Forum - View topicINTEREST: Student Group's Kūchū Gunkan Atlantis Anime Planned for Theaters in October
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HueyLion
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woooooah animated article thumbnail!
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MarshalBanana
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A small group of college students on a small budget make an Anime with hand-drawn mechs. Yet when I complain about CG mechs I get told that it's impossible because of money and you need special people to do it, because regular animators can only animate humans, and anyone who can do anything beyond that is a wizard.
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zrnzle500
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And they were making a single episode 15 minute anime with over 200 cuts, versus the 3,500 to 5000 (or even as high as 10,000) cuts for a single episode within a series that is at least 12 episodes long, while likely working on a number of other series as well. If anything, the issue isn't money per se (as some things are more expensive to do in CG rather than 2D), it's time, as is often the case these days in the industry. For something that needs to look solid like mechs (and are often more complicated to animate than people), I will take CG over the good chance of really bad 2D mechs. As to mecha animators, it's not magic, just specialization. Humans and giant robots generally move differently, so just knowing how animate the former doesn't necessarily mean you can animate the latter all that well. Like anything else, one needs time to learn it, and in the too often behind schedule productions, there isn't such time. I imagine the more skilled animators could make something good given enough time, but that is something too many productions don't have. In that regard, CG mechs is at least as much a time saving measure than money saving, only having to make the models for each one once, instead of having to meticulously make sure it stays on model every frame, which is more important as they need to look solid and is more complicated as it would likely involve more linework than a person. It isn't just mechs either. Horses are notoriously hard to animate in 2D, which often leads to CG horses. There are animators who can do 2D mecha, but many are busy with stuff like Gundam, and there are fewer of them than in the past. Which is why the work of these students is not only impressive but also important, providing a project to train the next generation of mecha animators. I hope to see more of both what these budding animators can do, and more projects like it to keep 2D mecha alive and well. |
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harminia
 Posts: 1997 Location: australia |
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Literally the only reason I'm here. Woah!!!!!!!!!!! |
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Cardcaptor Takato
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Is 2D mechs going off model really that common occurrence in anime? Maybe I just hadn't been paying much attention, but in the history of 2D mech anime, as a big mecha fan I can't think of many shows where 2D mechas were widely off model. Even with the more recent Darling in the Franxx, while I wasn't a big fan of the show, the 2D mechas were one of the highlights for me and they generally didn't seem to have much trouble keeping them on model. I'm generally more forgiving of CGI mechas these days and I've even enjoyed a few shows with them, but I can think of a lot more examples of CGI mechas having wonky designs and going off model, especially in earlier CGI mecha shows.
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zrnzle500
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No, generally what 2D mecha there is is usually well done, but those productions usually are healthier and have those mecha specialists. Franxx's designs seemed more simplified than more traditional mechs or at least easier to animate, and they had plenty of talented animators on that project.
Off model mechs wouldn't necessarily be the visible effect of what I mentioned either. Look at something like Summer 2016's Regalia, which had 2D mechs, which had to stop broadcasting after episode 4 until September of that year due to quality issues. That was a risky strategy which, while I think it paid off and I think the show became a valuable work within the genre for sticking with the 2D mechs, is not something many studios get the chance to do. Nor do I think most studios want to risk pulling a Marchen Madchen episode 9. Let me make a more specific example. Does anyone think that taking the time to hand draw the mechs from FMP IV would have made the show look better or worse or delivered more or less timely, given how they struggled with the 2D animation towards the end even with 3D mechs, even after being delayed, even with two recap episodes, even with extra time to finish the last two episodes? Not would it have looked better in the ideal conditions, but would it have looked better or worse in the conditions that produced the product we got? Not that it was bad, but it was clear they were strained already. |
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Calico
Posts: 383 |
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I've gotta say, I absolutely hate having an animated thumbnail. Is there a way to turn it off or something?
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4570 |
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This looks old-school in the best way possible. Good luck to them!
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Cardcaptor Takato
Posts: 4817 |
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zrnzle500
Posts: 3767 |
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^Actually a lot of it is still drawn on paper (and then scanned onto a computer). Plus drawing on a tablet doesn’t seem any less hand drawn than something drawn on paper to me. There is stuff like the Flash animation that Yuasa’s Science Saru is known for, and there is work being done on computer generated/assisted in-betweening like in the Heaven’s Feel movie, but the kinks are still being worked out on both.
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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Reminds me a lot of Gainax's early days.
Well, the mechs are off-model here, but intentionally so with some squash and stretch, and I can tell it's animated with fairly limited framerate with not much in-betweens as high production anime would be. I'm not trashing it at all, just putting in perspective with the discussion about hand animation vs CG More rigid mechas and mechanical objects that require being on-model and zero squash and stretch, especially non-cartoony cars and bikes, etc really benefit from CG. And the more frames, the more complex the mechanical design, the more so the CG helps. Mechs like in Aldnoah Zero https://www.aldnoahzerousa.com/assets/img/mechanic/Mechanic_009.jpg plus all of the flashy lighting and surfance rendering effects on top of that for the battle scenes, or real sports bikes in Bakuon https://randomc.net/image/Bakuon!!/Bakuon!!%20-%2001%20-%20Large%2030.jpg From a financial standpoint it doesn't seem like a good return on investment to spend an intense amount of man hours on essentially replicating what would be done with CG. You can spend your entire budget just animating a cut by hand to get that perfect, physically accurate mechanical animation. Even manga artists now use CG. Hiroya Oku uses Shade 3D and Poser extensively for Gantz http://archive.shade3d.jp/special/archives/interview/cp080425.html video convering the art process revealed in the English Gantz Vol.1 and I believed it was covered in the Japanese vol. 10 https://youtu.be/resyfrrNIlE |
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MarshalBanana
Posts: 5313 |
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In regards to the new FMP. Well CG is actually more expensive than a lot of Anime fans seem to realize, there are costs that either do not exist within 2D animation and those that do cost a lot less. So they could have used that money to hire more animators. But yes it may have made the end product even worse, and if that means not having that car chase from episode 2, then I'm all in. Xebec should of really not taken the project on if they are this incapable, despite making Nadesiko. At the end of the day we are watching a 2D animated show, I do not think that having cars and mechs in 2D is too much to ask for. People clearly really want it that way given the praise that shows that use minimal CG get, even if they do not like the show itself. So the industries main concern should be, and you seem to agree somewhat given your statement of this project, solving a shortage, the animator training project, before it went half 3DCG, was one good idea, and others like it are much better than using CG. |
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DangerMouse
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That looks pretty cool.
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13552 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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What is meant by "cuts" in this context? When I think of that for a movie/TV epi./special, I think of something that is reserved for the "uncensored" or "director's cut" versions.
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