Animation Quality is QUALITY
I occasionally praise the animation quality of something, but I usually don’t really convey the aesthetics aspect with those statements. I’m not very rigorous about those casual praises either. I do, however, talk about aesthetics separately because I think it’s important. Anime is a medium defined heavily by the visuals and I believe one of the defining characteristics is in the aesthetics. I enjoyed some mediocre, animated fare (Magic Knight Rayearth comes to mind) that are not much more than moving slide shows half the time, but also some arguably high quality things, like the two Ghost in the Shell TV series. I believe both sorts of shows can be enjoyable partly due to the aesthetics. It might be why even a show as irredeemable as Musashi Gundou makes it out of obscure-ville and into the consciousness of some anime viewers of the west.
Now how each of us define quality in terms of visuals will vary. I think self-proclaimed Otaking Johnson (UK-based translator of some of this stuff) made some video a while back saying anime today is less “quality” than anime of yesterday. His claim aside, Johnson laid out a framework to support his claim, and matched some old-fashion 80s/90s OAV visuals to some popular TV anime of the late 2000-era. What’s telling is that people subsequently criticized him for it. Well, a little criticism doesn’t hurt, but more importantly because he presented a framework, people can constructively give comments about how he had a lot of invalid points in the comparison.
What’s different is when people make a statement on “animation quality” without really justifying it. Like when people talk down on Birdy Decode 2 episode 7. Or people talking down on Kyoto Animation’s … animation. Or talking about Kaiba’s animation being bad. It’s ok if you don’t like it but you have to explain why! I think quality is one of those words that definitely infer some objective substance, a descriptor of a thing’s constitution, its makeup. It is unlike words such as flavor or, well, aesthetics, which infers something more related to the critic’s perception and reaction to what the thing is. It’s not even like “good” or “bad” because those are widely used subjectively.
But that is not to say that two people can or cannot have different opinions on quality; it’s just that in order to arrive at your opinion you must have a framework that could be objectively stated that others can trace your thought process to the same conclusion. I sure hope people have different opinions on animation quality and different perspectives to examine it. However, without knowing how you arrived at your conclusion, there’s little anyone can do to appreciate your brilliance, so to speak.
For example, one can state the framework as: If an anime has blobby hands, the animation is low quality.
This is great, because now one can say “Show X has poor animation quality because of the blobby hands.”
Because who in their right mind would criticize a framework based on how blobby the hand is? It’s like trying to kick a retard or steal candy from a baby. It’s great also because a serious reader would not be 100% certain that if it is a joke or not. There are some genuine retards who think blobby hands signify animation quality all by itself, but certainly it also can be a part of a larger analysis that indicates something about the animation. Plus, the statement is kind of ludicrous. It’s almost like saying anime with the color green in it has low animation quality. Or to go full circle, that animation with only 3 shades of color is lower quality than animation with 4 shades of color, as Johnson partly stated.
Also please note, this is about animation quality and not aesthetics, or in other words, it’s a problem of confusing aesthetic choices with the limits of animation. The confusion is not unexpected; one of the defining characteristic of anime is that it is visually lean–that it is both cheap and creatively so. A visually compelling scene can be done with just 3 shades instead of 4, but nonetheless just as impressive. Anime like Aria and Hidamari Sketch are popular but also awfully full of panned stills, or just plain, non-moving still scenes; most people don’t really care about that. Kaiba is also another shocking example, with entire episodes largely animated by a single person. Blobby hands abound!
I’m not going to get into criticizing frameworks based on number of shades or whatever, but let’s just say that it is pretty “awesome” to dig deeper into the way we formulate opinions and see if we understand why things are the way they are. For example, why do random people’s baseless claims on animation quality bother me? Probably because I see a bit of myself in them, that the ability to distinguish key details but the inability to put it in the right context can cause comical consequences.
Then again there are worse things you could do, like using a -sama honorific on your online nickname or call yourself the royalty of the otaku, etc.
The crux of the argument that people had against Johnson was that he was comparing the level of detail in high-budget 80s/90s OAV animation against modern, low-budget made-for-TV animation. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison and if you take a decent budget OAV from now it’s usually on par with if not better animated.
The fact that old hand-drawn stuff when done with a good budget is more aesthetically pleasing than modern animation is another argument entirely. Personally, I tend to agree with that idea. Modern Computer-aided animation is very clinical and precise. I guess it’s a lot like the way that so many audiophiles prefer the sound of vinyl to CD.
Talking about “animation quality” is in my opinion a complete dead-end. It’s got nothing to do with quality. If something is perceived as being ‘higher quality’ then what is actually meant is that the animation has been produced with a higher budget. Animation is art, and it’s impact has got very little to do with how much money they’ve pour into it, and everything to do with the overall aesthetic. A mid-budget show with a lot of stills and so on can have more impact than a high-budget eyecandy spectacular. Hell, one of the reasons that people like Akiyuki Shinbo’s work so much is because he uses the medium so creatively to express his ideas without needing high-budget animation.
Negative Zero already mentioned it, and I agree about the misplaced/unfair comparisons in that video.
Yes, this.
With regards to frameworks and animation quality standards, I’m not sure if digiboy’s frames per second rule should apply. It makes sense though given that this isn’t about aesthetics at all.
So if it isn’t, will it be just a matter of the number of frames per second which suggests fluidity, controlled perhaps with the more subjective ‘correctness’ of sequencing (i.e. the drawings look well together in sequence; the hands don’t turn into tentacles in some frames)? What do you think?
Yes, which is why (as a side note) to me it seems like things like character design weigh on people’s minds more than how things move. Or in another way, I guess, can something “look good” while it’s doing what it’s doing.
