TMC
07-07-2022, 08:49 PM
https://www.looper.com/919625/heres-why-the-simpsons-characters-only-have-four-fingers/
It's hard to put a finger on it
According to a video by Channel Frederator (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QZFQ3gbd6I), the four-fingered choice in animation has been done throughout history for economic and creative reasons. In the early days of traditionally hand-drawn animation from the likes of Walt Disney, it could take as many as 24 drawings to make up one second of animation, meaning that even a short five or 10-minute cartoon could constitute thousands of laboriously hand-drawn frames. With the enormous amount of time and money it takes to create these films, studios did all they could to reduce costs, which meant that taking off even one finger could save plenty of resources in the long run.
So why not cut down more fingers if this is the case? Dating back to the early days of animation, many of these simply designed characters such as Mickey Mouse or Felix the Cat were purposefully given only four fingers, and as explained in the video, five fingers created an uncanny valley effect where their appearance was pushing too close to reality. Four digits made for a nice balance where the anatomy of a hand was recognizable but never pushed any bizarre boundaries.
With a single 27-minute long episode of "The Simpsons" taking anywhere between five and seven months (https://youtu.be/_3ZGFKUE_8U?t=55) at around $5 million per episode (via Quartz (https://qz.com/1735700/apple-and-disney-are-creating-an-explosion-of-tv-series-budgets/)), it would make sense that the show, with its already simplistic art direction, wouldn't hesitate to comply with this common cartoon tradition. And outside of the one "Simpsons" character being granted the coveted fifth finger (https://www.looper.com/898872/the-only-characters-on-the-simpsons-to-have-five-fingers/), the trait remains consistent to this day.
It's hard to put a finger on it
According to a video by Channel Frederator (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QZFQ3gbd6I), the four-fingered choice in animation has been done throughout history for economic and creative reasons. In the early days of traditionally hand-drawn animation from the likes of Walt Disney, it could take as many as 24 drawings to make up one second of animation, meaning that even a short five or 10-minute cartoon could constitute thousands of laboriously hand-drawn frames. With the enormous amount of time and money it takes to create these films, studios did all they could to reduce costs, which meant that taking off even one finger could save plenty of resources in the long run.
So why not cut down more fingers if this is the case? Dating back to the early days of animation, many of these simply designed characters such as Mickey Mouse or Felix the Cat were purposefully given only four fingers, and as explained in the video, five fingers created an uncanny valley effect where their appearance was pushing too close to reality. Four digits made for a nice balance where the anatomy of a hand was recognizable but never pushed any bizarre boundaries.
With a single 27-minute long episode of "The Simpsons" taking anywhere between five and seven months (https://youtu.be/_3ZGFKUE_8U?t=55) at around $5 million per episode (via Quartz (https://qz.com/1735700/apple-and-disney-are-creating-an-explosion-of-tv-series-budgets/)), it would make sense that the show, with its already simplistic art direction, wouldn't hesitate to comply with this common cartoon tradition. And outside of the one "Simpsons" character being granted the coveted fifth finger (https://www.looper.com/898872/the-only-characters-on-the-simpsons-to-have-five-fingers/), the trait remains consistent to this day.