system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How come old cartoons like Tom & Jerry are animated much more smoothly and lifelike than more modern cartoons (80s, 90s) and anime?
gpt
Basically, more effort was put in.  These cartoons used to be a lot more expensive, so you could hire more animators and have them take more time doing things.  But this wasn’t sustainable and things had to change.  When these cartoons came to tv(something a lot of people are mistaken about is that the old Looney Tunes weren’t tv episodes.  They were shorts shown in movie theaters), animators had to come up with a lot of tricks to bring the cost of animation down.  Hannah Barbera are (in)famous for a lot of these.  They will reuse animation, reuse backgrounds, have cars move off screen and play a crash sound rather than animating a crash.  And yes, these cartoons weren’t as good, but animation wouldn’t have survived without these changes.  Eventually the techniques were refined(computers helped a lot) but TV animation never really hit the same level as those old shorts.  Animated films shown in theaters were able to maintain this level, but they had more money and time to work with.