I know people will be evasive about this topic but I'll try it anyway. A complaint people have about lots of anime is the frame count and the resulting fluidity in animation or lack there of. Sure there are scenes in which the frame rate will escalate, during action scenes or emotional outbursts by the characters. But most of the time we have still frames with claping mouths or just have them slide to make some kind of illusion of movement. This is evident even in movies, though to a lesser extent. How do people argue against this?
In my case, I don't. I just accept it as a flaw commercial anime has. I watch more anime than european or american animation, though I watch both. Most of my favorite titles, especially when it comes to series, are japanese. But I can't argue against the fact that the creators of anime lack in terms of frame rate management compared to their western counterparts. It could be blamed on lack of budgets, but american series have the same problems. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera are credited with developing lots of techniques related to frame animation because they couldn't get the budgets animated features had and yet they still managed to make cartoons more fluidly animated than lots of the more high budget anime series, like let's say Stand Alone Complex or Fate/Zero.
It's a trade off. While TV anime has lower frame rates, it has a much detailed art style. Basically the more detailed the art style, the less frames you get, assuming equalized talent, technique, and budget. This is why a lot of western shows have adopted Adventure's art style; it's simple but appealing (to most) so its easy to animate fluidly.
>>80505992
Shoot, I meant to say to say that while TV anime tends to have lower frame rates, they also tend to have more detailed art styles than western shows. There are exceptions in both sides.
>>80505992
>adventure time
>western shows
>animated fluidly
Bull. Shit.
>>80505904
I'm not too familiar with the frame-rate argument, but the fact is that the Japanese and American animation markets developed under different pedagogy.
Limited animation is a technique that saves time and money, sure, but the western market's broader, deeper creative climate and larger workforce enabled an evolution . . . whereas in Japan, instead of investing in the means (e.g., people, and tech) to physically overcome such limitations, the industry focused on promoting individuals who worked around them.
However, it's 2016. The quantity of animated programs produced in Japan that are produced with hand-painted cels is fairly non-existent. It's all digital. And when you produce content digitally, you can tween images a lot easier and more efficiently than by hand. On a personal note, this is one of the reasons I collect cels . . . a memento from years gone by.
>>80505904
>frame rate
I don't think you are using that term correctly.
>>80506277
What is the correct term for number of key frames / some amount of time?
>>80506256
>instead of investing in the means (e.g., people, and tech) to physically overcome such limitations, the industry focused on promoting individuals who worked around them.
Could you elaborate a bit on this? I kind of get the second part. I guess you mean that in anime they would hire creative directors who could use design elements and creative shot composition or animators who would have highly stylized drawings so these would in a sense "distract" from the limited animation. Is that what you mean?
I don't really understand the first part at all though.
>>80505904
>A complaint people have about lots of anime is the frame count and the resulting fluidity in animation or lack there of.
I think most people don't like anime because of the subject matter and the cliches more than the animation
>>80506277
I guess you mean that there is a constant amount of frames, even if it's the same ones all the time?
If so I think people still got what I meant.
>>80506348
Yeah, but I hear that complaint a lot as well, even if it isn't the most common one. Especially from people who are interested in animation in general.
Even if it's not the most common one, it's still one I'd like to adress. Subject matter isn't a problem for me in anime and even if it were, it's a subject for a whole other discussion.
>>80506256
Nigga western animators work digitally too. And the animation industry in japan is way bigger than in the U.S. What the fuck are you even talking about?
>>80505904
Man, I remember watching Akira and then Ghost In the Shell back when I was a teenager and finding the stiffness of the animation in the latter really jarring. Ever since then I've had trouble enjoying a lot of anime because of how the characters jerk from place to place. It's very distracting.
>>80506413
He never said it wasn't. He just decided to focus the last sentence on anime.
>>80506441
I think that's kind of a problem when you want to make animation with more realistic characters. In the west this is managed often by rotoscoping, like in Bakshi works, but this also looks rather odd. On the other hand you can't make your characters move in exaggerated ways, even to the degree of disney. It's hard to find the balance.
There are some anime where it worked out well I think, like Jin-roh or Letter to Momo.
>>80505904
its not a flaw. cartoons get away with consistent fluid animation only because of their over simplified designs and unimaginative actions. anime is more cinematic the characters are more anatomically correct and most genres are action heavy.
90% of western animation consists of two set of blobs with a face standing in at the center of the frame in a perpetual 3/4 view, they will talk walk and grab things until the punchline when the camera cuts to a closeup in which the character goes of model to express one of three emotions joy/anger/sadness
if anime followed this same formula it would also have a consistent frame-rate
>>80505904
i grew up on low framerate anime interspersed with fantastic fluid action scenes. i vastly prefer it. i hate when people overdo the idle animation when nothing's going on in a scene, just because they can
>>80510423
But it doesn't have to be mickey mouse tier exaggeration. I mean yeah, in a movie like Ghost in the Shell which aims for rather realistically proportioned but also behaving characters you wouldn't expect the heroes to bounce around and jump through dialogue. But also when you talk to people about something serious you won't see them standing completely still with just their mouths and sometimes jaws moving around. People move, make gestures, change pouses, evase eye contact etc. etc. Ghost in the Shell could be a bad example because maybe you could expect a cyborg to have his bodily functions manipulated or actually crafted from the base in such a way to get rid of those elements, so just take any other show with less-cartoony characters like Bebop, Ninja Scroll, Lain etc.
I've wondered why american shows haven't adopted similar techniques as anime for reducing animation smartly while still having an appealing end result.
Especially shows that have heavy anime influences (SU and Star vs) but never really go past superficial call outs to anime
>>80510423
While not super well animated, Tron uprising is pretty much like this and it works really well. Though its easier to add "idle" animation to 3D and the whole thing is purposefully jumpy so it hides animation shortcuts as well .
>>80505904
http://wavemotioncannon.com/2016/01/08/why-over-sixty-years-of-animation-history-still-remains-obscure/
This article should explain the Japanese approach to animation quite nicely.
>mfw anime does Ken Burns bullshit to appear interesting
>>80514555
>Ken Burns bullshit
Which is?
>>80506256
Most anime is still drawn on paper, it's the colouring and composite that's done digitally.
