Forum - View topicAnimation Expectations
|
|
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
|
|||
|
So, someone in a thread about Mezzo TV said that the animation quality was "way below every other decent show from the past few years".
This is totally mind-boggling to me. It's like we didn't even see the same series. Mezzo TV has, by far, some of the best TV animation ever produced. It's smooth, it's silky, it's got a high framerate and a lot of attention to detail. So here's my question: DID we see two seperate shows? Is my perception of quality animation so skewed or different that I'm not capable of judging good animation? Or is this guy on something? I was thinking about how up and down animation quality in anime is, and some examples of good television animation came immediately to mind: Last Exile Infrequent episodes of Naruto and One Piece Ghost in the Shell: SAC Cowboy Bebop Peace Maker Kurogane X 1999 TV Card Captor Sakura RahXephon Witch Hunter Robin Heat Guy J Am I off the mark on these? What are examples of 'good' animation quality to you folks? Keep in mind that we're talking about several things here; animation fluidity, frame count, on-model characters, frequency of obvious cost-cutting camera angles. Character designs and your personal opinion of the show's art direction don't really figure in to this sort of thing; the ugliest show in the world can have beautiful animation, despite being hideous. So? Some examples? Agree? Disagree? Yes? No? -Z |
||||
|
||||
|
Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
|
|||
|
Watching the commentaries on the Simpsons DVDs has gotten me rethinking my sense of animation quality. Sometimes the commentors mention that something is a good bit of animation, and they aren't talking about a flamboyantly pretty bit of showreel animation, but a simple, effective bit of visual storytelling, or a nuanced yet clear bit of characterization.
Now that I'm actually watching Rahxephon, I give it high marks for good character animation. Sure, the effects animation is lovely, and I always like that, but the way characters move is realistic yet expressive, even on a limited animation cel count. |
||||
|
||||
Legato 2057
 Posts: 437 Location: Soon to be Japan |
|
|||
|
I would also include Hajime no Ippon in this list. I have yet to see Mezzo TV, but Ippo is the best TV animation that I have seen (it is also done by Madhouse).
Other series with notable animation: Texhnolyze Reign Dai-Guard |
||||
|
||||
kamiboy
 Posts: 570 Location: CA |
|
|||
|
I agree with all the shows you listed except for the parts where they use 3D CGI. I don't care how much money they use on it, it will always look out of place and create an ugly contrast in my eyes. I've noticed that most new shows, no matter how cheap their animation is, look good. I think it's because of the shift from cells to computers used to do animation that gives the animation a special smooth feel that I like. Personally I like it more when animation has more frames instead of more detail, but often it is a question of balance. Nothing gets to me (well except for 3D CGI) like animation using a lot of still frames and cycled bits of animation.
Other than the animations on your list I would have to say that I was very impressed with the animation in Vision of Escaflowne although I was a little put off by the characters designs at first. I grew to like the unorthodox character designs later on though. Especially the early episodes of Escaflowne had very fluid animation with a high frame rate, which I liked. The only thing about it I didn't like was the transfer, which to me looked like it had washed the colours out too much. The early episodes of Evangelion also had some very great animation in most action sequences. Needless to say that Evangelion too has it shares of transfer problems. Fortunately the new shows are made digitally so the transfers are almost always perfect. |
||||
|
||||
|
Ventile
Posts: 40 Location: teh Netherlands |
|
|||
|
I suppose you were referring to my comments on Mezzo TV?
Well, somewhat of a correction is in order. It was especially episode 3 that bothered me to be completely honest with you, but that was the one freshest in my memory. The designs of Mezzo are great I won't deny that, but some of the action sequences in episode 3 just were below par. physics of the vehicles and especially their behaviour when they crashed just didn't look right, major drawbacks on detail and deformations of characters during shoot outs while those are the parts where one should expect the best out of it. The shows you mentioned don't suffer from any of those problems, except for Heat Guy-J which suffers from deformations on characters from time to time as well. And maybe that is a bit of a personal view, but from a hyped action series like Mezzo I hate to see those kinds of animation 'mistakes' 
[edit]the "way below" part of my rant should be changed to "below" though, I realize I was getting too much into it when writing that post. This might be my own subjective opinion again, but the series you mentioned yourself contain better animation than Mezzo TV. |
||||
|
||||
|
phoelixian
|
|
|||
|
I haven't seen many anime tv series (about 15), but the ones that I have seen that I considered to have very fluent animation Zac had in his list - namely Bebop, X and Witch Hunter Robin.
