Seeing, on screen more or less exactly what one had written was particularly true in the ‘Rankin Bass system.’ 
The process: the dialogue was recorded. Lee then took dialogue and script and timed it. That is, estimated the time required for the action – giving, say, 10 seconds for Lion-O to wield the Sword Of Omens in a particular sequence; or, say 25 seconds for Mumm-ra to transform in this or that scene. Lee then sent the locked track to Tokyo, to Pacific Animation and Masaki Iizuka’s storyboard artists. The track could not be unlocked almost upon pain of death, and very, very rarely was – a continuing sore point among the board artists and, more vehemently, the directors. But Lee had a real talent in this area and it wasn’t often that she got it wrong.
In this way, Rankin Bass exercised an iron control over the transformation from script to film, not only over the creative interpretation but over schedule and budget.
From the writer’s point of view, it meant that a Rankin Bass script usually included a lot more direction – action and acting – than a typical Hollywood animation script. (I’m speaking here of TV not theatrical movies). It also meant that, despite the success of a piece like Rudolph (that perennial Christmas special), the animation world of Hollywood and Los Angeles rather despised Rankin Bass, its techniques and its New York base.
That changed somewhat with the monumental success of ThunderCats but on my first trips to Los Angeles, attempting to recruit writers, that superiority complex showed. I’m happy to report that a small number of LA-based writers, and one partnership in particular, embraced their ThunderCats opportunity with imaginative and open arms. Later, after a long and successful career in both live action and animation, they told me that ThunderCats was the best working experience of their lives.
This and similar comments is just one of the many things that made ThunderCats such an immensely rewarding experience for me.
(Later, we’ll look Hollywood’s snotty attitude to Rankin Bass, and the WGA’s snotty attitude to TV animation writers during this epoch.)
More next week…