A trademark of the company's productions beginning in 1969 was a rotating "Produced by" (and on some shows, "Executive Producers") credit seen in the end credits (and in later productions, the opening sequences) of Filmation programs, a device that was supposedly created to allow Prescott and Scheimer to share equal billing (previously, Scheimer's name was placed above Prescott's), although later Filmation productions credited only Scheimer, in the form of his signature ("Lou Scheimer, Executive Producer"), starting with 1982's Gilligan's Planet.
Lou Scheimer and Filmation's main director Hal Sutherland met while working at Larry Harmon Pictures on the made-for-TV Bozo and Popeye cartoons. Eventually Larry Harmon closed the studio. SIB Productions, a Japanese firm with U.S. offices in Chicago, approached Scheimer and Sutherland about producing a cartoon called Rod Rocket. The two agreed to take on the work and also took on a project for Family Films, owned by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, for ten short animated films based on the life of Christ. The project enabled Scheimer and Sutherland to finance their own small Los Angeles animation studio, called True Line. Paramount Pictures soon purchased SIB Productions, and True Line's staff increased; including the arrival of former radio disc jockey Norm Prescott, who became a partner in the firm. He had already been working on the animated feature Pinocchio in Outer Space which was primarily produced by Belvision Studios, and also brought in the Journey Back to Oz project, which would be released over ten years later by Filmation. Both Rod Rocket and the life of Christ series credited "Filmation Associates" with "Production Design" in addition to Scheimer and Sutherland as directors; but True Line was not officially changed into the Filmation Associates corporation until Rod Rocket entered syndication in 1963. (SIB Productions, whose logo bore a resemblance to the original Filmation logo, would soon go on to become "Sib-Tower 12 Productions" and produce the first few of Chuck Jones' Tom and Jerry films for MGM, until becoming MGM Animation/Visual Arts for the remainder of the films).
The new Filmation studio would for the next few years make television commercials, until approached by DC Comics editor Mort Weisinger to do a Superman cartoon. This premiered in 1966, and was followed by several of the other DC Comics heroes, and then in 1968, the first Archie show. Both series greatly helped Filmation's popularity to increase, into the 1970s, when it really scored big with several of its shows.
As with other producers of Saturday morning cartoons, Filmation was more concerned with quantity rather than quality; however, it did make a number of attempts to rise above the standard animated fare and produce reasonably well-written cartoons. The best-known example of this is its animated adaptation of the Star Trek series, which included scripts contributed by well-known science fiction writers and starred most of the original cast. Other favorably remembered Filmation series included a 16-part animated serial of Flash Gordon originally intended as a movie for theatrical release, Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All; the original film edit was only aired thrice on NBC, years after the series was canceled. Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids was another hailed series created by and starring Bill Cosby with an explicit educational focus, which enabled the actor to earn a Doctorate in education. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, based on the popular line of Mattel toys, opened up a vibrant new North American market for first-run television syndication for animation in the 1980s. The animated adaptations of the Archie Comics characters were also noteworthy for the original pop music produced for it, particularly the song, "Sugar, Sugar", which was a #1 hit single.
In addition, certain episodes of He-Man and Bravestarr, in substance, and often animation, were pioneers in children's animated series of their time and paved the way for broader storytelling. Examples include He-Man's "The Problem with Power" which dealt with He-Man believing he had killed an innocent bystander, "Teela's Quest" which introduced a now famous mythology on The Sorceress being Teela's mother, whom she is heir to the mantle of safeguarding Grayskull, the versed continuity shared between He-Man and She-Ra, among others. Likewise, the scripts for Star Trek, which were often written by the same people who had written for the live-action version of the show, tended to be quite sophisticated, and garnered the first Emmy Award for the franchise.
Filmation had a reputation for exploiting the technique of limited animation to produce a number of animated series with a distinct look. It made heavy use of rotoscoping in later years (beginning with its Tarzan and Flash Gordon series), and it also re-used the same animated sequences over and over, many times, to the point where the Filmation style was instantly recognizable. Veteran He-Man writer Chris Weber noted this in verse, set to "I've Been Working on the Railroad": "Can't you see the kiddies streaming / home to watch him after school? / Can't you hear my boss a-screaming / 'Use stock footage, fool!'".