Zac, I'm curious as to your opinion on Gasaraki which I have and think was done well given the criteria you mentioned. |
||||
Mou Kaoru
 Posts: 298 Location: Simple minds are easily amused. |
|
|||
|
I think when it comes to animation, fluidity is important to me. The way everything flows together just gives it that realistic feel to the show. Whether it's some big fight action sequence in outerspace or even the sway of a flower blowing in the wind, it has to give you some kind of impact. It just looks weird and stands out when the frame rates are choppy as it downgrades the quality of the show. *Trigun comes to mind, mostly the latter part of the show.*
While I know we are mostly talking about TV animation, you have to take note of OVAs and movies with outstanding quality. Titles that I've seen such as Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Blood:The Last Vampire, Voices of A Distant Star, FLCL, Kite, VHD:Bloodlust, Macross Plus OVAs, Rurouni Kenshin OVAs and even X/1999 had some of the best art I've seen put in motion. For some it's not just the fluidity, but the background art/setting that brings the whole piece together. I loved the scenes in Voices of a Distant Star, Cowboy Bebop, Last Exile, Ghost in the Shell, Rahxephon, X TV, and Miyazaki's movies just to name a few. IMO a show is noteworthy if the scenes are able to stand out in your mind. As for camera angles the show that immediately comes to mind is SoulTaker. This is the only show that I know of that has experimented with sharp multiplane camera angles and bold colors for different scenes. The show becomes one whole art piece that somewhat reminds me of Reinger's Adventures of Prince Achmed, minus the paper dolls. And it actually works. Character designs are somewhat important since after all, they do play a big part in the show. While you have the cliched "big eyes, big colorful hair" look in anime, some shows like Witch Hunter Robin or Planetes for instance, can bring a fresh new look on character designs that actually reflect the better part of the show. I agree with the examples that were mentioned before. But I suppose to each his own, as they say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." That's just my take on the perception of good animation. |
||||
|
||||
|
L337Llama
Posts: 79 |
|
|||
|
I liked Bebop, Rah Xephon, FLCL (A perfect example of awsome animation, but it did have a bigger budget...), Miyzaki's movies, and I can't think of anything else at the moment.
Although Evangelion is awsome, there is one cost cutting thing I always through was funny: Gendo always covers his mouth. WHat do I think makes animation good? Nice colors, being able to make out whats happening (Boogiebop Phantom had some hard to see scenes) Nice character designs. I love the more realistic looking stuff, like in Rah Xephon. However, i dont like some of the warped faciel deminsions. Although it doesnt happen much, in Nedsico, there are a couple moments where people's faces look really messed up. Fluidity helps, but some stuff dont need it as a much as others. |
||||
|
||||
|
Nagisa
Moderator
 Posts: 6128 Location: Atlanta-ish, Jawjuh |
|
|||
|
I find Trigun is an excellent example of what I love and hate to see in animation quality. The first few episodes are excellently done; they're fluid, they retain as much detail as possible, and the characters are on-model. Once the series gets into its second half however, everything bottoms out. The animation becomes so choppy it's nearly unbearable, and the characters are so off-model & undetailed that they begin to look like clay sculptures that were left out in the sun for a week.
There are other shortcuts that bug me, too. Stock footage drives me up the wall, for one (one reason I see Gundam Wing as one of the weaker Gundam series is that by the time the series is halfway over, each fight is about half cutscenes and choppy, washed-out everything else). There's also the tendency to drag a single animation cel across a screen to indicate movement. This usually works for headshots of walking characters, but it fails just about anywhere else (Noir, episode two I think, they drag a single cel of a car across a screen to show that it's moving, and it looks painfully cheap). Then there's the tendency in a fight sequence to take one twenty-second loop of fighting and queue it up to repeat over and over and over and over, so as to represent "fast & furious combat" (DBZ is one of the worst offenders of this I've ever seen). Concerning cost-cutting camera angles, they don't typically bother me, as long as they're well done. I actually found the camera angles in Evangelion, Boogiepop Phantom, Lain, etc. to prove beneficial to the overall mood of the series, rather than being a detriment to the animation quality. And with the 3-D CGI issue, it depends on how it's used as to how the end product turns out, usually. Using CG to construct sets (as seen in Witch Hunter Robin, Shingetsutan Tsukihime, & Full Metal Panic!) works rather well, in my opinion, as do computer-generated effects like explosions. Using CG in a fully-interactive way, like using it to animate mechs while leaving the characters in 2-D, still clashes too much for my liking, though. Granted, I didn't really mind it so much in Uchuu no Stellvia as opposed to, say, Zoids, but I think there the overall quality of the rest of the series was able to make up for the faulty CG. |
||||
|
||||
Craeyst Raygal
 Posts: 1383 Location: In the garage, beneath a 1970 MGB GT. |
|
|||
|
Fluid realistic motion is very important to how good any animation looks, I'll agree to that.