>Then again there are worse things you could do, like using a -sama honorific on your online nickname or call yourself the royalty of the otaku, etc.
Oh lols.
Also worth noting that a lot of people can’t even differentiate art from animation…
I think you guys are generally at where I’m standing in terms of this issue, but there is a lot to say about animation quality in that ultimately there is an industry/production process aspect to it. There are some big time examples of this, such as during the switch from traditional cel animation to computer-aided animation in the late 90s and early 2000s, or the attempt to coerce 3DCG together with 2D digital ink stuff, or even something as simple as cel checking, or consistency of how things look between all the different cuts.
In other words, I don’t think talking about animation quality is a dead end; the technical aspect of animation is very non-dead-end and the production process and the output of the different processes is important. It’s simply just often confused with, like, direction or cinematography.
@ghostlightning
I’m not familiar with digitalboy’s FPS rule or whatever, but the industry standard is counting key frames. The rest is how hard you work your inbetweeners (and indirectly, how much money you got to spend in production).
I disagree about budget having a small impact on the animation. While a smart director can certainly ameliorate the effects of a tiny budget, the best and most talented teams generally cost more. Art might be subjective, but I think you could probably come to set of metrics that would objectively measure animation quality.
Also, just because a show has a lot of high-impact stills doesn’t mean it has good animation. The animation still sucks, and you’re just being pacified by the skillful storytelling. I don’t think you need special frameworks for talking about animation quality. Key frames is a very good indicator, with some exceptions in cases where the designs simplify by a huge degree any time there is motion.
Budget definitely has an impact on animation, but the way I read it from NegativeZero is that a drawing drawn with a stick on a sandy beach can be just as “good” as a drawing done with your blood on a platinum-plated canvas, for example. For some people that’s how they measure the “artfulness” or whatever. It is just one aspect of the overall thing.
I think more importantly, when people talk about animation quality they just generally have no clue what they mean by that. Implicitly there’s some kind of standard that one has to compare with to make a statement on the quality of something, after all, and I’m not sure if people know this, let alone being able to furnish a framework that makes sense in this context. I know I am fairly limited when I talk about stuff like this, so I tend not to get nitpickery, beyond something obvious.
However, I think it’s foolish to qualify animation quality purely on a key frame basis as there’s a lot more to it than just that. It’s almost like saying a (regular) movie is low quality when it doesn’t have fancy special effects or expensive and explosive stunt work. There are some works that have high key frame counts and still come across as bottom barrel to some people because they can’t tell the sky from the ground, for example. Naruto is actually one of the best examples of this. Another example is Shugo Chara, which had episodes with over 8k key frames per ep.:
http://zepy.momotato.com/2008/09/03/shugochara-animation-stuff/
But really, it’s just your typical and trivial anime on TV. I mean, did you watch episode 43? Can you tell it had movie production-level number of key frames? I doubt most people could, because I couldn’t–it only looks “better” than some of the other episodes.
When we’re talking about something that is cheap on purpose (as in cost of production), we have to use a framework that makes sense of that fact. A pure key frame per episode count only indicates animation quality on a wholesale basis, perhaps more like the clock speed of your CPU doesn’t explains the whole story about real life benchmarking of your computer and how Intel or AMD charges you more money for it. It’s going to run super slow either way if you don’t have enough RAM or have other bottlenecks.
Panning stills can be fine, if they are beautiful stills. Being “pacified by skillful storytelling” is also a part of the animator’s art, it’s a part of the whole package.
I’m not one to talk, however, I see people complaining about Shangri-lol’s animation quality and I don’t know what they’re talking about — I just don’t notice it. Complaints about its storytelling, on the other hand, I have sympathy with (even though I’m enjoying the show a great deal — more than K-on, for example).
The number of key-frames is a nice objective measure — but with anime it’s always been a matter of what’s done with those key frames that’s mattered most.
Animation quality on a dime is still not “quality,” kind of like what you’d expect of $4/lb beef versus $8/lb beef. But to a starving man I don’t think it matters, and not to mention what it means to a hardcore vegan. On the other hand it doesn’t take an expert to criticize the eatery for serving him well-done steak when he asked for medium-rare. It doesn’t matter if the restaurant is all about “pacifying the customers by skillful storytelling”; I’m gonna dock some points for getting the steak wrong. There is a technical element to all of this and it is distinct and separate from criticisms on aesthetics. We can splooge over moe character designs and whatever, but if they got the animation wrong because they put the wrong brand of guitar on the wrong guitar body, that’s a no-no.
wow omo. nice analogy. do you have a thing about people with special needs. Just don’t get your nastiness. The way you use the word retard scares me a little, like you’re a big bully. Shame on you.
I am a big internet bully. But this post is not even half way up on the bully-meter as it wasn’t intended to be so. However I think if anyone felt insulted it’s probably because it’s exactly what they need to hear.
The other problem with this is that Japan adopted as standard more limited animation practices than America did. Astro Boy did it against Tezuka’s wishes; he hated limited animation, but the budgets of the day forced him to use the technique, and anime’s been rather slaved to limited animation techniques ever since. There’s different cultural aesthetics in play, too–I’m sure that the cultural aesthetic of “ma”, negative space, and “less is more” contributed just as much as the budgetary demands–and why anime with a low budget need not also have poor aesthetics.
I still think an old quote Justin Sevakis once quoted from Kunihiko Ikuhara sums it up best: after being shown the Powerpuff Girls movie, Ikuhara reportedly asked the person who’d invited him “This cost HOW much? And it looks like THIS?”