What are some things that can only be done with traditional animation? Things that 3D, stop motion...

what are some things that can only be done with traditional animation? Things that 3D, stop motion, or puppet animation can't emulate.

Quaint old fashioness

Atmosphere.

I think this is the stronger suit. 3D, stop motion and puppetry all have to work a lot harder to capture emotion and ambience because they leave less to the imagination.

I've been playing around with the idea that a big things that makes traditional animation unique is "change" and that not a lot of western animators took advantage of this. Where as other forms of animation revolve around consistency of form and motion, you can do whatever you want in traditional animation. Your inbetweens can be a completely different style than your keys, they can be as extreme as you want and you don't have to worry about deformation like you do with 3D. You can go absolutely wild with everything, and yet the only people I see do this are Japanese animators, and until recently they used it very conservatively. Western animators often animated much as they do now with 3D. They always kept thing consistent and clear with traditional animation, never taking full advantage of the medium unless they were doing dream sequences like what you would see in Dumbo.

Again, I think the big thing traditional animation has above the other mediums is change and transformation. I'm very open to debate this though.

The Princess and the Frog wasn't much of a step forward though

I slapped my knee user.

Yeah I'm no philosopher but traditional animation does more to convey the idea of characters using some subtle art elements and exaggerated movement. We, as the audience, piece it all together and get a "feel" for the character.

With stop motion, puppets and 3d you need to really work to accomplish that since they don't squash or stretch easily and they take a lot of work to show those subtle movements, like body language, and 3d leaves so little to our imagination it has to be explicitly demonstrated or it comes off as robotic.

backgrounds and artstyle? when you look at the original sleeping beauty movie the artstyle for the background looked like Medieval tapestry.

They did early on. A lot of the really early animations were nothing more than abstract fantasies, with the audiences amazed that drawings where moving. When animators started telling stories doing so much whacky shit became 1) Expensive and time consuming and 2) hard to justify increasingly longer stories having no internal consistency. Western animation has always focus on fluidity, most western cartoons will have expensive lip-syncing animation at the cost of something else happening in the scene, where eastern animation is much cheaper and less dynamic in that regard. Since a character with only 2 frames of talking is boring and cheap it frees them up to exaggerate emotions with different drawing styles.

that's a very interesting point. I've done some research into the foundational differences in Eastern vs Western animation, but I never noticed where the focus of the animation went between the two. I mean, it's a small thing, but that's still interesting.

This music video is often posted to show how good 2d animation can be.. but goddamn, these lyrics are fucking stupid. The intercut stock footage of old freakshows doesn't really help either.

yeah, it's a real shame. The animation is 10/10, but everything else about the video is pretty mediocre or just plain bad.

here's a question to some of you animator savvy anons on here. When sketching keyframes and inbetweens what are some of the better ways to create the figures? Should I do it in simple shapes, in gesture scribbles, or should I forget about that being a one man animator and go as close to the final drawing as possible. Basically, what's the best approach to workflow for a lone animator

well, best approach is always what you're comfortable with
personally, the way i do it is that I start with a scribble of what it looks like, do some shapes to help with detail, etc. etc. until it's complete

Use gesture and scribble at first to capture the movement, because in the process of animating you might find that you've either made a mistake or might think of better drawings to use as keyframes.

that makes sense, I'll go for some scribbles and gesture first then. I've got the motion, spacing, and timing down alright, but coming up with a technique and workflow that's catered to one person is where I'm at now. After I get those down maybe I can finally start something.

This is exemplified by the Darkstalkers/Vampire videogames. A lot of people speculate that now that Capcom is on the 3D model train, we will never see another Darkstalkers fighting game because several characters were dependent on radical deformation or total transformation. (It's okay, though, I'll always have Skullgirls)

I think one of the most important things 2D did better was facial expression and emotion, but I guess advancing technology is bridging that gap, so maybe the future holds some sweet liquid physics applications that will compensate in areas of fluidity as well.

If that point ever does come, what 2D has will boil down to its intrinsic value as a style.

