Forum

Gina Szanboti wrote:

uguu wrote:

>those last Sasuke examples
Oh my god did you even READ the freaking article? It was blatantly defending that type of stuff and those come from scenes even more well drawn and animated than the Pain episode.

I'm not sure why you're getting so hysterical over my post since I never actually discussed the article itself, but yes, I did read it, and the only mention of Naruto was episode 167 of Naruto Shippuden - and I agree with Mike's defense of that episode. The pics I linked were from early in the original series (maybe by the same guy, I don't follow that stuff usually), and while the second shot probably was intentional in the animation of the scene, no one can convince me that the upside down head was, and if it was, it most certainly did not enhance the scene, especially when it stands out so much that you can pick it out during the playback and not just in a static shot (because it's the opposite direction of the movement it was trying to portray).

But intentional or not, they're still hilarious as static shots. That's all I was saying.

No, it's not the same guy - 167 was Wakabayashi, this is Matsumoto. Matsumoto is actually more skilled than Wakabayashi and his stuff is even better.

Do you really expect an animator like Norio Matsumoto, someone with lots of experience in the industry, to just randomly give someone a twisty neck for no reason? No, it's CLEARLY part of the overall motion and you're wrong that it's out of place:

And now watch it in motion to see how it all comes together
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAi03cX-nds (2:35)

He does a twisty head motion instead of just moving his head normally to heighten the impact and speed of his fire breath attack.

uguu wrote:

So you're ok with the deformation of "my pain is greater than yours" but you're not ok with a quick frame that is absolutely not noticeable in motion and actually makes the sequence look better? That makes absolutely no sense.

I guess you missed the part of my post where I said it was noticeable to me. Since you were unable to notice it in motion, then I can see why it didn't bother you.

Did the veteran animator you refer to personally draw every frame in that entire sequence? As Mike pointed out, that's happened before, but it's not the norm. So odd frames get in there without people noticing in the rush to air time. Are you saying that couldn't have happened in this case?

Thank you sensei, but I do grasp that deformation can help the overall animated effect, in the same way that a filmed punch shows stupid-looking but real facial distortion when looked at frame by frame. I don't feel that's the case in this instance. And I'll say again that I still find the frame hilarious, regardless of the intent. Instruct me all you like with your pearls of wisdom, but you won't change my mind about it being funny.

I deleted that, made a new post that explained what I meant.

OF COURSE you're noticing it now that everyone is drawing attention to it, but a viewer normally wouldn't. The scene is really damned fluid and the drawings are carefully-chosen. The twisty frame goes very well with the motion that's being animated and heightens its impact.

"I utterly disagree. Anime is a medium to tell interesting and entertaining stories. I shouldn't even notice the animation style, because that's not the important part. Animators are only there to facilitate the experience, not to show-boat and ruin suspension of disbelief by shoving the fact that this is a fictional piece of work in our faces."

You're watching anime wrong. If the visuals aren't nice the story isn't interesting.

"Let me put it this way. Let's say you were three hundred pages into reading a novel. And then for no in-story reason the font suddenly changes to MS Mincho and the text size doubles and the kerning gets dicked around with, and the changes only last one chapter before switching back to what they were. Would you not find that irritating as hell? I know I would."

That example is deliberately irritating. There is poetry that messes around with formatting in interesting ways, and it's cool because it's part of the medium.
In any case, the analogue would be the style of prose, not the font size. The prose is what makes a book interesting.

Quote:

That example is deliberately irritating. There is poetry that messes around with formatting in interesting ways, and it's cool because it's part of the medium.
In any case, the analogue would be the style of prose, not the font size. The prose is what makes a book interesting.

I couldn't really figure out what dtm42 was saying or how to counter it, but you did a pretty good job.

uguu wrote:

OF COURSE you're noticing it now that everyone is drawing attention to it, but a viewer normally wouldn't.

Then I guess I'm not a normal viewer because I noticed it the first time I saw it on tv, before I'd seen the still shots, and had a wtf moment, but I didn't have it on tape (yes tape), couldn't go back and figure it out, and didn't care enough anyway, so I forgot about it until I ran across the still much later on. Which actually made it funnier. Yep, still funny.

To me it's not fluid, because instead of just flinging his head back to his right to launch his flames, his head first tilts forward (never mind that no one's head turns like that unless they're an owl) and for me, that disrupts the sequence of motion, which is jarring. To me. YMMV. I'm done.

He didn't just normally tilt his head and instead did a twisting motion to give the attack more anticipation. It's not anatomically correct, so what? People's faces don't mutate like Pain's. People's skin doesn't stretch THAT much when punched. It's exaggeration.

It just saddened me that you picked two frames from one of the most well-animated sequences in that show to make your point.

Last edited by dtm42 on Mon Jan 27, 2014 1:17 am; edited 1 time in total

someone_else wrote:

You're watching anime wrong. If the visuals aren't nice the story isn't interesting.

Certainly if the visuals are distracting the story is hard to watch. But bad visuals don't make a story uninteresting. For most anime the visuals have nothing to do with the story. I can't believe anyone would even say that stories can only be interesting if the visuals are nice.

