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Why Does The Crunchyroll Original Series EX-ARM Look So Awful?

I'm not really sure why this is being particularly singled out. Like it looks utterly terrible, because it's anime CG. But every other instance of anime CG I've seen looks at least this bad.

Dude, this is the last thing Studio Orange put out, you really think they're on the same level? https://youtu.be/9JrUNy7qv2o

I'd rather CGI anime studios just do what video games do. The 3D animations in even bargain bin JRPGs look far better and more appealing than that, I'm sorry.

ninjamitsuki wrote:

I'd rather CGI anime studios just do what video games do. The 3D animations in even bargain bin JRPGs look far better and more appealing than that, I'm sorry.

Video games have been around forever and CGI anime is still in it's infancy stages so they haven't had the time yet to perfect it but you can't just transfer the techniques used to make one medium for another one.

I was talking pre-rendered cutscenes, which more or less is the exact same medium as animation. And even still, I don't understand why they feel the need to apply limited animation techniques that were specifically developed to cut costs for frame by frame anmation for a medium where you don't have to draw each frame. It's completely redundant and looks like crap. Instead of trying to make it look 2d, they should just... Do what the rest of the world does when they make CGI animation. You can make it work while still looking "anime".

For instance this short is from 2001 and yet perfectly manages to capture the appeal of 2d anime while still being fluid (for its time) and animated with the CGI medium in mind first and foremost. Much better than a lot of recent examples.

Personally I still think UFOtable's technique of using 3D for the movement then drawing 2D animation over the 3D animation is the best method:

Dude, this is the last thing Studio Orange put out, you really think they're on the same level?

Puniyo wrote:

Personally I still think UFOtable's technique of using 3D for the movement then drawing 2D animation over the 3D animation is the best method:

That's...not what's happening in that video. What you're seeing is the very rough CG references created to better plan out complex movement in a 3-dimensional space, and is 1000% different from actually animating using 3DCG. You can even see the traditionally illustrated storyboards used to build that CG reference in the first place. What Orange (or, I guess to stay on topic, the people making EX-ARM) do is a totally different process, workflow, and skillset than what you see in that video.

Puniyo wrote:

Dude, this is the last thing Studio Orange put out, you really think they're on the same level?

I mean, that clip still looks very uncanny and unnatural to me. Like someone else said, video games have done much better work with CG than anime studios have. Even if you ignore the Final Fantasies and other big games, the cutscenes in a free-to-play gacha game like Genshin Impact still look more pleasing. The only CG anime I've seen work are video-game adaptions like those Resident Evil and Tekken movies, probably since the source material is already CG so looking like it isn't much of an issue so it's just like watching a really long cutscene from those franchises. And those films came out over a decade ago.