Spicy Cityfailed to spice up ratings. © 1997 HBO.

Case Study #6: Prime Time Crashes
As this was being written, God the Devil and Bobwas being dropped by NBC. Clerkshas been cancelled by ABC after only two episodes. Dilbert died an undeserved death. The PJ shas yet to air again on a regular schedule. Mission Hill, despite a recent award at the Cartoons On The Bay Festival, will be lucky to keep breathing. MTV Animation may be going the way of the dodo, despite the cult success of Daria.And we can all see where such efforts as Spawn and Spicy Citygot HBO Animation after all their hype regarding "animation growing up." Family Guyand Home Movieshave seen too many setbacks and struggles, although Home Moviesis finding a new home on Cartoon Network and Family Guyseems to be somehow holding on. Several other series in development are now on hold, and the much-vaunted prime time adult animation boom is beginning to lose momentum. Some people in the industry blame the product, but it is equally likely that this culture still has difficulty accepting animation as adult entertainment.

What will it take to bring animation to adult audiences? A good answer might start with a solid expository script. Animation, primarily a visual medium, is far too cluttered these days with dialogue (especially the "hip," self-referential sort) and potentially great series have been hamstrung by over-written scripts. Perhaps today's writers feel that the dialogue has to be as lively as the animated characters in order to work, but in truth, animation works best with lessdialogue and lessadherence to typical storytelling formulas. While it is generally a mistake to animate anything that could be filmed live, most films today can contain up to 40% of their shots enhanced by CGI. The best bet for a great animated adult feature just might be an action-adventure flick that would have contained minimal dialogue and wowser SPX if filmed live in the first place.

With recent deals to bring deceased stars back to life, virtual humans like Dotcomix's Virtual Bill could lead the way for adult themes in animation. © Protozoa, Inc.

A second answer might be improvements in CGI. Max Headroom is ancient history; Lara Croft, Cyberlucy, and more recently Ananova are today's prototypes for the increasingly lifelike humans we will see animated in the immediate future. Experiments with more realistic human figures continue at every animation studio and software company in the world; "R" rated scenes using animated characters will soon be startlingly realistic. Coupled with solid dramatic scripts, it might be possible that audience identification with enhanced CGI characters leads to a breakthrough in adult entertainment that more cartoonish characters could not easily achieve. We may all see the day when a major star consisting of nothing but pixels graces the cover of People.

Finally, and perhaps cynically, a $200 million animated hit featuring adult themes and situations will be needed in order to change cultural attitudes, reverse a hundred year-old trend and persuade studios to make major investments (including promotion) in more of the same. Disney could have done it at any time during the 1990s, but opted for Broadway-style productions or hero(ine)-comes-of-age pics. With their "family" image on the line, The Mouse is likely to continue to sit tight, and the breakthrough film is destined to come from another source.

Any takers? I certainly hope so.

Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.