♪ The Simpsons ♪ Narrator: This is the
original title sequence to "The Simpsons." And this is what it looks like today. In the older version, Marge's
hair really whips around. But with the revamp, the
motion gets toned down. Even the paper bag moves less. Over the last 30-plus years, the "Simpsons" animation has
gone through a lot of changes, with every decade bringing new technology that helped the show refine its style. We talked to two of the main
minds behind "The Simpsons" who've been with the show since day one to find out how we got from this to this. Noble spirits, your time has passed. [burps] Narrator: Here's what
the Simpsons looked like when they first appeared on TV as a recurring segment on
"The Tracey Ullman Show." If they don't look like the
Simpsons you know today, that's because these
characters were very much still a work in progress. Homer: There's nothing to worry about. Now everyone go to sleep. Narrator: Matt Groening, the
creator of "The Simpsons," would sketch out the one-minute shorts, then hand his sketches to
the show's three animators, who together made up the show's
entire animation department. David Silverman was one of them. David: And we sort of would
take Matt's rough drawings and cobble a storyboard
between the three of us. Narrator: The three of them were involved in nearly every stage of
the process after that, from layout, where they draw out the characters' key poses or acting, to the actual animation, to in-betweening, when they create the intermediate frames
between key frames. To make things more demanding, "The Simpsons" was going
for a hand-drawn look, so the artists used traditional ink-and-paint cel animation. Starting off with plastic
sheets called cels, they would outline images
on the front of the cel and paint color on the back. David estimated that in the early days, they were working 60- to 80-hour weeks to animate just a minute and a half between the three of them. Pressed for time, the animators actually just traced over Matt's
drawings in the beginning. This might be why the
Simpsons in the early shorts have sharper, more irregular lines, in the style that Matt was known for. They also started out with
a more pronounced version of the potato-chip lip, another signature of Matt's straight out of his "Life in Hell" comics. From there, the artists designed and redesigned the characters
as they went along. This led to some pretty
notable inconsistencies, like the family's skin color
varying between episodes or their proportions changing
from one week to the next. There's even a 10-second sequence where Bart's character design shifts noticeably in
three successive shots -- all within a single scene. But these quick decisions
also laid the groundwork for the defining features
of the "Simpsons" look. Matt said he gave the characters four fingers instead of five because it'd reduce "pencil mileage," making the figures easier to draw. And the team painted the
Simpsons yellow for two reasons: the color would make them
stand out on TV screens, and it would suit the characters
who don't have hairlines. Like showrunner Mike Reiss said, the color yellow is
"kinda skin, kinda hair." Now we get to "The Simpsons"' first season as its own TV show. This is the final episode of season one, but it was actually
supposed to be the pilot, according to Al Jean,
a "Simpsons" showrunner who's worked on the show
since its very first season. Al: It really didn't look right. It didn't look like "The Simpsons," so it was actually the last
show aired of the first 13. In the first season, there
was a learning curve. We were basically training everybody else to draw the characters
as we had conceived them. Narrator: First, the animators had to make the Simpsons' figures more rounded than they were in the shorts so that they'd be easier
to turn around in space. And the designs that made
the characters so iconic also made them difficult
to draw consistently. Artists on the show have described the "Simpsons" character designs as "delicate" and "deceptively simple," because a single stray stroke
could transform a character. Compare Bart to a
character like Bugs Bunny. As David said, "Bugs Bunny
has quite a lot of lines, which makes him easier to capture ... there's a greater allowance for mistakes." But with Bart's hair, for example, or his version of the
Simpsons family nose, if there's a single line drawn wrong or with the wrong pencil thickness, the character will no
longer look like Bart. So throughout season one, the show developed its model sheets -- style guides that lay out the right poses, movements, and expressions
for each character. The season also varied a lot in how much fluidity is given
to the characters' movements. Fluid animation is when
a character's lines flow smoothly, like water. There are points in season one where the characters are very fluid, like Ms. Botz in this scene. See that head shake she does? It's almost like the animators drew her with more frames per second
than they usually do, producing this super-smooth motion that stands out next to other scenes. Wacky moments like this are what many fans love most about the first season. But in season two, those wacky moments started to become more standardized. Homer: You're living in
