Why don't western cartoons have great animation anymore? Are they just lazy, or is the talent not there anymore, is is there just not enough budget?
>>78321706
On a sidenote, the .gif you use to illustrate your point is rife with tricks for reducing costs.
For your question:
>not enough budget
Yup, better to animate twice the fraces for the same cost.
>the talent not there anymore
though 3d and the change of focus of art studies from technics to expression did deplete the talent pool, there still is plenty of good animators.
Check students short films to convince yourself of that.
>just lazy
Ask yourself which was the last epic (in the original sense) western anime that you saw. No use in getting top-notch animation for children shows or slice-of-life.
Also, japan anime industry is HUGE. Even if the proportion of godd to bad animation is the same on both sides, that means that they will produce a lot more of good sequences.
I redirect you to Tetsuwan Birdy Decode season 1 (or Evangelion, but I'm not that cruel) to see what a japanese anime looks like when it runs out of money. It isn't pretty.
Most cartoons in the west are marketed towards children nowadays. Children don't need god animation to be satisfied, so why put in the effort and money when you can make just as much with something like TTG? Adult animation has been reduced to comedy sitcoms.
>>78321706
I get a headache looking at that.
>>78321930
Evangelion had a terrible budget problem but they still managed to make great action scenes. If you have to choose where to spend The little money you have I think it makes perfect sense to use it on scenes where the animation matters more. Also there is nothing wrong in using tricks to reduce cost if the final result is better than without them.
>>78322226
>Evangelion had a terrible budget problem but they still managed to make great action scenes
The last two episodes are awful because of it. It's not a show where every episode was made with 80% of the money they had planned; they put 100% on the 24 first episodes, and 10% in the last two. As a result, it was detrimental to the final scenes and the conclusion of the story. Otherwise they wouldn't have need to do the End of Evangelion movie, which actually got good action scenes and a correct ending.
To keep it /co/-related, most western studios commission eastern studios to do their actions scenes, since it's way cheaper, and may even be actually better in terms of quality, japanese and korean studios being experienced with that sort of things.
>There is nothing wrong in using tricks to reduce cost if the final result is better than without them.
It's hard not to agree with you. Though the final result is very rarely better direcly because of those tricks.
I admit I might be a bit jaded by action scenes that try to cut corners nowadays, because it's the first thing that I see. So instead of going "whooa, cool scene", I only see the loops and reused frames. Kinda like when you notice anachronisms in a movie, instantly breaking your suspension of disbelief.
Honestly, it's highly subjective. If you don't notice it, it won't spoil your experience, but if you notice it it's a huge drawback.
It's just a question of using tricks that aren't blatant (or even better, ones that can pass for an artistic choice instead of budget limitations)
Side note, but does anyone recommend any good resources for learning the animation production process? Western and anime are fine. Recently watched Shirobako and I just always wanted to learn more about it.
>>78321706
>anymore
Western TV cartoons only had great animation for a very brief period. Disney and Spielberg put a lot of money into a handful of cartoons for a couple of years, before:
A.) Rising minimum wages in Japan made these quality productions no longer affordable
and
B.) Studios realized that extra money into the animation budget didn't actually have much of an effect on ratings
If anything, TV animation is at one of it's higher points right now, with the stuff Mercury and Titmouse are doing.
>>78321706
Not to argue that the general standards of animation are higher in japan, but a lot of the clips people use to show off how great anime is seem to be showing off at the cost of comprehension. Like, I have no idea what the hell is going on for most of that webm, even if it was somewhat impressive to look at.
>>78322226
But unlike Eva, most American studios have next to no control over the actual quality of the animation, they just give their boards to the cheapo Chinese studio that the network chooses for them.
Legend of Korra is a perfect example, they started out with a pretty good studio and downgraded for budget reasons and it started looking like shit.
>>78321975
This is the sad truth. At least shitty cheap animation nowadays is not as bad as it was in the 80's (except for Avengers Assemble) because of the amount of easy to use software out there.
>>78321706
Because cartoons are for kids.
Meanwhile animations closest relative videogames don't even want to be related to animation because of the massive stigma.
Also western Animated television needs to be more cinematic. All the good tv shows are now serialized and pay big money for good directors and cinematographers. Even Disney and Dreamworks hired big time cinematographers like Roger Deakins as visual consultants for their movies.
>>78323866
>>78325248
Gainax was broke and you could see them saving on animation in every episode, they just made sure to keep the art good even if they needed to make an entire conversation using a single image with minimal animation and focussed their animation on the action scenes since they are the scenes where animation matters the most.
Reusing frames/loops are as old as animation itself, if anything they learned how to use them without compromissing the final product. And by saving money without reducing much the quality of the scene means that they can improve other scenes as well resulting on better animation overall the series.
>>78328139
Video games are breaking the stigma, maybe the only reason cartoons ares till seen as something for kids in west is due to the power of the live action industry.
