For someone studying how animation works...

For someone studying how animation works, why do Western cartoons generally have such fluid and smooth animation compared to anime? No, I'm not talking about art direction, but just how everything moves.

Is it called FPS (frames per second)?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=N9-EdKLEuuA
wavemotioncannon.com/2016/01/08/why-over-sixty-years-of-animation-history-still-remains-obscure/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Anime traditionally had a framerate of about 12 and made up for it by drawing the slideshow pictures really pretty.

Western cartoons date back to high-budget theatrical presentations that were if anything over-animated. (There are basically no watchable made-for-TV western cartoons prior to 1989 Superman.)

The current budgets are much more equal (all being produced in worst corea), but they each carry forward their predecessors' styles.

>Is it called FPS (frames per second)?
Yeah, that's part of it. The west really likes having things animated at 24 frames per second, and are more willing to use computer tweening to achieve it than the japs are.
From my understanding, Japanese animation philosophy is also a lot more interested in using intentional jagged rhythm to enhance the impact of movement than the West, where they put more focus on smooth and clear arcs of movement.

They tend to shift camera angles more to make up for lack of (background)character movement, and secondary animation. Which IMO fills the screen just as well, while being less distracting. From a storytelling perspective; you'd never want to draw the watcher's attention away from the topic at hand, western animation is not very good in that regard.

Though what you're probably talking about is smear frames, which arguably is actually part of the art direction. Just google that

> From a storytelling perspective; you'd never want to draw the watcher's attention away from the topic at hand,

Oh I hardly ever give a shit about story in animation. It's why I'm not fond of anime at large but really like Western cartoons. I am more enthralled by moving 2D art than a plot and would gladly take prettier animation over it.

Well there's your ''why'' then

They serve different purposes

Just stick to action anime then there's plenty of that

Attack on titan and stuff

Japanese animation typically has
-- detailed characters and backgrounds
-- perspectives that imitate filmed camerawork
-- nowadays, they have a lower budget than they used to
Anime has its roots in other media such as japanese comics and both Japanese and western movies.

Western animation
-- less detail
-- often has less different angles and perspectives: characters are presented like actors on a stage with their whole body showing
-instead of angles or details, the emphasis is in the movements
-the roots are in humor and is considered more of a genre of its own rather than just a method for making any genre, like in Japan (although it seems anime and Manga has now become less respectable as a form of art, is only profitable in the otaku-market and is dying)


Obviously one shouldn't compate movies and tv-shows though. The quality has also changed a lot over the decades and keeps changing. In the 80's anime was far superior to anything made in the west, even the movies. During the 90's west seemed to catch up. it the 2000's the west collapsed and anime was clearly ahead until it started to collapse due to overheating of the market and now in the 2016 we are left with 9999 shows and all of them the same with a lower budget every year. The Same shows with a couple of details changed here and there, with even more emphasis on fan service. Over. And over. again. The west seems to be catching up again, even going ahead, even though the number of shows is lower. Or maybe because of that.

I've seen SnK and am curious as to where that fares on the animation scale.

Is it just deceiving or is Attack on Titan really just that great looking of an animated show? Shame I have no decent example images but I just recall the backgrounds being really pretty.

No, almost all animation in both the East and West is 24 frames per second.

The fluidity of modern Western animation is primarily the result of cgi and other digital effects, some anime like Attack on Titan are starting to also make use of digital effects hence they have a degree of fluidity comparable to Western animation

THIS essentially

Everyone is ignoring the fact that flash TWEENING is what makes this possible. Western animation tends to have DRASTICALLY lower Key count than anime, but since they CG it it looks more fluid.

That's how Archer's animation can look smoother than, say, Sword of the Stranger. Despite obviously having 0 effort behind it.

It doesnt.
youtube.com/watch?v=N9-EdKLEuuA

/thread

Kinda, 99% of the animation is excellent but occasionally the cgi looks very awkward and unnatural, the buildings can kinda look like pre-rendered 3D backgrounds from a videogame

>It's why I'm not fond of anime at large
You should check out some 80's and 90's OVAs, a lot of them are light on plot but gorgeous to look at.

season two fucking when

has anyone on Sup Forums seen Angel's Egg? It has like no story and made the creator go bankrupt but it looks nice

It's on my watch list, it just looked nice to me, even if from what I understand there's barely a plot

Holy fuck I'm retarded I basically wrote the same thing you did

It's Oshii being pretentious with his symbolism, metaphors and visual presentation. It's a very vague movie that really is about a lot of things since even Oshii doesn't know what it is about. Beautiful movie, maybe best that Oshii has done in that medium.

I haven't seen it, but I've heard it's a trip.

