Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Is Anime's Animation Style So Hard To Imitate?
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LUNI_TUNZ
 Posts: 809 |
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Unrelated,but the Muppets (including Sesame Street Muppets) do this too, which is most notable with the live-hand puppets,which means the puppeteer's left hand is wearing a four fingered glove. |
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ParaChomp
 Posts: 1018 |
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What is "e-cote"? Does anyone have examples of Japanese style continuity sheets? I'm very curious.
Anime uses way too many shortcuts to be something that's worth copying entirely. That said, it does embrace "camera work" and adrenaline more and this energy is lacking from western animation. I find what truly differentiates the two are anime's need for impact and western animation's need for flow. While the majority of it tends to be barely animated at all, anime is constantly building up an impact of some sort. It does this so often that sometimes absurd amounts of effort are put into those moments. On the other side of things, even the most poorly animated western cartoons manage to have a sense of flow in their animation. While not nice to look at, shows like Breadwinners and Johnny Test display action in their entirty. There have been American shows animated by Japanese. Here's an example of a scene from Gumball... https://youtu.be/IB2diWCfzGo ...the direction feels completely different. It's very blunt and quick. I also find it doesn't feel "dirty" enough. Not in a perverted sense but I can't think of a better word. Now for something interesting. When you have the time, check out Ajin (an anime) and Transformers: Robots in Disguise (a western cartoon). Both are readily available shows animated by Polygon Pictures. You don't have to watch the shows in their entirety, one episode of each will give you an idea of how different the two mediums feel. American comics and manga are worth bringing up. Loads of American artists like to copy that Japanese astetic. Alex Milne, Humberto Ramos, and Felipe Smith come to mind. None of them get the sense of pacing that Japanese comics do especially when info dumps are involved. Then there are Japanese artists who work on American comics. Takeshi Miyazawa, Hayato Sakamoto, and Sana Takeda: all three of them are Japanese but none of their American work feels like manga. It still feels like the American comic it is and it's probably due to the American script writers. A shame that there will NEVER be an American mangaka, I would love to see the other way around. The closest I've seen to getting a manga feeling are Scott McCloud and Bryan Lee O'Malley but I think that's due to how they embrace comics as a national heritage and how well versed they are in the mediums as a whole. |
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Aster Selene
Posts: 68 |
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Avatar, Korra, and Voltron are also interesting case studies in that they're animated by Korean studios (Voltron in particular getting attention from the positive feedback Studio Mir got for Korra). Korea is a lot like Japan in terms of its stylistic influences; it spent quite a bit of time copying a lot of aspects of the Japanese anime style, but also has its own nuances as well. I can almost immediately identify an artist's work as Korean in a lot of cases.
For that reason I think that's why things like those shows toe a lot closer to the more familiar anime style than a purely Western production would. Korea also has the benefit of an animation industry that's not quite going through the same...issues Japan's is (although it has problems of its own, including the fact that most non-outsourced work isn't very good), and the American studios have a large wallet to fund these things, so you get a lot more frames and a lot more fluid motion shots, particularly as Western animation tends to emphasize motion over model fidelity (whereas Japanese anime is the reverse). |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Cooking also allows you leeway for trial and error that cannot be done with animation, of any sort, due to how expensive and time consuming even one attempt can be. And it takes a whole team of people to make a TV show or movie, whereas a single chef can make a dish for someone else to eat. There are some chefs who can imitate someone else's style after they eat some of it without ever having watched them do it, and I think that's because they can try again and again until they're satisfied. I think that if a theoretical animator could make an animated work (even a short) by oneself and in a week, and this animator can afford to try as many times as one likes, our theoretical animator will eventually produce something indistinguishable, visually, from anime made in Japan for Japanese audiences.