Filmation's animation often looked poor quality due to the limiting of the number of frames per second used to fewer than the regular 24 frame/s seen on film or 25/30 frame/s seen on video. Frames would be repeated to compensate for the deficiency, resulting in a jerky and cheap look. This frequent use of stock footage saved production money, but often resulted in sacrifice of continuity. This was countered by cutting from one stock shot to another after only a second or two—long enough to set the scene but before the eye could notice all of the unexplained errors. This became part of Filmation style during a period when most TV and motion picture production tended to run minimum shots of 4 – 5 seconds. In contrast to the rapid jump cuts during action sequences, another Filmation trademark was the recurring use of long establishing shots in which the camera would pan slowly across a very wide background painting, thus filling up screen time with sequences requiring little or no animation. Filmation also pioneered other animation technologies, particularly in Flash Gordon, which included backlighting effects for the first time in American animation (they were already in use in Japan), including moire effects to represent energy fields (a technique that was later used in He-Man and later in She-Ra). It also pioneered a unique method of generating 3-D vehicle animation by filming white-outlined black miniatures against black backgrounds using a computerized motion-control camera and high-contrast film, then printing the negatives onto acetate frame-by-frame to create animation cels which were then hand-painted. This produced a dynamic, three-dimensional effect which had never been seen in cel animation before and predated the modern use of 3-D computer animation for vehicles in 2-D animated productions (although it had a distinctive "flicker" to it as some of the painted lines went in and out of visibility as the miniatures moved).
Lou Scheimer and Filmation's main director Hal Sutherland met while working at Larry Harmon Pictures on the made-for-TV Bozo and Popeye cartoons. Eventually Larry Harmon closed the studio. SIB Productions, a Japanese firm with U.S. offices in Chicago, approached Scheimer and Sutherland about producing a cartoon called Rod Rocket. The two agreed to take on the work and also took on a project for Family Films, owned by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, for ten short animated films based on the life of Christ. The project enabled Scheimer and Sutherland to finance their own small Los Angeles animation studio, called True Line. Paramount Pictures soon purchased SIB Productions, and True Line's staff increased; including the arrival of former radio disc jockey Norm Prescott, who became a partner in the firm. He had already been working on the animated feature Pinocchio in Outer Space which was primarily produced by Belvision Studios, and also brought in the Journey Back to Oz project, which would be released over ten years later by Filmation. Both Rod Rocket and the life of Christ series credited "Filmation Associates" with "Production Design" in addition to Scheimer and Sutherland as directors; but True Line was not officially changed into the Filmation Associates corporation until Rod Rocket entered syndication in 1963. (SIB Productions, whose logo bore a resemblance to the original Filmation logo, would soon go on to become "Sib-Tower 12 Productions" and produce the first few of Chuck Jones' Tom and Jerry films for MGM, until becoming MGM Animation/Visual Arts for the remainder of the films).
The new Filmation studio would for the next few years make television commercials, until approached by DC Comics editor Mort Weisinger to do a Superman cartoon. This premiered in 1966, and was followed by several of the other DC Comics heroes, and then in 1968, the first Archie show. Both series greatly helped Filmation's popularity to increase, into the 1970s, when it really scored big with several of its shows.
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Filmation had a reputation for exploiting the technique of limited animation to produce a number of animated series with a distinct look. It made heavy use of rotoscoping in later years (beginning with its Tarzan and Flash Gordon series), and it also re-used the same animated sequences over and over, many times, to the point where the Filmation style was instantly recognizable. Veteran He-Man writer Chris Weber noted this in verse, set to "I've Been Working on the Railroad": "Can't you see the kiddies streaming / home to watch him after school? / Can't you hear my boss a-screaming / 'Use stock footage, fool!'".
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