The '50s were a time of change for America. Hot off the heels of winning World War II, and with its patriotic economic shakeup, it was time for the United States to turn attention to its own country, to rebuild to the future. For these decades, gone was the idea of purely natural materials. The country was starting to move into artificial sleek and modern designs and materials; plastic, chrome, refined metal and chemicals, etc, as well as embracing and idolizing the power of refined machinery and the atom, in electronics; television, microwave ovens, transistor radios, jet engines, solid-state (room-sized) computers, and of course, nuclear power. The '60s were equally full of progress. The U.S. was shaking off the rust of a 1950s that had been viewed as too rigid, traditional, and "moralistic", with Flower Power becoming the counterculture. Sputnik 1 had only been launched a few years before the start of the decade, and now the race was on to see who would make tracks to different milestones in leaving, exploring space, and returning to our Earth.
On that note, media was rapidly changing for visual mediums such as television as well. As time went on, media needed to be created more quickly for the weekly schedule. What sprang up was an equally-artificial plan, in cutting corners in design. Literally and figuratively. For some, this was the beginning of The Dark Age of Animation.
Getting away from the lush smoothly-moving characters and backgrounds of film-made productions, moving at 24-30 frames-per-second with full detail, softness, movement, and proper perspective, which would take hours to prepare, an animation could be produced cheaply and quickly in a stylized limited fashion, with simplified, mismatched, imperfect, staggered, and loose geometric shapes, corners, curves, and styles, moving in similarly-staggered motions, on anywhere from 5-10 frames per second.
Usually, this was because smaller production studios might only have had a shoestring budget, further compounded by its mixture with videotape, which was extremely expensive back then for later broadcast, and that technology being equally extremely complex, and in its infancy.
Characteristics of the Mismatched Atomic Expressionism art style include, but are not limited to:
- Exaggerated, stiff, and distorted geometric-like design shapes:
- Extra unnecessary angles, giving the design a slightly-crumpled, bent, or lumpy appearance.
- Some designs that were normally straight-and-angular would be rounded. Conversely, some circular objects and designs would become oblong, losing some of their perspective, making one half of them appear squashed or flat, like the shape of a convex lens.
- Thick spirals would lose their circularity, and gain the basic attributes of a shape like a triangle, square, or pentagon.
- Emphasized elements would use thick, yet thickness-changing and angle-abberating outlines. (i.e. Instead of parallel inner and outer borders on the stroke, the outline might get thinner and the borders would almost meet, the nearer to a corner or sharp point on the design.)
- Animation, if used, could be extremely limited. Within a specific shot, a character would have stood still, with only an appendage, speaking mouth that moved independently of their chin, or blinking eyes moving within that shot. To sell the illusion of animation, a character would have changed their position between shots. Other times, the movement was limited to single-digit keyframes.
- The camera used for filming the animation would be moved or re-focused to produce motion and zoom-in effects, rather than having the perspective motion baked into the cel and background.
- Backgrounds use flat colors, and/or offset the outline stroke from the color fills in specific instances.
- Backgrounds would also use single-colored outlines for elements and objects, as if they were transparent, set in front of large swaths of color, so as not to take focus away from the characters and action.
- For more-detailed backgrounds that had a wider range of colors (e.g. establishing shots), colored lines within the same range (i.e. dark plum colors for purple, or sky/light blue for straight blue colors) would be added to fill in details taken away by simplification.
- If the production was really cheap on quality, one could see visible passes of painting material artifacts (i.e. brush strokes, mottled holes from sponges, etc.) and darkening layers of paint in the background, as well as on cel-painted movement representing the fast motion of objects and characters, but would not add any relevant complex detail.
- Perspective would sometimes be eschewed, giving the background a "flat" appearance.
- Shadows were usually angular and distinct, without fading from light to dark.
- No specular (shiny) highlighting, or shading.
- No smooth gradients, or sometimes no gradation of color at all.
- Anything involving sparks, sparkles, pizzazz, or magic was usually represented by shapes resembling a hand-drawn asterisk (sometimes with circular ends) or small starbursts.
- Sometimes antennas were represented by a simple line, with circular rings floating concentrically around it, ending in a small, round, ball-like point. (Think Elroy Jetson's hat.)
- Speakers covered by a mesh were usually made into an oblong or circular representation, with a simplistic grid of lines as a broad dome-like shape. Sound coming from the speaker might be represented by the lines bulging outward.
