ElfArmy177
Member
yes... average.
You realize that entire image consists of only roughly 6 frames repeated over and over right?
-
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"Hand drawn animation is inherently superior" is the most bs claim I've ever seen.
- Thread starter Boss Doggie
- Start date
You realize that entire image consists of only roughly 6 frames repeated over and over right?
CGwizz
Member
I searched for some gifs of Beast Wars.
I should've left that show in the forgotten recesses of my mind where it belonged. Man.
1) you're confusing art direction with pacing, shot composition, transitions, etc...
2) this is the same thing as saying that a live action movie only needs good directing to be well shot, and that cinematography and editting are superfluous details that you can take or leave.
Those shortcuts are valid techniques animators are tought/learn, and sometimes necessary. There is such a thing a too much animation and too much visual information.
This whole conversation is always garbage, since 3D animation is judged by the same standards as live action + character animation, whereas 2D animation is judged almost exclusively on how fluid a character or object moves.
People have brought up that 2D is admired more for the talent that goes into it (I honestly don't buy that, you wouldn't be impressed at all if it didn't actually look incredible), but that mentality also creates a double standard. Just because there is a skill/budget barrier to making 2D animation look smooth where other mediums get it free, suddenly it's the only thing that matters.
If animation was only made with comments like this in mind, you'd have a bunchof pretty looking gifs and scenes that are a train wreck to watch. Even then, the same elements people are calling irrelevant are still necessary to make those gifs look as good as they do.
CGwizz
Member
What is the name of this anime, neveer seen it it looks amazing.
Animation doesn't have to be technically impressive to be artistically impressive.
If it conveys motion well, despite a low amount of drawn frames, it's arguably even more impressive.
Anno did at least some of that right? What a badass.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. First Ghibli film, although they technically weren't Ghibli yet.
This is Hayao Miyazaki's adaption of a part of his own manga: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.
Nausicaa can be seen as the foundation of Ghibli, because after its success Miyazaki, Takahata and Suzuki founded Ghibli.
Something that I'm impressed by is a lot of OLDER cartoons are actually amazingly fluid.
Fleischer Superman cartoons still hold up to this day.
Money. Those Superman cartoons had an insane budget for the time - almost 1 million dollars in 2017 US dollars per episode.
Spiritual_Chaos
Banned
So happy the place I work at right now dont wanna get into paying by the frame but instead insists on a monthly salary.
I had a friend who was paid by frame and it was a project drawn on paper. He ended up drawing on the computer which was faster, print it out and have me help trace that onto paper.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
If we're talking handdrawn....yes it does. DragonballZ is not a bastion of top tier animation.
I think a lot of the people who take this stance, come from a place of thinking CG animation has replaced hand drawn animation. Which is not true, it simply is the most popular form of animation right now.
It's similar to people who complain that every movie is either a superhero movie or a remake nowadays.
It's similar to people who complain that every movie is either a superhero movie or a remake nowadays.
I can literally count more than that just from looking at it once
also what is direction
It depends on where you're coming from. When some people say "better animation", they mean literally a higher frame count, more detail, or more convincing range of motion (in the case of animators like Mitsuo Iso). When other people say "better animation", they mean "do I like the look of this shot?".
I don't like the use of "better" here because the word is vague and there is no objective measure of good/bad when it comes to art. It'd be more accurate to say that the DBZ gif (and most DBZ gifs) is low effort (manual labor) whereas a Fleischer cartoon is high effort. Low effort animation can still look good with good direction.
5 Centimeters per Second
Adolescence of Utena
In fact, the pixel indie game aesthetic is based on maximizing appeal with minimal frames. Each dog here has a run cycle of only 8 frames (very basic) and yet it's a highly engaging gif.
This was done by one person over 2 hours with very minimal computer generated frames. I would consider this medium effort given the amount of unique frames and effort involved:
And high effort would be Makoto's walk cycle from Third Strike, which has a total of 40 frames:
Its a really shitty system. I've worked in places where some of the junior animators were making less than 100 USD a week.
Well done CG action can be pretty cool.
(Shame that there are so few videos of Majin Bone stuff, that's just the tip of the iceberg...)
(Shame that there are so few videos of Majin Bone stuff, that's just the tip of the iceberg...)
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
You can have good direction but bad/subpar animation. Dragonball and anime in general is a near constant proof of concept for that statement.
The quality of any particular animation is not necessarily dependent upon there being one unique drawing every frame for the entire duration of the work (not even Disney does this masturbatory shit), but rather the needs of a scene as determined by the intent of a particular motion. Speed and power- to me- are best conveyed in as few frames and as large of differentials between distance as possible, which looks "cheap" to the layman because it's fewer drawings, but nonetheless helps create the illusion of a lot of kinetic energy passing along, which is fun and exciting.
