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@Guile You DO realize that what constitutes as a "cheap" or "low budget" American/Western animation is a high budget anime, right? You are aware of this, aren't you? What is "cheap" for one(Japanese anime) is super cheap for the other(Western) and what is considered high budget for anime, I.E stuff like Bebop, Gundam 00, Gundam SEED, GITS SAC(even though that's partially American) is considered cheap or low budget for the other(Western). Nickelodeon considers Spongebob a low budget animation, though at a cost of over $500,000 per episode, that would be OVA budget for anime or even less. Also, at least these cartoons have simple lip syncing. Less than 0.1% of anime have proper lip syncing, which is saying a lot on budget issues, if they can't even do simple shit like lip syncing, a thing that even South Park has. Also, how do you know those shows AREN'T in English anyway? Karen Strassman, who knows a little thing or two about France and French animation said that the majority of shows are done in English as their ORIGINAL language to promote the shows in America and elsewhere that speak English. The original language of Totally Spies is English, from what I've seen of the mouth movements. None of the mouth movements are off and it actually has lip syncing.

Overwork is not bad for your health. Well, not if it is not massive overwork, working like 2,500 hours a year is actually all right as long as it is not physical labor.

In Japan people work more than in Europe and slightly less than in the US. The stories about them being workaholics is prejudiced nonsense.

Number of hours worked per worker (2012)
Japan - 1 745 hours
USA - 1 790 hours
Poland - 1 929 hours
Norway - 1 420 hours
Germany - 1 397 hours

And obviously, desk jobs are much better for your health than any REAL physically demanding job like working in a coal mine.

Overall, the bad things for the health about being an animator is probably the diet and the stress of having a poor wage even though you work 30-40% more than most people.

Also, I think they should provide some hard data before we can say anything. There are tens of thousands of people working in the anime industry, therefore even if average life expectancy is very high some people are bound do die young. It's statistics.

ReverseTitan wrote:

@Guile You DO realize that what constitutes as a "cheap" or "low budget" American/Western animation is a high budget anime, right? You are aware of this, aren't you? What is "cheap" for one(Japanese anime) is super cheap for the other(Western) and what is considered high budget for anime, I.E stuff like Bebop, Gundam 00, Gundam SEED, GITS SAC(even though that's partially American) is considered cheap or low budget for the other(Western). Nickelodeon considers Spongebob a low budget animation, though at a cost of over $500,000 per episode, that would be OVA budget for anime or even less. Also, at least these cartoons have simple lip syncing. Less than 0.1% of anime have proper lip syncing, which is saying a lot on budget issues, if they can't even do simple shit like lip syncing, a thing that even South Park has. Also, how do you know those shows AREN'T in English anyway? Karen Strassman, who knows a little thing or two about France and French animation said that the majority of shows are done in English as their ORIGINAL language to promote the shows in America and elsewhere that speak English. The original language of Totally Spies is English, from what I've seen of the mouth movements. None of the mouth movements are off and it actually has lip syncing.

However, even though they are produced on a much higher budget, western animation feels very badly made in my opinion. The level of detail is extremely low and the movements, while occurring at high frame rates, have extremely poor physics and so feel unrealistic. They are also visually very simplistic, lacking the camera angles and visual diversity/aggression of Japanese animation (compare, for instance, Hidamari Sketch: Honeycomb with Family Guy in terms of visual diversity, animation and detail, Family Guy is vastly inferior in every way). In fact, after I watched a ton of anime now western shows feel so badly made that their bad technical quality started to hurt my eyes.

The same applies if you compare high budget anime films, which usually cost around 10-40 million dollars with high budget US animated feature, which cost 100-200 million dollars. Ghost in the Shell was made in 1995 with a budget of 6 million dollars, Lion King was made in 1994 with a budget of 55 million dollars and the first looks more visually impressive than the second (even though Lion King has higher framerates).

Evangelion is the most impressive of all: each episode was made on a shoestring budget of 70,000 dollars! The whole series cost about as much as a single episode of Breaking Bad (correcting for inflation nonetheless!).

I am very impressed that the anime industry is extremely efficient in delivering a very high quality product at an extremely small cost, given that it's an industry operating in Japan which is a country with high labor costs like the US. Though hollywood films cost as much as they do because they pay actors (including voice actors for Disney movies) ludicrously high salaries.

