Thread "Hanna-Barbera vs. Filmation." in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 1:04PM, Apr. 22, 2015

For the longest while Filmation was the only company able to compete with Hanna-Barbera in the field of TV animation. They both had their strengths and weaknesses.

Hanna-Barbera: Their animation tended to be more 'flexible' than Filmation and therefore funnier body language for their characters.

Filmation however seemed to have sharper, cleaner, blacker lines around their character cels and were more sharply defined.

Furthermore Filmation freely used Rotoscope for depicting more anatomically correct human characters.

So any additions to these opinions?

Posted at 8:04PM, Apr. 22, 2015

So Filmation did He-Man?
What I want to know was why the colours they used back then were so muddy and dark. It was soooooooo grimy.

Posted at 5:04AM, Apr. 23, 2015

What cartoons did Filmation do?

Dee

Posted at 6:04AM, Apr. 25, 2015

Filmation did all the DC cartoons (to include not only Batman, Superman, Justice League but also Hawkman and Shazam) as well as Star Trek, Archie, Groovie Glooies and He-man.

Hanna-barbera was pretty limited to Herculoids, Birdman and Scooby doo. Other than that HB did stuff like Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Flintstones, Jetsons and Tom and Jerry. More cartoons than animated adventures. Filmation did the adventure stuff and HB did the funny animals and sit-com families.

I really hated the rotoscope repetition of Filmation productions but at the same time they had better stories. The Star Trek animated series had many of the original writers in addition to the voices (with James Doohan doing sterling service voicing many of the guest characters) And I grew up on their Batman whether Adam West or Ted Knight.

But when growing up there were always channel 5 and 11 to watch Thunderbirds or Abbot and Costello. Or dig out the rabbit ears to catch Speed Racer, 8th Man and Marine Boy on UHF.

Posted at 3:04AM, Apr. 30, 2015

True that Filmation did more Action/Adventure cartoons but they were almost all adaptations of other comic characters.
Hanna-Barbera did do DC comic adaptations too but they at least made the effort to create original ideas too.
Space Ghost, Birdman, Herculoids, Mighty Mightor, Shazzan…and the best…Jonny Quest.
And NONE of it done in Rotoscope.

Posted at 9:04PM, Apr. 30, 2015

He-man and She-ra were biiiig cartoons for filmation, full of rotoscope but neither were based on existing characters.
Well, they were based around toys, but that's different.

Posted at 6:05AM, May. 2, 2015

Everyone has used rotoscoping. It's just that Filmation made it their trademark with thier low budget technique. It is amazing the amount of material they produced for cheap.

The thing is those Fimation licensed a lot of characters they also brought over the writers to craft the stories. Face it a lot of Hanna Barbera adventure stuff was lame, reptitious and stupid. Every season of Scooby Doo had the same stories (and rotoscoped action) as the previous season just with a new gimmick. Though seeing animated Jonathon Winters, Sandy Duncan and Don Knotts was kind of neat they were the same stories as the previous season with even the same jokes.
Jonny Quest is in a league by itself. Nothing else had that look in the other Filmaiton of HB shows of the day.

Posted at 10:05AM, May. 15, 2015

When I first saw this topic I originally thought "Whoever wins, we lose."
But seriously. . .
HB develped the concept of limited animation to make animation affordable for television. Filmation ran it into the ground. I'll always side with Hanna-Barbara though because Will and Joe worked in classic animation originally and knew how important voice talent was. Daws Butler, Mel Blanc, Frank Welker. They had the masters. And even if the animation was limited, the writing was genuinely good most of the time.

Posted at 10:05PM, May. 15, 2015

@Kota. Oh yes I agree with the voice talent department. Many of the Filmation cartoon characters had voices that just grated on the nerves.
Ever watch the Archie cartoons that they did? Archie, Jughead, Veronica and Reggie had voices that were just nails on the blackboard. >:<

Posted at 8:05AM, May. 23, 2015

Thye character designs on Hnna-Barbera was much stronger than Filmation. Filmation's character designs borrowed comic book designs whhich are much more difficult to animate using the limited animation techniques they used.
At least, Hanna-Barebera attempted to create suitable models - especially for their adventure line which was designned by comic master Alex Toth.
Rotoscope is alright. Even Disney used it. But it shouldn't limit the scope of the anmation.
Very few Filmation series are remembered today or even celebrated outside of He-Man and She-Ra. Not so with Hanna-Barbera whoose output continues to dominate the airwaves - Scooby Doo, udated Super Friends in the for of the Justice League, Johnny Quest, Birdman, Yogi Bear the Flitstones. Now these are classic cartoons!

Posted at 9:05PM, May. 23, 2015

@toondoctor: INDEED!! :)

Posted at 8:06PM, Jun. 1, 2015

I dunno man, HB pumped out a lotta crap… all that yogi-bear, McGilla-Gorilla stuff was way too much.
We needed animation based on real human figures, that's why anima took off so hard. Filmation didn't do well, but they did ok.

I remember a few of the series mentioned here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_produced_by_Filmation

Some did indeed had the silly bodyshape stuff loved by Hanna Barabera, like "the Ghost Busters". That wasn't a great series… especially when compared to "The real Ghostbusters".

I think the most obvious failing of Filmation, when looking at that list, is that they relied so heavily on trying to make something out of existing properties like start treck and other things.