Okay so, was it a common thing to re-use lots of scenes in cartoons anywhere between 10 to 20 years ago? I'm just wondering since watching Shinzo I noticed that a lot, and I do mean A LOT, of scenes are re-used, especially some from earlier episodes. Is it a budget thing? Or just laziness and cheapness?
It saves money and time, alot of those shows needed to be cranked out fast and in large number, back then it was much easier to just reuse.
This has been going on for years. From left to right: The Sword in the Stone compared to The Jungle Book and Robin Hood compared to Snow White. All from Disney. And Robin Hood compared to the Aristocats. Also Disney. But Disney aside, I know things like transformation sequences and the like would be resused to save on costs. Either from animating costs or just saving on hiring another person. Robin Hood only cost something like 1.5 million US to make. Sleeping Beauty cost about 6 million US to make.
It was common due to how long it takes to create new animation frames, and many of the shows back then didn't have very large budgets, and were also pressed for time usually. Also, Shinzo is an anime, not a cartoon. A better term to have used would have been simply "animation."
It's a bit hard to know what you're thinking based on a paragraph of text. You asked if it was common to 're-use scenes in lots of cartoons x - x number of years ago'. What criteria did I fail to meet?
If you mean BACKGROUNDS and SCENERY it was to save money. It's a lot easier for somebody to draw 1 background and use it multiple times than it is to keep redrawing new ones/the same ones.
This happened in the 20th episode of Digimon Adventure 2. Watch from 9:12 to 9:47 and then from 10:23 to 11:33: Admittedly, they at least tried to make the Digimon attacking different by flipping some of the scenes.
Same principal though It's harder to make something form scratch, so tracing or outright reusing something is often done to cut costs. This was a LOT more common back when you had to draw every single cell of animation, nowdays you're less likely to see anything as bad as the pre 2000s
Maybe it I'd because I was just rewatching Code Lyoko, but I read it as full frame reuse rather than element reuse or transformations. As with any form of it though it is to save time and money. And reuse of elements can help prevent continuity errors as long as it is done right. I've never minded reuse much though. If it is supposed to look pretty much the same what is the harm in making it look exactly the same? Aelita ends up deactivating a tower probably around 100 times in the course of the show, and I can only recall that animation changing twice. Bit I don't think anyone would appreciate having each one be unique when they have to be 95% the same by definition. I think the big reason we see less of it now is just that the shows are less formulaic. Or at not to the point of the exact same event happening in every episode.
Some reuses in Code Lyoko did cause confusion, though, because, for example, you'd see Aelita running into a tower, but then walking to the platform in the tower, or, vice-versa, walking into the tower, but then running to the platform in the tower (I think).
Now that you mention it, I guess they did do that same thing every time she went into a tower. It's funny how you never notice these things until you look back on it. But yeah, that's basically what I meant. And it's just kind of weird, and makes it hard to watch the shows sometimes. Like the fights in Shinzo are fun, don't get me wrong, but when they re-use old clips over and over it kind of makes the fight confusing