The masters at Warner Bros. utilized this constantly-- Witch Hazel would literally be replaced with twirling hairpins in one frame to the next to convey the idea that she zipped off screen so fast that you missed her. The Coyote would go from full stretch while barely touching a wall to a full squash in the next frame- no other drawings necessary- and the kinetic energy was maintained. To have added even one more frame to these examples under this delusion that everything just automatically looks better if you do a Richard Williams and cram in millions of drawings a second would've destroyed the intent of the illusion. You would've gotten late game Chuck Jones who slowed down with age and honestly jumped the shark with those shitty Tom and Jerry shorts he did, and the even more abysmally timed Tom and Jerry Tales series.
DBZ's fights take these two ideas and applies them liberally- I would say they're indeed hallmarks of the way the series is animated, ones that Super more often than not misses (and it fucking kills me). Large distance differentials across few frames combined with solid drawings with little to no squash and stretch gives the illusion that a lot of energy is moving throughout the characters' bodies, which is necessary for DBZ's "so fast humans can't see them" fights to work as intended. Honestly, other animes with flashier animation, like OPM, do the same thing as well at points-- A figure or body part will move from point A to point Z in just a couple of frames, and it works.
Don't kid yourself that more frames automatically makes every animation better. It does not.
This is a combination of the two sort of. The backgrounds are 3D, but the character animation is 100% hand drawn.
This is what bothers me, they go at different frames so they look way too off.
Also, CGI looks too clean to me.
I don't think "it's fucking hype" is necessarily the premise of the thread
Something that I'm impressed by is a lot of OLDER cartoons are actually amazingly fluid.
Fleischer Superman cartoons still hold up to this day.
This post made me look them up, I have only vague memories from my childhood of these.
They are on amazon prime if anyone is interested. Not nearly as clean as these gifs though. But pretty great! After the first episode my 5 year old jumped up and down going "YAY"
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Yes but when we're talking fluid movement, you can convey speed in a better way than dragon ball does.
These all convey speed more so than swish lines on top of a detailed illustration.
It works for the show but in terms of calling it good animation. Just because people get hype doesn't mean the animation is actually good lol.
I'm saying from the perspective of being an animator, the way DBZ takes shortcuts really feels cheap. This isn't fluid:
This is a whole lot of "teach students what not to do" in terms of taking shortcuts.
Watch more CGI films.
Give me an example of more fluid animation that is intended to convey motion as fast as what exists in DBZ's universe, because given drawing and frame rate constraints, I don't see how that's possible to get something more fluid without either softening the animation or slowing down intended movements, which I assert would result in something far less appealing and thus more pointless.
Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and Disney used speed lines and and blurs as well, particularly during run cycles when feet were going everywhere, so I don't see why those are off limits.
The animation isn't good because it's hype. It's good because it abides by the necessary principles in order to create that feeling in the audience.
The speed at which the fights are intended to happen means fluidity is not a necessity or a priority, no more than it was a priority to even have Hazel be seen moving off screen at all. Aside from being a good draftsman and creating solid drawings, not every principle of animation is equally equivalent at any one time depending upon the overall work and intent of scene. There's honestly nothing technically wrong with the gifs you're showing.
SigmasonicX
Member
I'm curious. Considering these shortcuts are known to produce results that convey the point of a scene in a way a general audience finds appealing and impressive, all while reducing effort and cost, why not teach students about them? At least to analyze why it is that people think they look good.
There's no weight to any of it, you don't feel the force of any punch or kick because there's no anticipation and followthrough. I mean it sort of works in Dragonball because they're superhuman gods I guess, but it's something that doesn't work for the majority of fight scenes and something you definitely want to avoid teaching students. You can look to how Jackie Chan and Akira Kurosawa shoot impacts to understand how to make punches and kicks impactful.
In the context of Dragon Ball: Aside from the fact that a lot of the choreography in these films are, well, real, a lot of the shooting that specifically Chan did involved cutting right before action though, which isn't necessarily always applicable if you're just framing two characters going at it within the frame.
I agree though in the sense that Dragon Ball isn't necessarily something to teach broadly because it's a really unique universe whose rules aren't going to apply to the majority of the use cases in animation. However, it does nonetheless work because, as you said, the show is portraying superhuman gods, and in terms of showcasing that kind of theoretical speed and power simultaneously, I don't think a lot comes close to how iconic DBZ looks, and that's in part to the draftsmanship of the characters, timing, and spacing.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Not DBZ's universe, but the constant implication of Jack series is that the only reason Jack is able to perceive this is due to well....being Jack:
^
It's possible to have a good mix of fluidity and speed with smears. Hell arguably Dragonball's most fluid animation is when they focus less on cutting corners with "speedy" loops and moreso on the actual connectivity and pacing:
vs.