I take it you don't watch many old anime.

someone_else wrote:

The prose is what makes a book interesting.

So not themes, characters, plot, setting, or anything like that? Only the prose can make a book interesting?

Quote:

Certainly if the visuals are distracting the story is hard to watch. But bad visuals don't make a story uninteresting. For most anime the visuals have nothing to do with the story. I can't believe anyone would even say that stories can only be interesting if the visuals aren't nice.

I'd rather read a good book than have to suffer through something that looks like trash for the script.

Quote:

So not themes, characters, plot, setting, or anything like that? Only the prose can make a book interesting?

He/she was saying that it's the style of prose that makes a book interesting, not the font size. He didn't say that it's the ONE THING that makes them interesting, but that it's a closer analogue to animation.

Quote:

I take it you don't watch many old anime.

Oh hey, the typical "old things look bad because they are old, you only enjoy them for the writing!" argument that's always applied to video games!

"Old-school video games are all about gameplay, not about graphics! It's not like they often had amazing art direction in spite of having less technology to work with, or anything deserving respect like that! Games like Yoshi's Island are only about gameplay!"

"Old anime is all about writing - visuals don't matter, because it's old and often low budget, and nothing low budget can be truly good-looking in spite of its hurdles!"

Except the former, while still ignorant, is actually >less< annoying than the latter because gameplay IS the core of video games. Meanwhile, visuals are the core of animation.

Imagine how RIDICULOUS it would be if someone said "you only watch Citizen Kane for the script - it's old and black and white and has no special effects, so it doesn't matter how it looks!"

I've been watching Ashita no Joe and it's low budget as hell. There's barely any movement and the artwork clearly had to be rushed most of the time. And yet, it's still very visually impressive - because the use of visuals is amazing. Even when it doesn't have a lot of frames or has to skimp on the details the expressiveness and visual inventiveness is there.

Same goes for a crapload of other shows. The visuals are a HUGE part of why I watch 70s anime.

http://i.imgur.com/2oxE1yE.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/3whcfQ7.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/cccGHqQ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/xsVXk5V.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/vKlpd8F.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/iCeXXjt.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/1EraFHg.jpg

"For most anime the visuals have nothing to do with the story" - I don't even think so. But if that's the case then you're watching badly made crap.

musouka wrote:

Oh yeah, the second half of Omega is nearly visually unwatchable. It ranges from "oh, they're actually moving this episode!" to "can you at least draw lip flaps that don't make me want to cry?"

Yeah, there's another animation director on the show, Mamoru Hoshino, who's absolutely terrible at drawing and animating mouths. Still, Yashima makes him look good in comparison.

So the way Naruto Shippuden episode 167 was animated was intentional? Interesting...

Even 3-4 years later and after reading this article I'm still not a fan of how that one was animated, most notably the Pain sequence mentioned in the article which can be seen in full below.
http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/116/992/Naruto-quality-3.gif

Call me shallow, but one of my biggest problems with that specific sequence is it's too off-model for my liking.

One instance of QUALITY I'd like to mention is the entire second half of Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple episode 38. The first half of the episode looked fine, but then come the second half you had stuff like this.
http://i.imgur.com/Ps33ntS.png
http://i.imgur.com/vTbA0SC.png
http://i.imgur.com/3VBhCxk.png

Another which has been pointed out is Birdy the Mighty: Decode. One that's really interesting is near the end of season 2 during the fight between spoiler[Birdy and Nataru]. However I'm now thinking that one might have been intentional.

dtm42 wrote:

I take it you don't watch many old anime.

Excuse you, if you're trying to imply that old anime is anything but GORGEOUS you're gunna have to step down!

Anyway, totally hating this animation vs story fight! It's wrong to try to divorce storytelling from animation. Sooo much of the story in anime/cartoons is conveyed through the animation, you can't really delineate where one ends and the other starts. If the artistry lacks power, the story loses so much of its potential meaning and depth!

uguu wrote:

I just looked through episode 21 and I have no idea what you're talking about.

are you upset that Mugen has more facial definition here or what

It's not that he has more detail...it's that the shot you posted looks nothing like Mugen. He's horrifically off-model there, and if I remember correctly Jin was even more so in that episode. You can't convince me for a moment that this was a stylistic choice, especially since it's in the second half of a two-parter; why in the world would any episodic series decide to get experimental halfway through something like that, when they could choose any other episode to do so? And again, this is coupled with the fact that the episode's animation looks extremely low-budget when compared to almost every other fight scene in the entire series. It sticks out like a sore thumb, and not in the "we meant to do this" way that Gurren-Lagann's infamous episode 4 did.

Last edited by DangerMouse on Mon Jan 27, 2014 1:40 am; edited 1 time in total

Great article, some great shares in the thread too, hadn't seen several of them before like the Aria one lol Smile

I generally like the experimentation most of the time and also appreciate that they all go back and fix the actual unintentional mistakes for the DVD/BD when possible too.