The anime industry is highly efficient thanks to network economies: there are hundreds of studios and tens of thousands of animators who share techniques and methods. They also do piece work instead of being employed full time which also allow very efficient production at very low costs. However, there are exceptions, Ghibli, for instance, started working more like a US animation studio after the financial success of Kiki's Delivery Service and employs their staff at full time.

@Jose Cruz Funny you say that since anime was influenced by Hanna Barbera, which had bad animation, yet rather than break away from this influence, anime today still have an average of 3000 mere drawings per 24 minute episode at a cost of $100,000-$300,000! Spongebob had considerably more cels/drawings per 11 minute skit and Spongebob is still inferior to the Amblin/Warner co-pros in terms of animation fluidity. Shows like Tiny Toons, Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain had over 25,000 cels per 22 minute cartoon, at a cost of just over $80,000 more than the average high of anime per episode.

And is mouth flapping "realistic?" It is not. Nobody in no language moves their mouths like that. Not Japanese, since I have seen behind the scenes work in Japanese recording sessions and the voice actor's mouth were not moving up and down. As flawed as American/Western animation is, it still can at least create simple lip sync, as I said before. The lip syncing is so bad in 99% of anime that even foreign language dubs manage to overcome the bad facial animations and sync BETTER. If you can name me a Spanish dub of a Disney animation which matches the mouth of let's say Snow White better than the English original, I would love to see it.

Also, I laugh at your example of Evangelion. Evangelion suffers from inconsistent, bad animation and off model art many a time. Especially when episode 18ish starts to hit, then the art work goes below Gundam Wing level, while even Wing improved, surpassing Evangelion both visually and fluidity wise. And Eva's only 26 episodes. I don't(or rarely) see animation errors in stuff with more episodes and more drawings like Spongebob.

Also, it's best not to use moe to counter the "poorly made stuff" of western animation, since moe stuff is just as bad, if not worse. You want to use stuff from the 80s-2000s to prove your point.

Also, there are several good western shows with great visuals, like Thundercats, Young Justice, the DC animated direct to video stuff and much of Pixar's 3D animations. Back in the 90s-early 2000s, there were loads of shows with great visuals like Batman TAS, New Batman, the Amblin cartoons, Batman Beyond, Spawn, Justice League, etc.

Also, except for Akira, parts of Only Yesterday(still pretty cheap to only have half the film synced properly), Flowers of Evil and some 3D animations, the facial expressions are super fake. At least Spongebob's facial expressions are believable.(not realistic, BELIEVABLE).

ReverseTitan wrote:

@Guile You DO realize that what constitutes as a "cheap" or "low budget" American/Western animation is a high budget anime, right? You are aware of this, aren't you? What is "cheap" for one(Japanese anime) is super cheap for the other(Western) and what is considered high budget for anime, I.E stuff like Bebop, Gundam 00, Gundam SEED, GITS SAC(even though that's partially American) is considered cheap or low budget for the other(Western). Nickelodeon considers Spongebob a low budget animation, though at a cost of over $500,000 per episode, that would be OVA budget for anime or even less.

I am afraid budget is hardly a means to measure a product. Throwing all the money in the world at something means nothing if the art direction, talent, or skill of the people attatched to it are lacking. The reality that shows like the one you mentioned costs that much per episode yet looks and animated as poorly as they do is a bit troubling towards me is all.

Jose Cruz wrote:

The anime industry is highly efficient thanks to network economies: there are hundreds of studios and tens of thousands of animators who share techniques and methods. They also do piece work instead of being employed full time which also allow very efficient production at very low costs.

Anime is able to do what it does by targeting a very specific market and adjusting accordingly, where a show only needs to sell five thousand copies to be considered successful, and double that is considered a fairly big hit. The reverse is the ideal method here, however: relying on appealing to the mass market, which causes shows to be compromised so networks can make them as accessible as possible to appeal to as many people as they can in order to maximize profits. The problem, and perhaps it's just mine alone, is that once I started noticing the transparency of the industry, it became impossible to ignore. Any time a new cartoon premiers, I can see behind the curtain and notice every single marketing and corporate mandate that was made to greenlight it. From anime-inspired shows trying to cash in on the anime craze, or to more thematic things like if a show is about a group of people, there will always be a token black character who exists only to fill a quota slot and would otherwise not exist if the creator had a say in the matter. There's a recent cartoon that premiered on Cartoon Network called Stepehen Universe, and I found it disappointing that I could immediately tell the only reason Stephen exists in it is because networks would have turned down the show had it starred only the three female characters and it needed a male lead to sell the show to the executives. I simply can't not see that stuff anymore, most likely due to my age and exposure to foreign industries which allow us to compare and contrast methods and practices.