^
Still speedy, but has a lot more weight, better poses, and more frames. Thus better animation.
I'm not saying that speed liners and blur is off limits. I'm that those shortcuts weren't as obvious, the speed lines weren't the only thing conveying speed. Even subtle motion blur would help those scenes immensely.
It's good because of hype. If you were to submit something like that as a student it'd be critiqued to hell and back.
And nothing particularly impressive about them either.
Because there are better alternatives that don't look as cheap. Students are generally taught to avoid anime shortcuts as much as possible tbch. The ones that do tend to struggle the most with growing as artists.
While I think it works okay in Dragonball, I also think they could have done a lot better had they had the budget/time to do so. What DBZ loses in it's animation style is how it portrays the force behind each punch and kick. It sort of gets around this by using environmental destruction, but I feel like that's pretty suboptimal and gets repetitive quickly.
This was already linked earlier in the thread, but I think this is an excellent example of how to showcase high paced frenetic action between superhuman characters while still clearly showing the transfer of force in each action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYyo0Fal_8s
Like imagine how amazing a DBZ fight in this style would be
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Sooooo good. Thank you for posting these <3
I edited out the gifs to cut down on loading/scrolling but not because they don't deserve to be seen, seriously if someone missed them CLICK THESE POSTS and feast your eyes
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, by Hayao Miyazaki. Also known as "the greatest animated movie of all time".
Seriously, it's not just gorgeous, it's an amazing story too with tons of charming characters and a wonderful, unique world that inspired countless other artists and writers. For example you can see what inspired chocobos from Final Fantasy, Panzer Dragoon-like monsters and worlds, Ash Lake from Dark Souls, etc.
manzoman96
Member
Considering that traditional hand drawn animation (at least theatrical) is pretty much dead outside of Japan, you can't really blame people for getting defensive over it. I'd love to see more hand drawn films.
His body of work is ridiculous.
Director
Black Magic M-66 (1987, animation director and key animator)
Zillion (1987, animation director, character designer, key animator)
Record of the Lodoss War (1990, animation director)
Hashire Melos! (1992, animation director, character designer and storyboard)
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1999, director, original character designer and storyboard)
A Letter to Momo (2011, director, screenplay and storyboard)
Japan Animator Expo (2015, Ep. 34, animation director, character designer, screenplay, key animation)[3][4]
Key Animator
Miyuki (1983-1994)
Genesis Climber MOSPEADA (1983-1984)
Black Magic M-66 (1987, also animation director)
Akira (1988)
Venus Wars (1989)
Patlabor: The Movie (1989)
Roujin Z (1991)
Catnapped! (1995)
Memories (1995, chief animator and key animator: Magnetic Rose / key animator: Stink Bomb)
Blood: The Last Vampire (2000)
Metropolis (2001)
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001, opening credit sequence director and key animator)
Tennis no Ōjisama Futari no Samurai (2005)
xxxHolic: A Midsummer Night's Dream (2005)
Naruto the Movie: Legend of the Stone of Gelel (2005)
Paprika (2006)
Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (2012)
Blade Runner: Black Out 2022 (2017)
Other
Blue Comet SPT Layzner (1985-1986, mechanical animation director)
Patlabor 2: The Movie (1993, assistant animation supervisor)
Ghost in the Shell (1995, character design, animation supervisor and layout artist)
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004, character designer and animation supervisor)
I would say one simultaneous pro and con of hand drawn frames is necessitation of shortcuts when budget won't allow the fabled 1s framerate (AKA most films that aren't Akira or Thief and the Cobbler). CG tends to be made with smooth framerate so it is standard (or at the very least expected) to see fluid CG.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Specifically hate watching CG shows not named CW due to all the obvious shortcuts in animation and in rendering.
copelandmaster
Member
The more visual information for your brain to process, the easier it is for the viewer to keep up. For me, looking at the average 3DCG anime like Ajin or BBK is so visually tiring. They try an emulate the cheapness of 2d TV anime, rather than something more fluid like a movie. That Majin Bone example posted above was extremely difficult to follow (the scene/camera direction and YT compression certainly didn't help), but would be easier if it was rendered at something like 60fps.