a world of make believe, with flowers and bells and leprechauns and magic frogs with funny little hats! Narrator: By then, the show had developed an almost 500-page style bible laying out exactly how and how not to draw the residents of Springfield. This page lays out various
no-nos for drawing Lisa, while another page defines
the eight-point rule for her hair, describing
how it should be clustered in groups of three, three,
and two on Lisa's head. Matt also wanted to
distance "The Simpsons" from the house styles of
other animation studios, which meant movement was key. In the Disney world, characters tend to move in a springy way, like they're dancing. And other characters, like
Wile E. Coyote and Bugs Bunny, had bodies that extended and
snapped back like rubber bands. The "Simpsons" team
decided to have characters with a more limited range of movements, with occasional moments of fluidity for comedic or dramatic effect. They even studied Kermit the Frog, because they liked how
he could convey emotion with just a slight change
in his Muppet mouth. This style still left the Simpsons plenty of room for expressiveness. According to Nelson Shin at Akom, the South Korean studio that
helps animate "The Simpsons," a typical cartoon face maybe
has six different mouths. A main character on "The
Simpsons" can have as many as 27. The backgrounds were another challenge. Al: If you look at, like,
Moe's in season one, it really does look like
they're in a 2D environment. And it really looks a
lot more 3D subsequently. David: The artwork was becoming better. Just getting perspective
to the backgrounds, as opposed to them looking
just sort of, like, badly drawn. [laughs] Narrator: The showrunners also leaned into other aspects of the "Simpsons" look: thin outlines and characters
with few sharp edges on them and distinctively walled eyes. Those are crucial -- the big, bulgy, almost circular eyeballs with black-dot pupils that make the Simpsons
look permanently stunned, like they just got
electrocuted by their TV. The show made a rule that characters' eyes had to either be looking
in the same direction or turning slightly outward from the nose, never cross-eyed like you see
on Saturday morning cartoons, because that would look too "cute." Still, the show wasn't
perfectly consistent on details like these. For a while, in seasons
three through five, some characters' pupils were drawn bigger, something that David and
Al say was unintentional. I want my characters to have
more of a confused bird look, the sort of like ... It seemed the jokes played better. And then I think the blank expression, you as a viewer can just project
whatever you feel about it. Narrator: "The Simpsons" stuck with hand-painted cel animation
through the '90s, but by season seven, the
showrunners were experimenting with digital paint in one-off episodes like this one, "Radioactive Man," and even digital animation in the season seven Halloween special. In 2002, the show used the
same annual Halloween episode to try out digital paint again, this time for a sequence
where Homer clones himself. Which actually would have
probably been impossible on cels because there are so
many clones and levels. There's a certain physical point of how many cel levels you can have, where, of course, digital compositing can have infinite number
of levels and characters. Narrator: A few episodes later, the show switched over to
digital coloring for good. Al: There was just a talk that you had, when they just said, "You're
gonna have to go digital." There had been earlier shows where something wasn't
the right color, maybe, but it was impossible to
fix because of the cost, whereas with digital coloring, you can fix it faster for cheaper. And it's a whole new world, it really is. Narrator: It also gave the show more vivid backgrounds
and crisper graphics and, at first, heavier black borders around characters and objects, an accident that the show fixed later on. We would have a problem where you had the camera move in and out, the line would get thinner and
thicker, which we all hated. David: We were able to figure out that you could basically dial in the size of the lines and so forth. So as the seasons progressed, pretty quickly we just got into the more technical remedies for these situations. Narrator: And it's these
experiments with digital that set the stage for "The Simpsons"' biggest transformation yet: "The Simpsons Movie." Trailer: The greatest
Simpsons family adventure of all time! Narrator: For a while,
the showrunners thought "The Simpsons Movie" would
be fully CG-animated, but they didn't end up going
the full-CG route for the film. Moe: "The Simpsons Movie" ... [splat] in 2D! Narrator: Instead, the team mixed traditional 2D animation with 3D CGI to make the show's classic style work in the most wide-screen
movie format, CinemaScope. Since Springfield would appear on a 100-foot movie screen, the color-design team used
a larger color palette for the movie than they'd