Motion lines first and foremost. I forget what we're supposed to call them, but I do basic shapes of the character along the lines of motion I'm conveying, then draw it in proper and touch it up as i continue the piece so that it flows right.

Smearing or speed lines? Both work well with fast paced scenes. This user should try it.>>685346

Throughout this entire video, I was telling myself "there is no way that the lead vocalist of the band has a chin that impressive in real life. He's just covering his insecurities"
But then the final scene happened, and my worldview was ruined.

I think inside out showed that 3D animation could finally get into the subtle changes that made for good expressions(though the movie itself was pretty uninspired). I don't think 3D will ever quite be able to produce the transformations traditional animation can, unless they take a route like the new Guilty Gear, though that almost has more in common with stop motion than 3D animation.

Animation Arcs? If those are what you're talking about I really do need to get better about using them.

It's hard to see because they are sketchy as crap(I did them only a few minutes before posting them so I could show where I'm at and the issues I'm having) but if you look closely at the boxer his gloves actually do have a slight blur on them. Fast, hard motion is something I'm trying to into now… that and extreme perspective which requires animating a lot of scenery as well as the character.

I don't understand how this video is a proof of superiority of 2D animation, considering half of it was either rendered in 3D or assisted with 3D.

is 2D assisted with 3D inherently bad? I kind of miss when Dreamworks did 2D assisted with 3D like with Prince of Egypt and Spirit valley of the Cimmaron.

No, it's great. Probably the best you could do, since you got the benefits of both 3D and 2D.
But it's not a proof of 2Ds superiority.

personally, I've always thought that the 2D always did fluidity of movement, deformation, and impact has always been best in 2D rather than 3D

While we're on the subject, what are some of the strengths and weaknesses for Stop Motion and Puppetry? Is there even still a place for those two mediums?

stop motion is that you can have much of the control of 2D and CGI, but with the added bonus of live-action looks at the cost of even the time it would take for 2D

puppetry, on the other hand, allows for the fastest because it's basically a live take

I don't think puppetry has any ground on which it's superior to animation/stop motion.
I don't think there has ever been any really high budget take on puppetry, since (not counting large-scale animatronics), it's the cheapest and easiest technique.

Thunderbolt Fantasy says hello

What now? Are you saying it just takes a long time?

Puppets are somewhere between cartoons and life. If designed right with the correct movements and acting, it is very easy for them to gain empathy. It also takes a lot of things used in traditional animation to make their movements believable. Milt Kahl often praised the Henson guys for their "animation" with puppets… it's weird how Richard Williams' guide translates to so many different art forms. Hell, the knowledge of traditional animation can even help regular actors.

Anyways, I'd say puppets, when designed right and paired with the right puppeteer, are cartoons made real. There is something "honest" about them that traditional and digital animation can't really capture… or perhaps I'm wrong. It's hard to say. I feel what really defines a medium are the things it can do that no other medium can, so you have to find that core and capitalize on it. The question becomes, what is that core for puppets, or stop motion really.

Sort of like what Watchmen did for comics.

I think I need to get a little more change in there, as well as thinner, cleaner linework…

would Watchmen be comparable to Neon Evangelion in terms of what both did to their respective mediums?

Attracted a massive influx of normalfags with it's deep plot whether it was or not depends on your point of view, thereby tainting the genre's consumer base?

With Watchmen yes- but the collector boom also took a part in that, along with the Comics Code and more attempts to make comics "for everyone".
With Evangelion- sort of. It made plenty of western nerds join in, but not mainstream.
2007 seems to be "the year" geek hobbies got flung into main-stream for exploitation.

However, as for comparing Watchmen and Evangelion:
- Both creators suffered mental health issues.
- Both have been called brilliant masterpieces, and cash-grabs with a plot that passes off unanswered questions as deepness.

What would you say about Jim Henson's stuff?
I'm biased since I love Farscape.

Jim Henson's Creature Shop technically

While it's not Holla Forums, Soul Eater is the show I think of that will always show off why 2D animation will always have a place in media. There something about the atmosphere that 2D can always bring to the table that others can't.