10 - Technical Perspective

I must preface this argument by defining 'low production values'. In this entry, I take the meaning of this phrase to be a work with little attention paid to the outcome the end result, or low effort put into the end product's visual appeal.

It is very common to come across cartoons that are of low production value. This is because of the vast amount of episodes that a series can come to contain, and the immense amount of work that it takes to generate high quality animation. While the end result may still be entertaining, some animation styles simply do as little as they can get away with during each episode's actual animation.

Winx Club
Source: hirvine.com

Notice in the image above t hat the characters seem to be paying minimal attention to the insane display about them - lightning has magically sprung up and created a magical dome, but their expressions/postures seem hardly surprised. This is a result of trying to build as few fresh new cells as possible for the episode and to maximize reuse of individual cells.

Further, look at the actual lightning in the image. A single color is used throughout to help with scalability of the original image into the end product of the animated scene. The background suffers similarly - notice that all of the trees are actually just using a single template with altered shading. How the sky is composed of as little detail as possible.

These factors, while decidedly placing the show into a low production value piece of work, do not necessarily make the show 'bad'. This is an important distinction - just because corners were cut does not mean that the end result is awful. Writing often saves these low production cartoons and makes them enjoyable despite the lack of detail.