[quote="Guile"]

ReverseTitan wrote:

@Guile You DO realize that what constitutes as a "cheap" or "low budget" American/Western animation is a high budget anime, right? You are aware of this, aren't you? What is "cheap" for one(Japanese anime) is super cheap for the other(Western) and what is considered high budget for anime, I.E stuff like Bebop, Gundam 00, Gundam SEED, GITS SAC(even though that's partially American) is considered cheap or low budget for the other(Western). Nickelodeon considers Spongebob a low budget animation, though at a cost of over $500,000 per episode, that would be OVA budget for anime or even less.

I am afraid budget is hardly a means to measure a product. Throwing all the money in the world at something means nothing if the art direction, talent, or skill of the people attatched to it are lacking. The reality that shows like the one you mentioned costs that much per episode yet looks and animated as poorly as they do is a bit troubling towards me is all.

American cartoons, Japanese cartoons... all animated in Korea! The budget difference is almost entirely salaries; you could probably animate an episode of the Simpsons just from the VAs' federal withholdings.

Quote:

Anime is able to do what it does by targeting a very specific market and adjusting accordingly, where a show only needs to sell five thousand copies to be considered successful, and double that is considered a fairly big hit.

Perhaps more important is that the pricing structure used for late-night anime that allows them to exist the way they do is mostly normal in Japan, while the US long ago moved to home video pricing that makes the same model flat-out unworkable here(I wouldn't be surprised to find out that AoA's biggest hits didn't move three thousand units per volume).

Roxas4ever wrote:

I'm surprised the response to the international animation question didn't mention Canada. Canada produces quite a few animated shows that are aired on American television: Total Drama Island, Braceface, Totally Spies!, just to name a few. They also frequently animate shows for American audiences: My Little Pony, Arthur, Ed, Edd n Eddy, etc.

Not to mention the great shorts done by (I think) the Film Board of Canada?-Great stuff that kept my love of animation going back when anime was hard to come by

Guile wrote:

There's a recent cartoon that premiered on Cartoon Network called Stepehen Universe, and I found it disappointing that I could immediately tell the only reason Stephen exists in it is because networks would have turned down the show had it starred only the three female characters and it needed a male lead to sell the show to the executives.

Gotta stop you here. You could "immediately tell" that based on what?

The entire premise of that show is that Sailor Moon (so to speak) dies during an adventure and she's left behind a goofy, incompetent-but-lovable son and his dad.

This is like saying "the only reason Finn is in Adventure Time is because they needed a male character to please the executives". What? If that's your all-seeing, all-knowing grasp of the incredibly transparent and predictable western cartoon market then I don't think you actually watch any of this stuff; you sound like you don't know what you're talking about at all, in fact, and just make assumptions based on generic cynicism. Which isn't wisdom or insight.

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I know the French have pretty good animations, but have they ever tried to sell them in America?

Code: Lyoko seemed to do pretty well in the US and elsewhere.

Last edited by Guile on Sun Dec 15, 2013 9:20 pm; edited 1 time in total

Zac wrote:

otta stop you here. You could "immediately tell" that based on what?

The entire premise of that show is that Sailor Moon (so to speak) dies during an adventure and she's left behind a goofy, incompetent-but-lovable son and his dad.

This is like saying "the only reason Finn is in Adventure Time is because they needed a male character to please the executives". What? If that's your all-seeing, all-knowing grasp of the incredibly transparent and predictable western cartoon market then I don't think you actually watch any of this stuff; you sound like you don't know what you're talking about at all, in fact, and just make assumptions based on generic cynicism. Which isn't wisdom or insight.

