I need some information on 2d > 3d

[Nick-The-Holy-Potato]

Heyo everyone! I have an animation due next Thursday up in Washington D.C. for this program at my school called Business Professionals of America. It has to be about a super hero.

Anyways, I notice most of the competition there will be using 3D animation, so I thought If there was a way to convince my judges (we have to talk about the animation after presenting) that 2D animation is harder to use/better in general than 3D animation that would help my chances in placing higher.

Now I don't want to start a flame war, and i'm not saying 3D animation IS HARDER than 2D animation, I just want to convince the judges that. Also on a side note most of the people using 3D animation will probably be using programs that come with most of the stuff already designed/rendered (Sorry I'm not very familiar with 3D animation) so any info on programs that I could look up on would be appreciated. I have goggled it and got a few ideas as to why but I thought maybe someone here could help me acquire some better information.

*Also, any techniques that may come in handy in Flash would be helpful to know, as i'm still kinda limited in what I can do sadly.

[Nick-The-Holy-Potato]

Correction

I didn't mean 3D animation is harder than 2d, I meant 2d animation is harder than 3d. Sozzy.

[gener8ion]

At 4/28/11 08:13 PM, Nick-The-Holy-Potato wrote: Correction

I didn't mean 3D animation is harder than 2d, I meant 2d animation is harder than 3d. Sozzy.

I suppose you can't argue which is harder,
but if you insist in my opinion

3D is very time consuming to actually create that initial figure.
where as 2D you need to actually recreate every frame - considering you're doing frame by frame animation.

sorry this isn't helpful :(

[Nick-The-Holy-Potato]

At 4/28/11 08:39 PM, gener8ion wrote:

At 4/28/11 08:13 PM, Nick-The-Holy-Potato wrote: Correction

I didn't mean 3D animation is harder than 2d, I meant 2d animation is harder than 3d. Sozzy.

I suppose you can't argue which is harder,
but if you insist in my opinion

3D is very time consuming to actually create that initial figure.
where as 2D you need to actually recreate every frame - considering you're doing frame by frame animation.

sorry this isn't helpful :(

Thank you! it is very helpful!

And I agree you can't really argue, both are very difficult depending on what your doing. I just need to convince the judges 2D is harder/better.

[Nick-The-Holy-Potato]

A wild Bump appeared!

[ThorClodofBlunders]

[soapbox]

Advantages of 3D/disavantages of 2D:
-consistent lighting
-consistent mass, no need to worry about perspective drawing
-having a set to move a camera around in (2D backgrounds tend to be limited, in terms of depth, unless you're Richard-Williams-insane and draw your background moving on ones)
-Simulation: You ever try animating photo-realistic water, fur, or cloth by hand? It's hard :[

Disadvantages of 3D/ advantages of 2D
-Unless you're working with a professional/godly amazing modeller and rigger, you're not going to be able to push poses that far. 2D poses can be drawn into the perfect pose every single time, while with a 3D model you're going to be limited by what the rig can do, how the polys are weighted to the rig, etc. Simple things that you can do in 2D, such as flexing a bicep and having the bicep grow, is actually really hard to do in 3D (I know Pixar and ILM have to actually get into modelling and rigging the muscle groups in the arm to pull something like that off)
-Typically, 3D animation is more demanding of being perfectly animated. a 2D animation can be slightly choppy/imperfect and it'll look more charming; a 3D animation with an incorrect motion just looks bad (compare Hoodwinked to those Charlie Brown specials)
-When I worked on "The Incident at Tower 37" we had constant, constant problems with some of the renders producing weird artifacts/glitches and whatnot on the screen. In many cases, it was my job to go through and paint out those errors frame by frame. Don't get me started on how many issues we had with the shadows because a good chunk of time, part of the team was trying to figure out why the shadow passes would crash the render farm
-2D animation can be churned out much faster than 3D animation, provided you have the right workflow and a large library of pre-built poses to choose from (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUWu5DGow YE , http://blog.cloudkid.com/keyframe-caddy/
)
-It's a LOT easier to break the "rules" in 2D animation, i.e. breaking joints, exaggerating perspective (in 3D you need to program the different lens types for the cameras)
-While you'd need less artists dedicated to animating in 3D, you make up for that number with having to hire programmers and computer technicians to cover the technical side of 3D animation
-It's not necessarily faster to animate in 3D. Maybe in the long run, if you're using the same characters over and over again you save time by not having to draw once the characters are modelled, but, as an example, "Tower 37" is a 10ish minute 3D animate film that took about 3 years to complete (I only worked on it for one semester), whereas my 5 minute thesis project (a combination of 2D + 3D animation, but most character animation was done by hand) was done in one semester/4 months (not including storyboarding time)

IMO, 3D animation is actually harder to do than 2D animation because there's so much more you need to do and so many more things that can go wrong. Provided you're an amazing artist, the only real disadvantage to 2D animation is how fast you can draw, but the definite advantage of 2D over 3D is that with hand drawn animation, the animator can really focus on the performance of characters, rather than trying to wrestle with a rig and its limitations. HOWEVER, keep in mind that "harder" is relative; I know some people who find it much easier to animate a fire simulation with code and maths than it is to draw out 400 frames of character animation.

If you're trying to push on your professors than 2D is a viable option for fast productions, it might be worth it to look into south park and word girl and how they do things because their turnout rate is actually pretty fast. Also, it might help to explain how many things can screw up with 3D animation (because technology will ALWAYS fail at some point or another)

[/soapbox]

[00-BEN-00]

ok, so your knowledge of 3D animation is bullshit..

anyways, you shouldn't lie too much, just explain that 2D and 3D are completely different types of animation. Make sure you know everything about 2D animation, and think of an answer to the question "Why do you prefer 2D animation over 3D animation?".

[HowardWimshurst]

hmm. If I where trying to convince someone that 2d animation is "better" than 3d I would start up a forum on newgrounds blaring out >3d animation is sooooo much better than 2d!!< and then a mob of computer trolls would start arguing then you just pick out the points that suit your argument.
As for choosing between 2d and 3d, you can animate In 2d to give it enough depth to look kind of 3d
I do this by motion tweening still structures like buildings
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/da0f 4b7e45fd2ab11e56cdee4d30c7fc
and frame by frame for characters (i know its not the best)
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/18d5 ca98ae6e6f34b6737313a2330a84

oh, and good luck