Forum - View topicThe Joy of Sakuga
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Desa
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So "sakuga" was the word for this. I didn't realize there was a word for this specific aspect of animation. I do differentiate it from something I call "keyframe spamming" though, which is basically a "brute-force" method for adding flair, which can sometimes mask a lack of substance.
I see it a lot in shows like Nichijou or Himouto, and while it's nice to look at, I don't watch shows for the sakuga alone; The cherry does not make the sundae. Nichijou does add style on top of its keyframe spamming (which I assume is where the sakuga comes in) that mixes well with its humor which amuses me in a Looney Tunes kind of way, but Himouto is for a special audience. 1 episode is enough for me. I am more of an action fan, but it's the "content" of the animation that matters most to me rather than the animation itself. Just compare Samurai Champloo with say, Kyokai no Kanata. The former has flash and substance in every combat scene, whereas the latter has mostly flash and little substance. I suppose the key thing here is "choreography". Kyoto Animation can keyframe spam like the best of them, which works well for everyday movements, but they don't seem to have an experienced action choreographer on staff. In Champloo, nearly all the combat scenes are "sakuga scenes" but more importantly every motion has purpose. This makes you believe you are watching skilled warriors and therefore the duels are engaging. In Kyokai no Kanata, nearly all the combatants simply twirl and spin their weapons without much reason, and while it looks very fluid due to KyoAni stuffing it to the brim with keyframes, it is ultimately empty and is just "superfluous sakuga"; When characters simply move for the sake of movement, their actions are not connected to a purpose, and you lose the thrill of engagement, just like when people spam a million bullets and lasers and every single one doesn't hit jack. Sure lots of pixels are moving on your screen, but what's the point? Here's an example of engaging action that does not rely on excessive keyframe spamming or over-stylization: 
Clean, focused action can go a long way in lieu of big budget FX and over-the-top style (read too many things going on all at once to fully appreciate what's happening). The one place where keyframe spamming does not apply (for now) would be all-CG animation, like the recent Knights of Sidonia series. Unlike the bottom-up approach of traditional animation, all-CG uses a more top-down method of applying motion by adjusting movement points similar to stop-motion animation. One of the biggest benefits of all-CG animation is reusable models and environments. Any character or structure never has to be redrawn the same way again. This saves a gigantic amount of time and artists can put more effort into making extremely detailed sets knowing that they won't have to do it all over again for a different scene at a slightly different angle. This also eliminates those infamous off-character "QUALITY" moments which get just as much attention as sakuga moments it seems. The biggest downside of all-CG animation is that with current technology, achieving "natural" motion is still very expensive and is thus beyond the reach of typical TV anime with their substantially lower budgets (and tight schedules). But it was possible to achieve natural, fluid motion even in the late 90s as seen with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. All it took was the most advanced technology at the time and about 200 people working for 4 years to complete it. The $137,000,000 budget also helped. Today I think U.S. animated TV shows have progressed much further in the CG department with shows like Transformers Prime, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and Beware the Batman, all of which have spectacular animation, but they do work with a higher budget than most anime studios. |
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Yuyucow
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Let me tell you about Yoshiji Kigami, who's been in the industry since the 80s. He's worked on movies you might have heard about, like that one Akira film that people seem to enjoy the animation of. It's pretty good, yeah. Same for Grave of the Fireflies, though I guess that doesn't prove the action mastery you want. Thankfully, he's got that covered. Turns out this man's good enough to be even considered a personal rival by the likes of Toshiyuki Inoue! And well, he happens to be a director and very respected KyoAni director. (The rest of your post is also plagued by that very silly idea of "forced animation", but this part was especially amusing.) |
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conan___e
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what makes sakuga fans unique is their strong desire to learn more about the animation industry, which lead them to busting many of stereotype a and myths about the industry.
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NearEasternerJ1
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@Hikaru That is obviously wrong. Why are Ghibli films and Production IG films superior to the rest? Big budgets. More budget, means more animators. There is a correlation between budget and fluid animation.
Princess Mononoke: 2.4 billion yen Ghost in the Shell Innocence: 2 billion yen Akira: 1.1 billion yen Ghost in the Shell: 600 million yen Spirited Away: 1.9 billion yen Ponyo: 3.4 billion yen Even for TV shows (average per episode budget) Eureka Seven: 25 million yen Afro Samurai: 119 million yen Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: 30 million yen Moribito: 30 million yen Having said that, the Sakuga fandom is pointless. Anime has the worst animation of any form of animation. US animation has much more drawings, more detailed facial expressions and proper lip syncing. The facial expressions in anime are beyond forced and stiff and the mouth flaps are beyond a joke. Sakuga fans need to focus on Disney and the Amblin shows (25,000 cels per episode), not to mention Avatar (15,000 drawings) and Spongebob (20,000 drawings per 11 minute episode). |
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TD912
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After reading this, it reminded me of the first series in Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya. Average animation for most of the show, then suddenly in episode 6 there's an epic battle between Archer Illya and Saber Alter.