- Anything coiled (such as wires or springs) or wispy (such as smoke) would be drawn as randomly-spaced-out twirled scribbles. Smoke, if fine enough, would also be represented by broad undulating waves.
- Explosions or emphasis would be represented by simple, but wild and exaggerated multi-pointed starbursts.
- Fluffed dirt, semi-caked mud, or slime might be represented by rounded lumps. Gritty dirt was usually represented by sputtered paint.
- Rocks were extremely angular, with jagged rocks triangular and almost knife-like.
- Body features would be distilled down into their most basic forms possible. For example:
- Hair was drawn geometrically and unchanging with curves, angles, and points. Puffy Hair would be drawn as loops or connected arches with color fills.
- Simplified faces would connect the nose and mouth as one single line.
- Lips and toothy smiles would be represented as large single-color arches.
- The eyes of beautiful women would be represented as single-color circles.
- Arms were usually angular, with simplistic "catcher's-mitt" like hands.
- Text for logos and graphic design included:
- Geometric background shapes.
- Colored Outlines.
- Exaggerated text lengths.
- Rounded corners.
- Misaligned non-parallel angles both in overall elements and in shape.
- Blocky designs in sans-serif fonts.
- Lengthened, sometimes curved serifs in serif fonts.
- Extra lines or shapes separate from the text, to add flamboyance to the design.
- Lengthened, sweeping loops in cursive fonts.
These days, it's the quintessential American Golden-Era "retro" style of the 1950s and 1960s, evoking the time where America entered and embraced the Atomic and Space Ages; what was thought of as futuristic in those decades. It's also usually associated with Zeerust, given the comparatively primitive artificiality of the designs; For the purely graphical design side of the trope, it's what you might find at a modern retro-styled drive-in restaurant, lounge, theater, or even in a bowling alley (all of which was prevalent in these eras). In this context, it's often referred to as "Googie style
".note For animation and illustrated characters, you might find it in a modern cartoon attempting to replicate the style of those decades, either in parody or as a callback.
Also crosses over strongly with Thick-Line Animation, as most cartoons made during this era were created this way. This trope also covers what some would consider the "UPA Style", after the United Productions of America, but is not necessarily the entire trope.
Raygun Gothic is a similar Speculative Fiction about possible (at-the-time) future structures, devices, and culture, from which Mismatched Atomic designs draw their style inspiration, although the two are not interchangeable, as Mismatched Atomic concentrates on graphic style, not physical concepts.
Compare Brutalist Animation, where, in less-developed/less freedom-espousing countries, it trended in The '50s and displays similar principles to this trope: mainly, the same artistic idea of cutting corners, except by showcasing building materials, work, darkness, grittiness, harshness and decay of nature, and symbolisms of power and social status, rather than gussying it up and keeping it clean, but with the same rough-at-the-edges feeling.
Also compare with Timm Style, a sleek, cleaner, more-focused version of this trope.
Compare Art Deco, a preceding aesthetic style from the 1920s to the 1940s that focuses on strength, machinery, metal, artistic mixing of materials, and smooth geometric shapes and lines. Compare Cubism, which is an aesthetic style popularized by Pablo Picasso, which highly distorts designs and perspective even further than this, but used similar elements before the modern age.
Sometimes, one might find this style used in tandem with the Tuxedo and Martini spy genre.
Examples:
Straight Examples:
- Bewitched: Used for the introduction animation of the show. Samantha's eyes are represented by abberating spirals, her design is simplified with smoothed sweeping angles with flat colors, and the city backdrop uses simple squares and rectangles to represent the buildings and windows, with the aforementioned "asterisk sparkles" representing Samantha's magic.
- I Dream of Jeannie: The opening credits uses this style in an animated representation of how Tony met Jeannie after finding her bottle after splashing down.
- The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis The show's intro uses this style, with staggered text in the logo, and extremely offset fills and lines, with simplified body shape and features in the characters.
- Pinball machines made during the Electromechanical Era (post-WWII to the late 1970s) predominantly used this style of artwork on the playfield and on the artwork in the back, particularly those made at Gottlieb. The reasons for this art style are the same as those in animated works of its time: pinball machines were designed and released on a per-month basis, requiring the art teams to work as quickly as possible to keep up. Artwork coming out like this was trendy at the time, could be completed fast enough for the artists to avoid falling behind, and was easy to silk-screen for mass production. Examples include Sure Shot, Doodle Bug, Card Whiz, Capersville, and Straight Flush.