Those 3D Precure fights from earlier in the thread (the jacko lantern one and the giant particle magical girl one specifically) nail their 2D inspired art styles, but the final product is dragged down by the cutting of frame count down to under 24. Quite a few of the problems that people have with CG anime would dry up of they would just stop cutting the framerate to pieces.
Two games where more frames certainly equal better:
Example 1 - NUNS4
You cannot tell me that you'd go back to 30fps UNS4 after seeing that.
vs
Example 2 - GGXrd
I like the Naruto one a lot more because its so much smoother and more visually consistent. I just don't "get" CG anime that tries to nail the "cheap anime" aesthetic. Having 3-4 different framerates going on at the same time cluttering the final image is just really crappy looking. The nature of the CG medium itself allows for a lot of frames with minimal resources (in terms of manpower specifically vs 2D, thanks software interpolation!), why not take advantage of that????
I'd like you to explain why. Especially when there are professionals in this actual thread saying the opposite..
Coriolanus
Banned
i feel that the examples you listed show quite well why GGxRd does it the way it does: because their character animations are much more wild and ambitious.
also prolly cuz, like, frame data and stuff.
Make no mistake, i'd love to see a xrd made with 60 frames of animation per second for everything (or heck, even 30frames) but goddamn if they don't manage to make it look ludicrously stellar with the stuff they put on display.
(also id be quite surprised if Sammy/Sega whoever gave Arc as much dosh to do their stuff as the amount that naruto project gets)
depths20XX
Member
yes... average.
Yikes. If this was an example in favor of hand drawn animation you sure picked a bad one.
Boss Doggie
all my loli wolf companions are so moe
I need a good gif on this
how
Those attacks in the Naruto video are crazier and more complex than anything in Xrd.
Namco publishes the Naruto games. Coincidentally, Namco is also publishing Dragon Ball FighterZ, which frankly doesn't animate any better than Xrd.
plasmawave
Banned
So do you think 48 fps movies are the future since more frames = better?
GG's models are more complex than Naruto's. Especially with the kinds of transformations many characters go through all the time.
Actually, this video will explain what they needed to do to make these models and why they went with this far better than I could.
KazenY2J
Member
dr3upmushroom
Banned
That has to be on the of the weakest fucking OPs ever. At least make some valid comparisons between great animation and great CGI.
Fulminator
Member
Why is that soul eater gif so good
Is there a soul eater movie?
Also a lot of people in this thread mistaking good art for good animation
Is there a soul eater movie?
Also a lot of people in this thread mistaking good art for good animation
Coriolanus
Banned
Not a single thing in that video approaches the madness of, say, Faust, or Bedman, or Venom's destroy. Nor are any of the characters as detailed as GG's characters.
And then you've also got the destroys for newer characters, like Answer, Ramlethal or Baiken, which just ooze ambition.
fwiw, that one special with the stretchy arm was pretty cool.
(tbf faust is nearly impossible to top.)
The weird thing is, this thread is basically all about that.
One of the OP's main examples for why some 2d animation can really sucks is using an inbetween frame from the worst animated (and worst in terms of art) arc in dragonball super.
As for the topic of this thread, i don't think its about animation or anything specific, I just personally think that the lowest of lows in 3d cgi are worse than the lowest of lows in 2d animation. I don't think i can even think of a 2d movie worse than Food Fight for example.
I also believe that the highs of 2d animation are way higher than 3d cgi alone. Though, frankly, that is a misstep in the conversation. Rather the question should never be "which style of animation is better", since we are seeing more and more integration and combination than ever before, but rather we should ask which sensibility does an audience like more?
There is a lot appealing in 3d animation, especially from the likes of disney and pixar, but for me, I enjoy 2d animation (or 2d-like animation) a lot more.
Honestly stuff like Guilty Gear Xrd (though i do have some issues with how "clean" things feel, and some of their scenes feel like they intentionally limit frames which causes some animations in finishers to be choppy af, but that's just me I guess) and the disney Paperman short prove to me that 3d can also have 2d sensibilities. Many anime i've seen have shown me that 2d can have 3d sensibilities (for better or for worse...)
There is one thing that does bug me about even modern western 2d animation though, and that's this weird need to make things feel "flat" or like a stage. Even shows like Legend of Korra and A:TLA have this (to a lesser extent), so maybe its just how the artistry of western 2d is, or idk. Western (and non-western) 3d, however, doesn't have this problem. So its not like 2d doesn't have its problems. Its probably why we are seeing a lot of anime counter examples instead of western ones, since anime never really suffers from that same problem.
Anywho, i guess what i'm saying is that I like 2d and 3d, but i like 2d more and think that 2d is inherently a stronger artistic medium.