American comic books, at least the superhero side of it, has a pretty rigid range of styles, I noticed. It's as if they trained to do this one style that they have trouble doing other styles. It was only after they did stuff that looked wildly different, like the crayon-like Teen Titans comics, that I started seeing more diversity. I never had that experience with animation instructors, but then again, I went to a university with a film production program that completely lacked an animation program. Most of the students were totally disinterested in anything animated, but I would hear from other people about an anti-anime slant. I think it's just a generational gap, akin to Hollywood being two to three decades behind. "Dadgum kids!"
That's what I noticed watching Panty & Stocking too! I thought I was crazy for being the only one to be thoroughly unconvinced due to the way the characters moved. I've seen some anime fans recommend it for people who watch western animation but will not watch anime, and I want to tell them, "No, they'll know right away. The only people who can't tell them apart are people who haven't watched enough western animation to know." I think the biggest giveaway, visually is the low framerate, however. Western animation is simple in character design so it can maintain a smooth framerate. That is, it prioritizes fluidity, whereas anime prioritizes frame detail. And narratively, the biggest giveaway is its high level of continuity requiring episodes be watched in order. You cannot jump in in the middle nor watch episodes out of order without being lost. As for why western animation prefers 4 fingers on each hand, this is due to the design of early characters like Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who had big, thick fingers. There was only room to fit three fingers and a thumb. Notice that in the early cartoons with more realistic character design, like the Fleischer Superman shortsd, they had five fingers.
American animation is VERY focused on fluidity. Rarely does it get any worse than twos. This is best exemplified in lip flaps. Anime tends to alternate between "closed" and some form of "open." American animation, no matter how low-quality, will always have at least one in-between frame. When you have a character speaking quickly, like Boomhauer in King of the Hill, it can be animated on ones. (The only exception among popular shows is South Park, which is intentionally bad and meant to be done on a shoestring budget.) Also, sakuga has nothing to do with fluidity, except when a Japanese animation director wants to focus on fluidity. |
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SillyPerson
 Posts: 39 Location: Vatican City |
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Perfect Hair Forever is an American animation that imitates anime style pretty perfectly, and also forever. It does the limited animation thing, has anime-style eyes, everything, and it is written to sound like badly translated Engrish (akin to "all your base"). Even the credits which are in Wingdings look kinda like Japanese. OK so it is just a parody of anime. But it is fun, and I think they imitate the style pretty well.
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Stuart Smith
 Posts: 1298 |
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There isn't an anime style, but it's still incredibly easy for medium savvy people to tell if something is drawn in Japan or elsewhere due to things like technique and method. It's a bit like that obscenity law which states "I'll know it when I see it". Likewise, it's easy to tell when a show is trying to copy an anime style aesthetic despite the fact there is no real universal anime style. When it comes to the actual animation, it becomes even easier to tell than just using art alone because animation has its own variances.
Nowadays it's a rarity, but back during the mid 2000s and early 10s it was all the rage. It seemed like every action cartoon coming out was taking cues from anime in some regard. Ben 10 is the easiest to use since it keeps getting rebooted. Compare the first series and its anime-esque style to the current style that looks like typical noodle-limb style. Copying anime is no longer a thing, presumably because anime on television isn't really a thing anymore either so there's no competition aspect to it. The only real anime-esque show airing right now is Voltron and it's Netflix only, and it's by the people behind Korra/Avatar so it reveals those people are probably the only ones still clinging onto the trend. Action animation kind of died off, which in turn means the anime style died off. Or maybe it was the other way around? -Stuart Smith |
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lys
 Posts: 1017 Location: mitten-state |
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E-conte (絵コンテ) - if you google that you should find a bunch of examples. I don't know much about the technical side of animation, so I'm not entirely sure how they differ from storyboards in other animation industries. |
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svines85
 Posts: 42 |
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A good article, thanks
Yup, and there you have it.......this is style we're talking about here, not just nuts-and-bolts mechanical type stuff. Yeah, you can try to copy....sometimes with some degree of success.....but yeah, it's still just gonna be a copy. And, I don't know, Kiza seemed like they were kind of disappointed with other (Western) adaptations of the "anime" inspired style........well, for myself, I've enjoyed and appreciated a number of those types of works. I personally think that's the best way to go.......not trying to totally "copy" the style, but taking whatever elements and incorporating them into your style to make something new. But that's just me I guess 
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svines85
Posts: 42 |
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Heh......that one was freaking hilarious
Yeah, more parody and satire on the style, but yeah, definitely anime-esqe
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Paiprince
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I don't know how these guys were able to create these imitations without mentally cringing themselves during and after the process. They must've been so full of themselves that they could be just like Japan. "Turning Japanese" they ain't.