Also check out Katsuhiro Otomo's Memories, it's got some of the best hand drawn animation I've ever seen.

I credit Yoshitaka Amano for it more desu

Great great film. If you liked Yume Nikki it's right up your alley.

Did, all three were great.

Honestly, there is an enormous catalogue of legendary quality content behind anime. Why is that medium viewed in such disdain?

>Why is that medium viewed in such disdain?
the fan base is absolute garbage, especially in the west

You my nigga.

Anyway, I think it's mostly due to the kind of stuff that gets popular over here, and also this

Blind leading the blind

Maybe you're right. As I've observed, there are a plethora of animated OVAs and films made in Japan that never get much attention over here.

Even some TV series can be worthwhile (IMO) but aren't all too popular like Nana and Versailles.

Even better shoujos than that exist though.

I liked Attack on Titan but it's sure as shit isn't something you would enjoy if you don't care for the plot. He'd be better-off watching animated films like Redline or something.

wavemotioncannon.com/2016/01/08/why-over-sixty-years-of-animation-history-still-remains-obscure/
>American animators as actors, Japanese animators as cinematographers
This long essay is well worth reading.

Also going by your OP pic, it's because many modern American/western cartoons use computer software to tween like says.

I'm not sure if you're just being stupid or you legit have no idea what you're talking about? The SnK anime looked like straight up garbage and was a production nightmare when it was being released.

Americans generally prefer low-detail, but fluid and consistent animation. A lot of the budget actualy goes to the work in-between keyframes.
The Japanese method is basically "if action is subdued, JUST draw keyframes." It allows for more detail and lets them dump most of their budget into pivitol scenes, but creates uneven quality to the point that some scenes (sometimes whole series) look like picture books.

Honestly, if it weren't for executives, I think American TV animation would have moved towards a compromise between these styles 10 or 20 years ago. People like animation bumps when they're subtle and the fluidity in shows when characters are just standing around talking can be a bit of a waste at times.

Part of that is their much more important history with comics. Manga influences EVERY form of media in Japan.

Eh it's similar to OPM. People can only remember the short, but well-animated action scenes and forget how the rest of the show looks like ass.

Anime is struggling because of retarded business practices and a niche audience, ala the American comic market.

Manga does just fine, even in the face of the smartphone craze.

OPM never fell into the abyss of terrible quality and shitty CG AoT did. It had plenty of average looking scenes, but nothing shitty.

>"if action is subdued, JUST draw keyframes."
That's not how it works. Even talking head scenes will have in-betweens. There are just less unique frames in general.

>dump most of their budget into pivitol scenes
*Assign the better animators to pivotal scenes.

True, at the very least OPM wasn't a production disaster like SnK (or Wit shit in general), but the comparison is still valid imo.
Also OPM was worse in terms of art direction.

>*Assign the better animators to pivotal scenes.

Sup Forums can fuck off with this meme. I don't believe for a fucking second that master animators can magically whip up a mindblowing action scene in the same amount of time a normal animator can animate some mouths flapping. Art takes time and time is money. Good animation requires a fucking budget.

>That's not how it works. Even talking head scenes will have in-betweens. There are just less unique frames in general.
user, do you not know what an exaggeration is?

It's impossible to animate with just key frames. The end result would be way too choppy.

>*Assign the better animators to pivotal scenes.
Along with putting more time on those scenes, yes. The budget isn't some magical resource; when the budget is said to be reallocated, it meansthings like placing the better staff on certain parts, increasing workload for one scene or cutting it back for another, hiring on more animators, cutting some off, changing the production timeline...

Seriously user, stop correcting me just to say what I already implied.

>Along with putting more time on those scenes, yes. The budget isn't some magical resource; when the budget is said to be reallocated, it meansthings like placing the better staff on certain parts, increasing workload for one scene or cutting it back for another, hiring on more animators, cutting some off, changing the production timeline...

The entire anime community has been convinced that this isn't the case. They believe that Japan is some magical land where time and effort have nothing to do with the budget, and good animation is just magically brought into being by godlike animators who just do it arbitrarily with no regard to budget whatsoever. They are insane and delusional children and I hate them.

Some animators are really bad, and others are really good.

Fuck, the guys at Bones animated parts of Mob Psycho with painted glass. Nobody at the dearly departed Gonzo could have competed with that.

Okay. That doesn't mean the really good ones don't require time and money to make good shit. It just means that they are capable of utilizing time and money to make good shit. It still takes a fuckton of time, which is money. Good animation requires more money than bad animation.

West emphasizes movement while Japan emphasizes minor details and cinematography. Also because anime is mostly adaptations of manga whereas western cartoons are mostly originals.
Nowadays western animators are imitating anime and shit sucks.

