Mondo Knows Facts

Hanna-Barbera made cartoons cheap with limited animation

Television budgets forced shows to reuse cels and hold frames Television budgets could not fund full animation, so Hanna-Barbera built shows around static backgrounds, repeated cycles and characters whose mouths and eyes moved while bodies stayed still. The Flintstones and Scooby-Doo were made this way. The approach made weekly series possible and shaped the look of TV cartoons. It sits in Mondo's movies & tv collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Paley Center for Media

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Tags: animation, television, 1960s

Hanna-Barbera made cartoons cheap with limited animation: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
Television budgets forced shows to reuse cels and hold frames. The figure is taken from Paley Center for Media, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a movies & tv fact?
Yes. It sits on the Movies & TV shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.