Cynicism is not the word I would use, as it implies the problem merely exists in the viewers mindset. Most of this has been documented and transcribed by people in the industry. Every year the amount of shows that get rejected from the main networks because they feature female protagonists is staggering. Just last week Kevin Smith interviewed Paul Dini on his podcast and Dini more or less broke down Cartoon Network's process for marketing shows and their desired viewer demographics: they blatantly say they couldn't care less about female viewers or characters. They want boys who like Teen Titans Go and Adventure Time, because goofy comedies about boys are what boys like. Smith suggested marketing to girls in other ways outside of toys, not unlike what anime has capitalized on, but Dini shut him down and told him network simply do not care enough and it's easier to cancel shows that get too many of the 'wrong' viewers and to try again. It's truly heartbreaking to hear the man's dreams crushed like that.

Adventure Time is not all that comparable to this. Adventure Time is the standard default male protagonist that dominates the industry and what sells. Stephen Universe, however, seemed like it could have been the perfect time to introduce a show with female protagonists, and yet we find ourselves with yet another wacky young boy as the titular character, which seems like a large step back from the network which previously gave us The Powerpuff Girls. As someone who has been following the industry for almost the pass three decades and has read and interviewed creative staff on the amount of hoops and sexism they have had to jump through, stuff like this just sets off certain flags and tells that other people in the industry have talked about. Unfortunately, most people do not talk about it until years after their show has ended or they have left the industry, because open criticism is a good way to get blacklisted from Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, and any other big players in the industry.

Guile wrote:

As someone who has been following the industry for almost the pass three decades and has read and interviewed creative staff on the amount of hoops and sexism they have had to jump through, stuff like this just sets off certain flags and tells that other people in the industry have talked about and everything starts to come together and pull the curtain to expose the backstage workings.

So the creator of the show, which is a woman who did the music for Adventure Time and wrote most of that show's best episodes, when she said in multiple interviews that she was allowed to make whatever show she wanted and this show is the result of that... she was lying, then.

I'm not saying you're wrong about the amount of sexism etc in the industry, just that you're demonstrably wrong about Stephen Universe specifically. Pick another show to make your case on, I think.

insert name here wrote:

Its a bit easy to judge people for choosing to smoke, but I could see it being the drug of choice for animators and mangaka. In such a labor intensive, high pressure creative industry it would make sense that people would prefer a drug that has the weird combination of relaxation and stimulation (not to mention ready availability) that cigarettes provide.

I guess part of the reason for animators smoking is that it's a stimulant that doesn't make the hands shake, unlike coffee. I wouldn't be surprised to hear about anime artists getting into nicotine patches, except possibly in Japan it's prescription-only.

Rebecca Sugar has also stated in various interviews and on the Stephen Universe panel at New York Comic Con this year (which I attended) that Stephen is specifically based on how her younger brother, Stephen Sugar, acted as a kid. Stephen Sugar works on the show now, too.

Rebecca Sugar is the first female creator to become a show runner of a cartoon at Cartoon Network (which is remarkable in and of itself), and Stephen Universe has a lot of thought and talent behind it. To suggest that she was forced to "add in" a male protagonist really bugs me. Sad

So yeah, choose another show to illustrate corporate meddling.

Frankly, things have been getting better diversity and creativity wise from the creator's end of things. Young Justice, for example, had a huge, diverse cast of characters because the creators wanted to include as many comic book characters as they could, not because of quotas (and they were allowed free reign of the DC Universe, a privilege which other creators, like Dwayne McDuffie of the Justice League cartoons didn't have). The Korra creators did have to fight for a female protagonist to head their new series, but they got it because they wanted it. Adventure Time has tons of female characters that have evolved at the creators' behest (I would argue that it could actually use some diversity, but they do what they want--which includes using untranslated Korean, which would never have been allowed a decade ago on a kids show--Greg Weissman has commented that he wanted to use foreign languages in some Gargoyles episodes but wasn't allowed to).

So networks seem to be respecting animation creators decisions more than they used to, and we are starting to see a more interesting variety on US tv. It's a start!

ReverseTitan wrote:

@Jose Cruz Funny you say that since anime was influenced by Hanna Barbera, which had bad animation, yet rather than break away from this influence, anime today still have an average of 3000 mere drawings per 24 minute episode at a cost of $100,000-$300,000!