ever used on the TV show. And while backgrounds on the show were often flat-colored
and lit by a single source, the movie called for backgrounds
that were richer in detail. To help focus the audience's eyes, the artists added shadow
vignettes to the backgrounds and put a tone shadow and drop shadow on characters in every scene. On TV, they'd only given
characters those shadows for scenes that were set at night or supposed to be especially dramatic. The more nuanced lighting
and shadows in the movie created depth in every shot, so that certain characters
and objects pop out at you. These artistic elevations stuck
around long after the film. "The Simpsons" started incorporating more computer animation and 3D effects, especially for complicated backgrounds. The showrunners even created
a special scene-planning team to digitally animate elaborate sequences. David: The scene planners
helped in our camera moves and making them more sort of cinematic. We would try to emulate the
idea of a multiplane camera, where you have planes of animation so that it feels like the
camera's physically moving as opposed to just zooming in and out. Narrator: And working in
widescreen HD animation for the movie proved to
be a useful trial run for two years later, when
the show, in its 20th season, officially moved to HD. Isn't it about time you went digital? Watch your mouth, you little smart-ass! Al: HD was a whole other enormous change that we had no money and
no time to prepare for. Narrator: Higher digital resolution left less room for mistakes or shortcuts. Al: You really have to
be much more careful that the backgrounds don't
look shoddy in one spot and much better in another. There's so much information in the frame. Where we used to get by with, you know, you'd have a little piece
of paper on a bulletin board and a scribble on it,
it looks terrible now. Narrator: And in the first HD seasons, artists couldn't save
time by recycling shots from past episodes like they normally do. Al: In season 20, it was really tricky. There was nothing that we could rely on from past shows to fill in. We had to restart our whole
library of backgrounds, our whole library of old shots. So we've had to go redo things like the comic-book
store or the town square, totally rethinking how
they would look in HD. Narrator: And the HD
format also took the show from its traditional 4:3
aspect ratio to 16:9. With this switch, Matt
said the "Simpsons" team had to "rethink everything." David: So we became even more conscious of thinking about the space cinematically. We talked more about that. "OK, we're gonna have
a flat-space shot here for this part of it. Now let's go to a deep-space shot." So, you could take more
advantage of a longer shot. You could play more of
the action in a wide shot. Narrator: The wider frame forced the team to think more about shot composition. This meant creating
more asymmetry in shots. Al: Where you have a little
piece of garbage here or a fire extinguisher on the wall there, or several things that
just are like real life rather than just these
perfect rectangles everywhere. Narrator: The show's iconic
opening was also redone for the first time since season two. This HD makeover was
somewhat controversial in the eyes of fans, who said characters like Marge looked too rigid in their movement. Al: The movements aren't
quite as fluid, yeah. And what happened there was we said, well, we've gotta go to HD
and we need a new main title, which is fairly lengthy, and they said, "You have no money." [laughs] We had to figure out ways to
get it done without extra time, without extra money,
and put in new things. Narrator: The artists were
also still getting used to animating in HD. David: I think everybody
just got used to using it more organically. So at the beginning it
was a little stiffer, and we try to be conscious
of that and try to make sure that the characters are
moving more fluidly. Narrator: Even in recent seasons, characters seem to have bouncier movement, straying away from the stiffness
of some early HD episodes. The show's still figuring out some other aspects of its look, too, like how much shadow to use. David: Sometimes we go overboard, and I think there's
too much use of shadow. We sort of try to balance it out. Narrator: And how much color. David: We still follow
our basic 200 colors, approximately, to paint things, but we vary the tones of them. We try to keep a sensibility that's connected to the
original color palette. Narrator: Lately, the
show's also revitalized some of its sets,
including adding new jokes into the town square. And the artists have polished
up old character models, especially when dusting off
characters from earlier seasons, like Comic Book Guy, who
they had to scale down from his season-two model, which means "The Simpsons" is
still tinkering with its look after more than three decades. And it's this constant
tweaking and adapting that's helped the show last through so many different eras of TV. That's what helped make "The Simpsons" the longest-running
scripted primetime series, the longest-running American sitcom, and arguably the most
successful animated show ever.