JacobYBM wrote:

Charred Knight wrote:

One stylistic choice thats is constantly called horrible is Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood: Star of Milos. The character designer and chief animator. Kenichi Konishi who was the character designer and Chf outside of two scenes the movie itself looks great, but Ed has weird hair so the defining way people talk about the movie is that it looks horrible. The dramatic scene were they talk about Milos past? Doesnt matter Ed has weird hair. The epic finale involving a sword fight animated by Yoshimichi Kameda (the best animator for FMA Brotherhood), Lava, Wolf Chimera, and a guy's head exploding ? Doesnt matter the movie looks weird at times.

From what I remember hearing, Director Murata Kazuya specifically wanted the animation to be rough so that the animators' passion came through clearer. You can see this a lot with Kameda Yoshimichi's cuts. With Kameda you can feel a strong visual level of storytelling through his thick brush strokes. If Kameda isn't the best animator to work on the franchise I would say Tanaka Hironori is. What he did for the TV series is perhaps even more insane then Kameda, considering he was also working on other titles at the time.

wandering-dreamer wrote:

Oooh remembered another one, Birdy the Mighty: Decode. The series had really loose animation at some points to start with but apparently the tv release for one episode (looks like it was episode 20/season 2 episode 7 depending on how you count it) was really simplified and off-model. It got corrected for the DVDs so if you've seen the Funimation streams it looks more or less normal but I saw some comparison screenshots once and yikes, looked less like a stylistic choice and more like a budget cut. Can't seem to find them anymore though, anyone else know what I'm talking about?

Series Director Akane Kazuki (Tenkuu no Escaflowne) discussed that episode here.

Quote:

There were a lot of good parts, some honest parts, and also some reflections. For the good part, we presented animation's possibility other than current trendy style and people out there who actually enjoyed that. For reflection, maybe there is that energy overload to a point of recklessness. It's not ruining the drama, but seems bit overboard. (laughs) Especially the episode 7, isn't it? To me, I think the TV is something that you make things with trial and error. And I think it's okay to swing little wider. Except, we did retake on episode 7. Because DVD is something you can look back multiple times, I thought that I should be responsible for scenes where I could have firm control over direction.

Quote:

Again, there was a fuss about redoing episode 7. That is not denying episode 7 as TV animation, but just to distinguish each other through different media, right?

Quote:

Akane
That's exactly as you said. Originally, I wanted audience to enjoy the "live performance", so I think that animators' "recklessness" is okay to a certain point. Even though there is that ever-present demerit of insufficient time in TV animation production, creative development and agility are excellent. There is no doubt that excitement is born out of the insufficient time in TV animation.
Due to difference in media, there are many cases where both on-air and DVD episodes are shown together, but I want to clearly divide them. DVD, feature films, and etc are media where you gain fair understanding of the content to fit your taste.
However for TV, I think it has to be the place for new discovery. A place where the viewers discover new excitement, a place where creators discover new method. That's the "live feeling". For example, the on-air episodes 7 and 12, I think it's just too much to do the same thing over again. They were made with production atmosphere and vigor of that time. It's not something that you can make with calculation. I'm having a thought that audience should have the same breadth of creator's vigor. That way, they can enjoy the animation better. (laughs)

Yamashita Shingo and Ryou-chimo were still relatively young animators during Tetsuwan Birdy: Decode. They're the Series Director and Episode Directors on Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta and you can really see where their skills have flourished and diviersified since then.

Damn yeah, so many great animated moments in FMA in there.
Those Bradley fights sampled in those sakuga collections for example were incredible and some great Milos scenes in there too.

Cool info on Birdy, loved that show.

willag wrote:

Some of my favorite parts of the Ghost Stories English dub are when they were making fun of the wonky animation. There's one part where Leo's mouth looked strange and Greg Ayres started mumbling random stuff as if he couldn't speak. And I think Hilary Haag said, "Oh anime eyes," at one point when Satsuki's eyes went off-model.

Some people still don't get that Japanese animation is actually very similar to jazz or very Technical Progressive Metal with lots of tempo changes and time signatures. American animation is more like a pop song with a time signature of 4/4.

The great thing about anime is that you can have a cut animated by Toshiyuki Inoue in a very realistic way and the next one is done by Imaishi using Kanada's Style. Kyoani in another hand is a Studio were is very hard to tell animators apart because the animation in their shows is very consistent.

Forum - View topic
The Mike Toole Show - Anime Gets Sloppy

The Condemned Villainess Goes Back in Time Novels 1-2 Review

This Week in Games - Good News, Bad News, and Just News

ODDTAXI's Baku Kinoshita On His New Film, Housenka

Your Anime Rankings - Best of Summer 2024, Aug 26-Sep-1

Shadow of the Ninja Reborn Game Review

This Week in Anime - Cashing In

The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System Manga Gets TV Anime by GoHands

Case Closed: The Bride of Halloween Anime Film Review

TOUGEN ANKI's Main Cast Talks About Their Roles in the Upcoming Anime

I Left My A-Rank Party Manga Gets TV Anime Next January

Pupposites Attract Volume 1 Manga Review

This Week in Anime - Banned Together

Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - Anime Gets Sloppy

Forum

Forum - View topic
The Mike Toole Show - Anime Gets Sloppy