- The Bozo Show: The cartoons that were broadcast for the original live-action television shows kept to this style. The design shapes were stiff, thickly-lined, and characters would usually not move within the same shot, save for a speaking mouth or blinking eyes. Sometimes a character would only speak off-screen to save on animation effort.
- Felix the Cat (Joe Oriolo): The Trans-Lux edition of Felix the Cat sometimes had higher-quality animation, but most of the time, still stuck to flat colors, staggered limited-animated shapes (prevalent in the Professor), and used simplified backgrounds and establishing shots accentuated with simply-outlined details drawn in colored ink pen.
- Frosty the Snowman: This being one of Rankin/Bass' rare hand-drawn animation works, the style in this case also mimics the look of their iconic stop-motion films. Frosty himself, of course, is one large snowball with a smaller one as his head and some limbs attached. The humans are similarly geometric.
- Gay Purr-ee is a feature-length example. All the cats are various shapes put together to form a body, with Meowrice's hench-cats taking it to the extreme in being literal shapes with eyes.
- Gerald McBoing-Boing: Used for the entirety of the short. Color variation on everything is usually kept to a minimum, with thickness-abberating strokes, and backgrounds that use object and element shapes offset from their outlines.
- Anything made by Hanna-Barbera; Yogi Bear, The Jetsons, Secret Squirrel, Huckleberry Hound, Wally Gator: These animations are the Trope Codifier for the studio, and are easily recognizable by containing many of the qualities of the trope, including but not limited to: the extremely limited animation with movement-saving techniques made to quickly create a production, varied-width strokes, flat colors for the characters, and equally-stylized-detail backgrounds with offset strokes and fills. The Jetsons takes this a step further by including Googie architecture, a speculative-future construction staple of the American Atomic/Space Age, in its settings.
- Looney Tunes: When Looney Tunes was given to DePatie-Freleng Enterprises in the 1960s, the art style became this trope; although without the thick varied outlines on the characters.
- Mr. Magoo uses this style. Quincy Magoo himself is a round bald head atop a triangular-shaped coat. Less important characters often receive minimal detailing, in some cases not even being completely colored.
- The Pink Panther: Again, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises provided the animation for both the films, and for pre-feature short subjects for various movies, with exaggerated facial features, simplified hair, and simplified colors, with backgrounds containing flat-colored shapes occasionally outlined in colored ink pen.
- Rocky and Bullwinkle: One of the many Trope Codifiers of the day. The style was reportedly not liked by creator Jay Ward, as it was cheaply produced in Mexico. The backgrounds use extremely simplified flat-colored shapes to represent structures and objects, with the occasional outline and full contours of an object. To draw attention to more-important designs, objects, and characters, they were drawn with a thick (usually black) outline.
Replicated Examples:
- The 2005 Pixar Short Mr. Incredible and Pals was released as an extra on the DVD of The Incredibles. Before the supers are banned, Mr. Incredible and Frozone licensed their names and images to a TV animation company. The resulting pilot, a parody of low budget Saturday morning cartoons from the '50s and '60s, uses Synchro-Vox techniques and very Limited Animation like in Clutch Cargo. The "commentary" has the present Mr. Incredible and Frozone watch the unaired pilot for the first time. Played for Laughs; Frozone points out everything the cartoon does wrong (like making him white or at best, tan instead of black), while Mr. Incredible tries in vain to defend it.
- Catch Me If You Can: The opening credits use an even more stylized version than usual. The human figures are little more than silhouettes on backgrounds that are often only one or two shades. This gets the audience into the '60s mood that the film takes place in.
- Loki (2021): In the first episode, after Loki is brought to the Temporal Variance Authority, he sees a short video explaining the multiverse, the Sacred Timeline, Variants, and what the TVA does. It's shown as an animation narrated by an anthropomorphized clock named Miss Minutes with very simple figures, little more than stylized outlines with faces, showing Variants leaving their assigned timelines and causing chaos. The art style also fits in with the TVA, which has a very retro feel in general.