However, I'd also have to say that uniform detail is important, too. Look at series movies like Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust and Ghost in the Shell, the intricate costumes and complex mechanisms of the weaponry are a integral part of these movie's amazing animation. Another important thing is mood. Whether it's the soft homey pastels of Oh My Goddess or the harsh grittiness of Patlabor II, the colors, lighting, and textures of an anime are very important when trying to convey a particular mood. A good example (at least in my eyes) is comparing a bleak desperate scene in Char's Counterattack to a bleak desperate scene in Gundam SEED. Char's Counterattack, to me, better conveys this emotion because of its "dirtier" color set and harsher shading. |
||||
|
||||
Inu-Yasha
 Posts: 373 Location: Quad Cities, Iowa |
|
|||
|
Kikaider animation will hurt my eyes, I can't stand watching it more than 5 mintutes. Inuyasha's animation is good but I wish some facial features were drawn fully out,and perhaps the only thing I don't like is bad CG in the movies.
As for backgrounds in animes I haven't really payed to attention to that. Fluditiy motion is VITAL in animes and if the anime is lacking this I will still watch it but I won't hold in it a high regard. |
||||
|
||||
|
naruto-kun
Posts: 33 Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands |
|
|||
|
I really agree with Zac.
I watched Mezzo DSA and i liked it from the start. Animationwise, it's got vibrant colors, detailed animation, no reused frames (as far as i could tell) in opposite to, for example Inu Yasha (although the later episodes don't suffer the same problem). The other anime Zac mentioned are also to me examples of good animation, especially Last Exile (which i also liked for its story, characters etc.) Other examples of series with good animation? -MACROSS ZERO!!!! -Texhnolyze (this serie definitely deserves more attention); -Planetes: nothing spectacular, but solid animation, especially the characterdesigns. no character looks the same, which makes them more "real" to me. I believe that good animation doesn't only appeal more, but also can contribute to the story, like the settings, different characterdesigns etc. Anyhow, Salut! |
||||
|
||||
CorneredAngel
 Posts: 856 Location: New York, NY |
|
|||
|
Interestingly, a lot of the titles people are citing as examples of good animation (Tehxnolyze, Witch Hunter Robin, Cowboy Bebop, Last Exile) in my opinion are rather weak precisely because they try to use animation to emulate live action. Good animation is that which does things you *can't*, by definition, do in live action - for example, FLCL, KareKano, the last two episodes of Evangelion, Cat Soup, Spring and Chaos.
Last edited by CorneredAngel on Fri Mar 19, 2004 1:11 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||
|
||||
littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
|
|||
|
Everyone has already said pretty much what I'd say, so I won't bother repeating already stated ideas. One thing that's intresting to do though if you REALLY want to notice the animation in a show is to watch the anime with absolutely no sound. I had a Naruto ep that the sound was missing on, but I watched in anyway, and I was cringing at how cheap the animation looked. The sound to an anime really distracts a viewer.
My favorite anime studios are usually the ones I consider to have the best animation: Sunrise *Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop, WHR* Bones *Wolf's Rain, Scrapped Princess, RahXephon* Production IG *Blood, GITS, Evangelion D&R, FLCL* Madhouse *X, CCS, Hellsing* Gonzo *Chrno Crusade, Last Exile, PMK* Gainax, though they have been known to get cheap on stuff, they tend to do some really memerable and gorgeous scenes, and do new things with animation. When I look for quality in animation, I tend to look at how fluid it is, detail, and if they aren't off with the character designs. I watched the first 5 or so episodes of Mezzo, and really don't understand how people said the quality degraded. I didn't notice anything, but then again I guess the show had me completely into the story. That or it didn't break through my dense personality. |
||||
|
||||
|
Godaistudios
Posts: 2075 Location: Albuquerque, NM (the land of entrapment) |
|
|||
I dunno if I can agree with you that it comes under the definition of what is good animation. Your point of view seems to reach a into a completely different area. I'd say your view point is not so much about good animation, but rather dealing with the abstract. So this is more about abstract concepts dealing with atristic quality rather than animation quality. Though they are related, they aren't really the same things that Zac had in mind when he set the tone for this thread.
I'd have to say that your concepts fall exactly under the concept of art direction, and that's not what Zac was talking about. 
|
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group