I don't think any other part of the series, including sequels, were animated as well as that scene. |
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malipro
Posts: 28 |
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The thing about CG and stop motion is that while it is handy and has reusable assets, there are many that diss it for not having as many "sakuga" moments. There are some CG/Stop Motion studios that try to mimic sakuga or traditional animation like Blue Sky Studios or Laika in the west (A video even showed they had "squash and stretch" models for their body parts to mimic film), but I feel like those are more doing it for the artistic value than anything. Like you said, mainstream CG shows over here are getting better in that sense. |
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reanimator
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Just want to add, Japanese studios outsource their work due to labor shortage in home turf, not because oversea is cheaper. We're talking about the country that produces over a hundred animation title of decent quality visuals per year for cheap rate and there is no way that industry can muster enough talented people to work on every single title.
Oh that's what happened as well? Hopefully everything is ready with both parties for possible second attempt.
Boy you really don't know Sakuga fans and am I sensing a jealousy as well? Sakuga fans do look and have respect at Golden age Western animators & animations and there is even a sakuga fan who make Animator clips of master animators like Milt Kahl. You accuse anime being cheap and substandard, then why bother watching it all? You can find other wonderful forms of visual entertainment as anime's visual is annoying to you. If good animation is only about having more money and other things you've wrote rather than great expression, then it's better off making dead and boring visuals. You boast American produced animations having more budget and technical prowess, yet where are the animation fans who are genuinely excited by great expressions and willing share the same excitement with other fans? What is up with annoyed attitude of western animation fans who can't stand what anime is doing? Why can't western animation fans just be excited with any great animation out there and be supportive like anime fans instead wasting time nitpicking on technical details? Not all anime fans are into Sakuga, but they're very supportive with what they like. Japanese are pumping out 2D animations pretty much on their own with meager resource and they make them with dedication and passion. I don't know much about how 2D animation industry is doing in the U.S. nowadays, but what is good about film/TV animation industry that stopped hiring traditional 2D animators in their own home turf? What is good about being nostalgic about good old days when they're letting oversea animators do all of the 2D animating works? No matter how great the technical prowess of Disney and others had, the whole nostalgia is just full of hot air to cover up incompetence and lackluster output. You can boast all you want, but without initiative end product is nothing and without passion technical prowess is meaningless. Last edited by reanimator on Thu Oct 01, 2015 11:55 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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Budget can play a huge roll in the fluidity of animation, but no amount of money can make up for unskilled animators. High quality and fluid animation is made by highly trained and talented animators with a passion for what they are making.
huh? 
I don't think you understand the appeal of sakuga at all. Pure fluidity and a massive budget is not at all what draws people to sakuga. @Desa What is that clip from? |
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Philmister978
Posts: 309 |
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I don't think you get the idea of the fandom. Sakuga fans appreciate good animation from all countries. Even American animation. The problem is that the examples you list off (Seriously? SpongeBob?) are poor choices. You can't automatically think all animation=big budget only. Even the big budget productions can have terrible animation as they can good animation. Even Disney's guilty of it at times. Talent comes first and foremost and by far the most invaluable tool. Budget's only a factor that merely helps out. By your logic, you might as well come out and say all anime sucks because they reuse storylines or that the voice actors all suck. |
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Videogamep
 Posts: 564 Location: CA |
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Still, even skilled animators can't do much when there's no money. Just look at the later episodes of Evangelion. |
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MajorZero
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While I agree that anime has pretty bad animation on average (and that is an understatement considering how many shows rely on little more than still frames it's sometimes closer to motion comic than actual animation) that doesn't mean you can't find gems in the medium. Sakugabooru has plenty examples of western animation (not nearly as much as anime, but they get better), so, it's not like they ignore western animation entirely, just more focused on Japanese animation. On a side note, good god, all it takes is one guy with different opinion to infuriate fandom. That's why we can't have nice things. |
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Desa
Posts: 285 |
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Over-generalization, my bad. If there were any action veterans who worked specifically on Kyokai no Kanata, they didn't do their past work justice. As I said, I'm more of an action fan than a sakuga fan, and I appreciate it when an action moment is also a sakuga moment, but it doesn't matter too much to me either way. I've never seen Akira. "Blasphemy" I know, but it doesn't matter to me if it happens to be a sakuga fan's wet dream if the rest of the movie doesn't seem as interesting. But one of these days I just might spend those 2 hours in the hope that I'm wrong, but I still have that backlog of stuff I do want to see so that'll have to wait. Your Grave of the Fireflies example illustrates why I'm not a die-hard sakuga fan (aside from the fact that I'm also not a fan of GotF). It shows the typical everyday motions that KyoAni excels at, but it doesn't matter how accurately you depict real motions in animation to me, because I live in the real world watching real people do real things all the time so I don't exactly care for more reality in anime. So what if you can articulately animate someone playing the piano and all their fingers match the keys in sync with the music? Not like I've never seen someone play the piano before. What does impress me is when animation can start to fool you into thinking it's real: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvaGd4KqlvQ&t=8m33s BTW, ANN's "thought-police filters" killed your last link, which I'm pretty sure was non-threatening, but I understand your point. I'm not oblivious to the effort it takes to create good anime, but I feel that a lot of it is there just to appeal to sakuga fans. |