- The Nanny: Used for the Animated Credits Opening, where the characters of the show are depicted with flat colors, with rounded, thin, and exaggerated features, the backgrounds use sporadic or misaligned outlines, and the show logo uses a staggered font with misangled squares behind it to accentuate it. The season 3 Christmas Episode "Oy to the World" is an animated episode that uses the same art style and character designs as the animated credits.
- WandaVision: The episode "Don't Touch That Dial" begins with an Animated Credits Opening in a style reminiscent of Mismatched Atomic (particularly the Bewitched opening), which fits with the episode being a homage to sitcoms from The '60s.
- CounterSpy uses this animation style throughout the credits, and even in the game itself to some degree. This is less surprising when you realize the creative team from The Incredibles were behing both works.
- Fakin' It from The Jackbox Party Pack 3 has the appearance of a 1960s Saturday morning cartoon. The characters are pops of color on a white background with outlines of living room furniture, and they all move in a jerky, limited fashion. The players' names are written on top of round-angled blobby shapes, and all the text in the game is written in a rounded, misaligned, friendly-looking font.
- SPY Fox: Used as the art style for the series. Details are simplified, with flat colors and shading, outlines that change thickness from point to point, the aforementioned "slightly-crumpled appearance", offset strokes, and exaggerated designs. This was likely done in reference to the 1960s, from which the Tuxedo and Martini spy genre of media developed from.
- Pajama Sam: A modified form is used as the art style of the series, in a fashion, but without purely flat-colored detailing, except for Sam himself and most other animated characters. The designs of the backgrounds usually stick to the aforementioned "slightly-crumpled appearance", as well as exaggerated angles, with a few sleek Raygun Gothic designs (such as the Sun Machine, S.I.D. note , The Snowflake Inspector, and "Shrink-O" snowflake-shrinking device in Pajama Sam 2: Thunder and Lightning Aren't So Frightening]], but cleanly stay within the borders of the abberating-outline strokes.
- Homestar Runner, "Career Day": Mimicked in Strong Bad's (oh, ahem... Space Captainface's) SBASAF presentation, "What's Your Captainface?", with geometric flatly-colored designs and abstract details for Strong Bad, the Cheat, and SBASAF Mission Control Leader Ted Averill, but without the thick varied outlines, and with similarly angular and rounded shading.
- Cartoon Network:
- Dexter's Laboratory & The Powerpuff Girls (1998): Although created by two different producers in the same decade and released the same year, both follow an extremely similar design aesthetic to each other, as well as mimicking Mismatched Atomic, with thick varying black outlines, flat colors, and simplified backgrounds. This is further enhanced in both cartoons, by the addition of building and room designs that one would see in the 1950s and 1960s. (For example, Prof. Utonium's house follows Googie/Modernistic architecture, and Dexter's house follows the basic two-story design of the suburban family house one would find in the era.)
- Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?: Although much more detailed than what the 1950s and 1960s offered, the basic aesthetic is there (sans the thickness of the outlines), given the wild, but still overly-simplified approach to the design of the show. For example, the filament of Robot Jones' light bulb brain is represented as a crude coiled spiral, cylindrical objects often are not totally round (one side has a flat line), shadows are represented by closely-spaced parallel lines, and most of the color detail of the show sticks to flat non-specular design. In fact, there is some Brutalistic design (harsh natural designs, as well as detailed machinery and dark areas) mixed in as well.
- Invader Zim: A variation; the designs of the entire show stick to the "slightly-crumpled" angular design, but with cel shading and specular highlights.
- The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat: In homage to both the original Otto Mesmer/Pat Sullivan (1900s-1930s), and Joe Oriolo (1950s) editions of the Felix cartoons, the series uses this trope's styling in its designs, along with a healthy dose of Inkblot cartoon styling, but with 1990s gradients, thin outlines, digital coloring and animation, and double-exposure glowing (in specific instances).
- The Simpsons: Homaged in "Duffless", with a "retro" black-and-white 1950s Duff Beer commercial with a simplistic animated doctor mascot. (But without the thick abberating lines)
Doctor: Only Duff fills your "Q-Zone" with pure beer goodness! So drink up...! ...and up! ...and up! [He takes a drink, and rockets off screen]Announcer: Duff Beer: Proud Sponsors of "Amos & Andy"!
- The Spongebob Squarepants episode "Truth or Square", features a faux '50s commercial for the Krusty Krab done in a style reminiscent of Mismatched Atomic.