Where did you get your facts from? I think you've got facts mixed up. Hanna Barbera business model has nothing to do with Japanese animation industry. Initially Japanese (Toei and Sanrio) wanted to be like Disney, but reality of TV production forced to adapt new form production model which gradually became the norm.

3000 drawings for $100K~$300K? That's total BS. If you're talking about TV anime prior to 2000's, then they produced one episode with 3000 to 5000 sheet with budget of $50k to $70k. That's when they could only afford 10 to 20 animators. Nowadays, we see 50 to 100 animators per TV episode.

Quote:

Also, I laugh at your example of Evangelion. Evangelion suffers from inconsistent, bad animation and off model art many a time. Especially when episode 18ish starts to hit, then the art work goes below Gundam Wing level, while even Wing improved, surpassing Evangelion both visually and fluidity wise. And Eva's only 26 episodes. I don't(or rarely) see animation errors in stuff with more episodes and more drawings like Spongebob.

I'm not going to name specific title, but off-model drawings are common place in all older anime. That's because they didn't have enough experienced animation supervisors/directors who can correct or salvage bad drawings at that time. Put bad drawings aside, some off-model drawings in anime are intentional and animators were more interested in experiments and communicating ideas. On the other hand, western side had tight reign on animation production, so it's difficult for animators experiment like going off-model on purpose.

Quote:

Also, there are several good western shows with great visuals, like Thundercats, Young Justice, the DC animated direct to video stuff and much of Pixar's 3D animations. Back in the 90s-early 2000s, there were loads of shows with great visuals like Batman TAS, New Batman, the Amblin cartoons, Batman Beyond, Spawn, Justice League, etc.

Those are excellent shows and I'm not going to argue about it. However, when new generation craves for something that they can connect with, older shows don't always cut it.

Here is the fact you should know. Opening animation of Thundercats is storyboarded and animated by Masayuki, co-director of Evangelion. Batman animations? Telecom animators (some of them are future Ghibli animators) were behind the greatest action scenes of those shows.

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Also, except for Akira, parts of Only Yesterday(still pretty cheap to only have half the film synced properly), Flowers of Evil and some 3D animations, the facial expressions are super fake. At least Spongebob's facial expressions are believable.(not realistic, BELIEVABLE).

Facial expression in anime is never meant to be life-like. If you look carefully, they're basically graphical "symbols" which meant to be recognized in a split second like manga. Japanese production is "animate first, dub later", not "dub first, animate later" model. Besides their voice actors are doing good job to convey characters' emotions and directing audience's attention to their acting rather than imperfect lip synch, So there is no need for lush facial animation to express emotional state of a character in Japanese TV budget.

[quote="reanimator"]

ReverseTitan wrote:

Quote:

Also, I laugh at your example of Evangelion. Evangelion suffers from inconsistent, bad animation and off model art many a time. Especially when episode 18ish starts to hit, then the art work goes below Gundam Wing level, while even Wing improved, surpassing Evangelion both visually and fluidity wise. And Eva's only 26 episodes. I don't(or rarely) see animation errors in stuff with more episodes and more drawings like Spongebob.

I'm not going to name specific title, but off-model drawings are common place in all older anime. That's because they didn't have enough experienced animation supervisors/directors who can correct or salvage bad drawings at that time. Put bad drawings aside, some off-model drawings in anime are intentional and animators were more interested in experiments and communicating ideas. On the other hand, western side had tight reign on animation production, so it's difficult for animators experiment like going off-model on purpose.

They do on Adventure Time! A lot of fans can figure out who storyboarded an episode based on its visual style and art, because the creators (Penn Ward, etc) encourage the artists to put their individual marks on the episodes they work on. Just another example of a new attitude towards TV animation in the U.S.

Fox's ADHD Block (Animation Domination High Definition Saturday night programming, with Axe Cop and High School USA) is also taking a lot of creative risks to try new things.
[url=usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2013/07/24/animation-domination-high-def-saturday-night-comedy/2574359/]USA Today writes[/url]

Quote:

The cartoons may be budget-
minded, but that's certainly not
the case for the impressive
facilities in which they're made:
a brand-new studio on Sunset
Boulevard in Los Angeles that
houses everything from
writers' rooms to recording-
booth and editing facilities. It
allows 100% of the animation
to be done under one roof and
gives more leeway for voice
talent and animators to make
mistakes and cut loose
creatively.

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