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MajorZero
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No matter how much passion japanese animators have they still leagues below of what Disney did almost 80 years ago. And I have more respect for a company which willing to throw hundreds of millions into projects like Inside Out without any guarantee of success than any risk-safe output from Japanese companies. As for 2D animation, face it, it lost momentum, it isn't popular anymore with mainstream crowd Iron Giant, Titan A.E., Princess and the Frog already proved it. |
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Desa
Posts: 285 |
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While in the U.S. 2D movies in the box office are largely extinct, there's still plenty of 2D tv shows. Aside from old staples like Simpsons and Family Guy, there's Gravity Falls, Rick and Morty, Archer, and brand new series like Guardians of the Galaxy and Moonbeam City, all of which have excellent animation. And then there's South Park. Essentially the exact opposite of "sakuga" which I feel Ninja Slayer and Hell Cop have taken in spirit with their hilarious cut-out style animation. Extremely cheap animation can work depending on the series. Same deal with Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
It's true there are not many notable examples of CG sakuga since CG has not been around nearly as long as traditional animation and can't draw upon decades of experimentation, but this is not to say there aren't any good examples. Like, every fight scene in FFVII Advent Children is a sakuga moment. You got your stylized action, you got your flair, you got explosions, over-the-top environmental FX, and of course, you got your liquid smooth animation. Heck, pretty much the whole movie is one gigantic sakuga moment, which leads me to believe some people can't see the forest because they're surrounded by too many goddamn trees. |
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Galap
Moderator
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@Desa
Story quality aside, I really liked the action scenes in KnK. Whether those artists were veterans or not, that doesn't matter to me; I found their work to be really impressive. It took their other shows' fluid, churning, organic style (now I said studios don't really matter much, but there are exceptions; places like Kyoani and Ghibli do have something of an in-house style due to having full time employees and stronger unifying animation direction) that they often use in the past for quieter moments of character acting and applied it to super high energy fantasy battles, and the results were something spectacular that I would love to see more of. Strangely enough however, while I'd say that on the whole the action was really what made that show, for some reason the particular moment that stuck with me the most was Shinpei Sawa's dance animation in episode 6. And from there I must say I disagree that there's no value in seeing animation that is realistic. The above dance scene is so incredible because of how accurately it depicts human motions, and the motions of the fabric in their dresses and scarves, and even the motion of a metal chain necklace hanging out of a pocket. To me, the magic is that unlike a live action video, where the depiction of things like hair and fabric and muscle and tendon is trivial, in animation it is not because what you are seeing is not hair and fabric and muscle and tendon. It's not even a real object. It's just a series of drawings, but the artist created them such that when viewed in succession, it actually looks like those things, actually moves like those things move. The map they created actually looks like the territory in the reality it's depicting. And it came directly from their heads. It's like looking directly into someone else's brain. This is incredible. @MajorZero I disagree with that as well. Western commercial animation never got the knack of moving the 'camera' through 3 dimensional space, or giving 3 dimensionality to the characters and environments in the same way that anime did. And they were doing it from the beginning. this is from 1947, and a cut like this simply does not exist in western commercial drawn animation. Many western animators would say things like doing something like that is impossible. For example the creators of Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron stated that they used CG in their films because it enabled them to move the camera in their shots, which is something that would be impossible otherwise. What gets me is if they have been doing this in Japan since the 40s, you would think that someone at Disney would see it and decide to try it themselves. In addition, western commercial animation tends to not do cuts with short lens length and extreme foreshortening of subjects. Now I'm not saying that Japanese animation is inherently better than Disney (though I tend to like it more personally), but that it does have a lot of unique strengths and merits that set it apart from other things. And that's also not to say that Disney doesn't have things of its own like this. For example Disney tends to be much better at utilizing character deformation on non-action cuts. And I'm not sure whether the commercial lack of success of recent 2D films means that the public isn't interested in them at all, but it does seem that viewers prefer CG or at least don't care about the difference, and producers seem to like it much more. But wouldn't willingness to take risks be making a 2d film despite the difficulties and lack of success guarantee? |
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