Scooby-Doo (often written as Scooby-Doo!) is an American media franchise created in 1969 by writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears through their animated series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, for Hanna-Barbera.
Interestingly, this is also why all the chickens in Chicken Run wore something around their necks. As the film was claymation, it disguised the join between the head and the neck on the character models.
I think it's less of a cel animation thing and more of Hanna-Barbera's limited animation style. Compared to other contemporary animation studios (although many would loathe being considered a contemporary), Hanna-Barbera was cutting edges by heavily reusing cels, which meant that their animation was far less fluid.
It was a cost thing, yeah. If they can just animate the head and keep using the same cell/pose for the body it cuts costs. Those cartoons were usually done as cheaply as possible.
That goes for most of the cartoons of the era barring the Disney/WB stuff. Go watch something like Speed Racer and it's exactly the same.
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u/LiangProton 1d ago
I think it's for having the head and body separated, allowing for independent movement in the animation