Not to dismiss anime being an inspiration to a foreigner's creation, but unless you're totally familiar with how Japanese animators work, just stick to what you know best. On the reverse side, Japan manages to get get the "designs" pretty much on point (LOGH had characters who look like they'd fit in Captain Planet and Panty and Stocking wouldn't look out of place in, say, Johnny Test), but that's as much as they're willing to ape. When it comes to technique, they will always revert to their own methods which is why Western pandering anime like Redline and Space Dandy still retain their "Japanesiness." Japanese industry can into fluidity and there are several instances in which they incorporate it, be it in TV or movie format. Sakuga and Itano Circus being a few among other trademark Japanese animation techniques. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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I'm curious about these American animators who seem to have a grudge against anime. Why? Is it the frame rate? I certainly can recall lots of anime sequences that "flow" just as smoothly as American ones (though I don't watch much American animation these days). Do they dislike the character designs? The lack of attention to mouth flaps? All these seem rather nit-picky to me as an outsider interested only in the aesthetics of the finished works.
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Selipse
Posts: 216 |
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On the technical side, yes, it would be the lower amount of drawings and movement. Anime does have fluid sequences (ie sakuga), some even better than what America produces, but most of the time it's not like that. Lip flaps also get criticized. One other big thing is that, on top of not being fluid all the time, anime doesn't always make full use of the 12 basic principles of animation, which are treated as the Commandments within the western animation industry. Outside of sakuga, anime doesn't use much stretch and squash, there's not as much exaggeration, they don't use clear silhouettes, etc, etc. Anime really goes against pretty much the entire Disney school of animation. American animators see that these cartoons are not following "the rules" and thus dismiss them. |
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NearEasternerJ1
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Average drawings per episode (Anime): 3300 (roughly) Average drawings per episode (American): 10,000 Most fluid TV anime: Afro Samurai: 10,000 drawings at least Most fluid TV American animation: The Amblin animated shows: 25,000 drawings http://31.media.tumblr.com/5974a1562f7b1f7810bde495154cfaea/tumblr_mqv0z2eCVI1swzwcfo1_500.gif http://i.imgur.com/iLpcVAT.gif So YES, American animation is more fluid objectively. Sakuga doesn't mean much if it isn't consistent fluid moving. Anime has the worst animation of any medium of animation. |
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Selipse
Posts: 216 |
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Those are some bad gif choices. Eh... American animation makes it a point to be consistent throughout its run, thus maintaining a certain quality all the time. However, that also doesn't allow for the breadth of personality Japanese animators can have. I don't think I've ever seen an American TV show as impressive as Mob Psycho 100. Not only is it consistently fluid, but its visual direction is amazing. This article explains it really well. American animation definitely has a bigger number of drawings, but just having more drawings doesn't make it more visually interesting. |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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There's more to fluidity than the amount of drawings or frames per second. You might not be aware of this but most 90's cartoons are animated in Japan so using TMS animated shows like Animaniacs doesn't really count for American animators unless it's one of the segments an American studio animated, but even then you're pulling from a show that's 20 years old This is more accurate toward what American animation is like these days: https://youtu.be/TxJGnALYmHg https://youtu.be/Zgxger8fGpk Cherrypicking a Japanese animated show for the golden age of US animation isn't reflective of where we are now. We have to look at modern anime and modern cartoons, which means Adventure Time, Harvey Beaks, The Loud House, Milo Murphy's Law, etc... The hard part is finding shows that aren't done in Flash or CGI to compare to anime |
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