped off a cliff in S10 – that seems to be close to the consensus from what I can recall. On a recent rewatch, I gave up not far into that season, skipped to Behind the Laughter (which would have made for a good series finale), and didn’t bother with anything after.
I’ve only watched the Halloween episodes each year, and even those haven’t been great. One of the big thing that strikes me about the new episodes is Marge’s voice; Julie Kavner seems to be really struggling with it (understandably so).
Reviewers had arguable personal vendettas with the series as a wholeThe AVClub
I kinda bailed around S28 or so for watching new episodes. My cut off point is S14ish basically (Season 12 still has some great stuff I really like New Kids on the Bleech even though it’s a N’Sync guest starring episode that people say is a signpost for the show’s decline but it’s hilarious. “Hey, you! Join the Navy!” “Okay!” “I’m in!”). Of all the various “finales” the show could have, I think the movie works great as one as it still had a bunch of the classic-era creative team working on it. Much channel in Canada runs the entire Simpsons series on a loop at least two episodes a day weekly (barring Oct and Dec when they run Halloween/Christmas episodes) and right now it’s cycled back to early era and now on S6 and it’s pretty much daily viewing for me right now.
Bob Chapek, is that you?
I think the idea that it isn’t great now is more about how high the bar was. It’s still perfectly enjoyable and some episodes are genuinely great while some are terrible. But the early seasons were some of the best tv ever and that’s a hard bar to reach.
TV Tropes has a page about how something is so influential and so copied that everything about it becomes hated due to repetition or others telling the same joke better. The Simpsons definitely fits that bill since even Rick & Morty plainly has Springfield’s DNA in it.If anything the Simpsons can be criticized for is not changing up how the show is presented since the day it changed TV 30 years ago. Sometimes they do go off track and the episode is well regarded. But people can’t be blamed for tuning out on 100th time Ned and Homer become real friends.
One of my favorite things about collected volumes of comic strips, is seeing the style evolve over time. Peanuts, and Foxtrot, are both fascinating to observe how they grow and change.
ALL ANIMALS CAN SCREAM
I… have… memories.Mem-or-iiiiies.
Circle of Life, yo.
When I saw that couch gag I was like Krusty after watching Worker and Parasite – “What the hell was that?”
I know its TV and has a more limited budget but damn the poses and inbetweens in this show are so damn stiff now. No smears, no overlapping action, barely any follow through. I don’t believe that more ‘fluid’ animation (aka more drawings) matters when the main keyframes are so generic and boring.
Simpsons quality can be gauged in inverse proportion to how good the animation looks.
Which is helpful if you’re flipping channels and come across the show. “Oh, look at that clean animation. Pass!”
In retrospect, it’s a wonder the early Simpsons looked as good as they did. I’m impressed the Tracy Ullman show lasted two seasons. That’s Netflix longevity.
Dumb idea I’d had years ago:
Start with the first episode, and then after TWO SECONDS, switch to the following place on the next episode.
Seconds 1~2 of episode 1 -> seconds 3~4 of episode 2 -> seconds 5~6 of episode 3, and so on. The first season would only take up a little under thirty seconds; most of the following seasons would take just over forty seconds.
All the people constantly whinging about how the show is consistently awful now really don’t watch the show. Is it as consistently fantastic as it was in Seasons 1-10? No, of course not. But there are still multiple great episodes each season, and even the mediocre ones are entertaining. If the show had started in Season 25 or so, we’d be quite pleased with it. And the animation is also strong as well.