This term we have a History of Animation class, it’s one of the few academic style courses I’ve had in the program but for the most part is mainly a course where we watch cartoons from the many studios that have come and gone in the history of animated features. We only recently covered the Van Beuren Studio which besides it’s rather lackluster Felix the Cat cartoons I had never heard of before provided less then memorable fare. The stories were pretty plain and character development was practically non-existent. I was wondering when the toons we watched would suddenly be funny. Practically never. This is my general feeling for the lousy stuff that has been released in recent years like the awfully shallow flash based cartoons from Canada such as 6Teen(ugh), Total Drama Island(wretch), Total Drama Action(hmph), and this even worse one about surfing(hurls). I think all those studios still around should take a course like the one I’m taking and see what was good and what wasn’t.