Generally, yeah, but there are actual cases of savants and incompence.

Like, each episode of Space Dandy had half (or less) the budget of a Toei show like One Piece or Dragon Ball Super. Ghibli didn't make the best movies just because they had the most money. KyoAni excels in some respects but is fucking GARBAGE in others.

Budget matters and you can't just magically make a show better by throwing good animators at it, but sometimes skill CAN make up for shortcomings in budget and time.

nothing worse than when western cartoons imitate anime.

Don't they only know like Sailor Moon and DBZ?

Many Western animations have taken cues from Japan, though.
If you look at Wakfu or Steven Universe, you find a lot of elements that are not so typical for cartoons.
Like an ongoing linear plot, a complex universe and time dedicated to eye candy, food appreciation and such things besides the story you try to tell.
Hopefully this is not an omen that cartoons will disappear up their own asshole, too.

I'm way more of a weeb and you're full of it.

Yes, good animators and a good schedule, but anime budgets are more or less around the same throughout the industry. Sometimes you can tell when a production has more money pumped into it, but budget doesn't affect the end product as much as some would like to think. Or what explained about their supposed implications.

Not really. The majority of the anime community still throw "budget" around loosely, and no one said anything about time and effort, rather, time and effort isn't as closely linked to "budget" as people would think.

Sure, being shit with money or having incredible teams is a thing.
But mostly you have hard ceilings of possibility dictated by what you have and what you do with it.
Trigger threw together KlK on basically nothing, but you can tell all the ways in which they stretched the animation budget. They cobbled together a show that worked, but they fell back on tricks that have not been used in decades and got creative to get there.

And of course it all hinges on your art direction being competent. You can spend millions on things that look like shit without any misallocations or throw together great-looking scenes with minimal cost, depending on how effective your art is.

>Eh it's similar to OPM.
Sort of but OPM NEVER slipped up like this. It did have very bland art direction and outside those short spurts of animation it was fairly average looking with the 4th episode being essentially a slideshow.

Also in the long run, a good schedule is the most important (SMC S1/S2 vs SMC S3), but in the context of *pivotal scenes*, that's usually the case of assigning better animators.

Anime has way better animation desu

>99% of the animation is excellent
You realize animation is movement of the characters onscreen, right?

Not CGI effects.

AoT's animation is garbage.

Christ, amazes me how many shit anime get western releases yet we only get a mediocre DVD for this sand with metropolis

>Manga does just fine, even in the face of the smartphone craze.
What do you mean? Did manga make a jump to digital or something?

>tfw despite a ton of terrible anime being pumped out every year, the seasonal format and short 12 or 26 episode, director/writer/creator driven shows are way more conductive to better storytelling and better shows than the Western format

Barring adaptations of course, but a handful of original anime get produced every year, and out of those there's usually a few that are decent to good and occasionally great. But of course, there's also some great adaptations out there too.

Meanwhile in the West we get the same cartoons running for years and years with some new ones here and there, and then some die off.

And all of them are comedy or have comedy listed as an element. Even Steven Universe is branded as comedic.

Every.

Single.

Show.

So uh
Now that south Korea is basically fucking exploding right now because of pic related and there are some prettt intense riots going on, you think that'll affect their animation industry? Is the age of outsourcing animation over, or will we just hand it over to the poo in loos?

Forgot pic

I think the mags have digital companions, yes, but I meant that despite smartphones taking over everyone's train time manga still thrives.

>No, I'm not talking about art direction, but just how everything moves.
I don't think that's necessarily true, I don't think there's really an advantage one way or the other. I think Anime and Western cartoons generally take different animation shortcuts, and when the animation is actually well done, you see a lot of similarities between the two.

This
Especially after shit like the otaku killer, after that pretty much every anime nerd was seen as a potential murderer in Japan

It's along the line of Western animation only skips every third frame, most anime skips every other frame and maybe has a few short completely fluid sequences

>and when the animation is actually well done, you see a lot of similarities between the two.
For modern cartoons? What western modern cartoons have some "well done animation"? Besides parts of Korra I guess, though most of it is pretty meh.

>Nowadays western animators are imitating anime and shit sucks
I dunno user. I'm not much into anime but I enjoy the look anime inspired shows like Avatar. They tend to have a more realistic character design I prefer over CalArts style and a more varied cinematography without picture book no animation style dialogs, minimalistic facial expressions and all retarded Japanese tropes that come with anime. They are probably expensive as ship though. I mean, LoK was expensive, right?

t. i only watched a few anime in my life
Go watch Hashire Melos and Junkers Come Here and then come back to discuss about stuff you barely have any knowledge about.

>Don't care for a specific cartoon
>lose 25% of possible things to watch for the next 5 years since its played constantly