MysticSkillz 2015-02-18 20:36:58

I can understand it's hard for traditional animator to get a job, specially now that programs are made to make animation more easy and faster to work on such as flash and toonboom and so on. I still to this day enjoy 80's and 90's cartoons not only that they are hand drawing but most of them have a good moral to it. And it also took a team to do so, but what cartoon I find amazing is Tom and Jerry. Not the new ones where they looked like it's done in flash, no sir! I'm talking about the old school with Tex Avery and Chuck Jones style. They have my most respect because normally it only took about 4 to 5 animators to produce them and their background work is very detailed. Rumor is that Disney was going to go back to traditional animation, would be a smart move if they do so, problem is that studios now a days are all about money and fast production, that's why a lot of cartoons today are crap in my book... poor Cartoon Network... May you rest in peace.

Plebs 2015-02-19 07:13:39

I recently discovered the way of animating on 3's. Had only used one's and two's before. Really when you pose everything right you'll barely tell the difference. Doing everything on one's is a pain in the ass.

We all try to find ways to animate more efficient while maintaining a quality standard, but i'm afraid that will never happen. At least not without the compomise over the quality. Let's face it unless you're animating strictly dialogue, which i hate to do, it will take ages. All you can do is improve your technical skills and plan out exactly what you want to happen before drawing a single line. That will shave hours and hours of your total time.

Good luck experimenting ;D

CrabbWalker 2015-02-19 11:43:14

Yeah, doing everything on 1's as an indie animator will spell doom for you, unless you sacrifice color and/or cel-shading. Overall, this is a good informative post. There is another technique you've forgot to list, and that is partially-looped animation (like a run sequence for 3 seconds into a jump) , and reusing entire animation shots, like in DBZ. Panning from side to side is helpful too: cliché, but usually effective with some establishing dialogue. I animate on 2's and 3's, sometimes 1's if I particularly want a smoother animation for a particular movement...it all depends. People still opt for professional, clean animation though. SimontheCat got hundreds of thousands, but sacrificed dialogue, storyline, and color (and background) to do it. It also depends on how many people are involved in a scene (3 people in a scene is like animating twice), what else is moving in the shot, layers involved in a shot, etc. In my case, the better you get at animation, the more problems you deal with, because you work with heavier dialogue, start working with other high-end people, cinematic shots that can become difficult to animate without proper references, etc. Sorry if I put too much into one paragraph, lol. Time will always be an issue for the animator, and we just have to work it out and sacrifice certain things in order for our stories and completed animations to progress. I would say the most important thing for you to do, or any animator, is to finish up your animations by any means necessary.

kmau 2015-02-19 16:16:16

All of this is why I prefer 3s over 2s / 1s. More limited animation simply forces you to draw up stronger key poses and put your inbtwns / eases where they count - in the end this will help you grow faster. I've seen too many (new) animators loosing themselves in smoothing hell.

OdellAtkinson 2015-02-20 03:19:23

Bravo. This is so well thought out and great to read. Thanks for taking the time to share examples and make some case points. I definitely hope you can find your balance and effect you're going for. I definitely wanna see what you have in the works currently, cause you've always been an extremely talented artist.

Kel-chan 2015-02-20 08:23:47

I was just thinking about this the other day- even with 3D the playback rate of 12-15 frames gives it a more cartoony look. Even though I can go as high as 60, its not worth it unless I want to spend hours tweaking everything to get it to look pixar smooth.

Alot of those old cartoons were 8 fps while alot of reused frames and things, especially the animes and old hanna barbera and flintstones stuff.

So far as getting 3D to look 2d- theres a bunch of techniques. A japan studio called Short peace is kind of leading the way. Its a mix of texturing and fiddling with frame rates to focus on dramatic keys like 2D. Meanwhile it offers alot of detail frame to frame that isn't possible in 2D really unless you want to spend hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJfhKpayMog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSTLyCpb_Kw

check out those shorts made by that studio.

I think disney is going about it wrong. They'd be better off breaking 3D renders into frames and focusing on texturing models correctly to look as if they're drawn instead of that smooth anti-aliased look they like so much that most of their 3d movies feature.

The paperman route is a rediculous amount of work.

kmau 2015-02-24 06:33:57

Yeah exactly, it's like how more detail doesn't necessarily make for a better painting.
I think choppy animation just makes everything seem more powerful but there's one other thing I've been thinking about:
Especially during action sequences I find super fluid animation off-putting most of the time. When you are in a situation in real life where your adrenalin level rises some movements aren't perceived consciously and thus "frame skips" in your perception and memory are created. So in the end I think choppiness just comes off as more natural and has a better effect on the viewer, at least in action scenes - either that or I'm going nuts.

Josef-Eliasson 2015-04-26 07:42:41

JJ JJ