How does Anime do it?

[HollowedPumkinz]

You know what I find odd? How a lot of anime, even if it isn't very popular, seems to be very well animated. I mean, the background art, the characters, the movement and the special effects. I've seen many Animes that simply have exquisite animation in all those categories, yet the show itself was never popular. Be it mainstream or not, almost all Anime I've seen has great quality. How?

I always thought that in order to get that kind of quality, one would need a professional studio to work at. Yet, considering the lack of popularity of the show, how are they producing enough revenue for that kind of quality when they don't have a very large fan base to produce the revenue and thus, use that studio? It just seems that for how high the quality is, they'd need the money to come from somewhere to do it. Perhaps because a lot of Anime seasons are only 10-20 episodes long, they use up all their funding working on high quality shows in small quanitities, while other, longer shows, lack that quality but usually last longer.

I'm just not all too entirely sure, and it's been quite the conundrum for me. Anybody care to explain?

[AlphaCentauri]

Maybe they are more popular in Japan/other places then they are in America?

[icecreammac]

Perhaps the studio is using revenue it got from an earlier, more popular anime it produced.

[Halberd]

That is one of the up sides of anime is that you can do shit other forms of media and entertainment can't

action scenes in anime are pretty cool.

[Sanch]

anime is pretty shit, if anything is good its maybe one decent background and then a bunch of one-color characters whose only moving parts are their mouths

if you actually want to see actual quality cartoons look up soviet animation

[Shady]

Anime has always emphasized animation. :p
Japanese people are good with computers?

[Boomstick]

They spend time detailing, I guess they're more into detail than just getting the show done for money.

[WiiFittoToreinaa]

maybe they drug/hentai deal on there own time

[GenericName54]

Anime does not cost a lot to produce. That's kind of why it exists.

[Finalfina]

Because they are just simply awesome. :3

I just finished watching an ep of Toradora. Good stuff.

[ornery]

Its relatively easy to draw since there is a simple canon for it. And the bulk of anime is actually horribly animated. The backgrounds are nicely drawn, some of the characters sure. But when you really look at it, most of it is static characters blinking and a 4 frame animation for the mouth. Chop in a few 5 frame quick motions every so often when the gesture changes an presto, you have an anime.

Look at disney (movies, not shows) or even some of the older nickolodeon cartoons and you will see much more dynamic and fluid animation. Shit, even some of the lazy adult swim shows have more lively animation.

[Mismo]

This can explained by that which you said, that there are so many of them. It is not easy to keep track of every anime out there, so of course some will slip by and the first one you notice are the ones that are already popular. Also even if you afterwards seek up other animes it is very common you don't want to put in time to get invested in a new whole story. Most people stick to one or a smaller shows because it is hard to be following all animes out there.

[MrMeD]

Maybe you just think the animation is great because American animation is so shite.
If you pay close attention, it's actually pretty lazy animating at time, but granted, it still decent.

[Falonefal]

I'll stick to Pixar thank you.

[The-Psycho-Ragdoller]

At 12/11/11 03:06 AM, HollowedPumkinz wrote: Anybody care to explain?

There's a thing I read about on wikipedia, a long while ago. If I recall correctly it's some animation thing that's supposed to make drawing the scenes out easier. I remember seeing someone say that it's what was used to make shows like the Boondocks, I'm kind of mad at myself right now for not remembering exactly what it was...

[Sevkat]

Because it's kawaii.

[BumFodder]

I dont see where people are getting the 'static' thing from because ive seen a lot of anime where everything is well animated and the background and characters arent ever static. I know what theyre on about though, but its mostly a thing with older anime thats like 10 years old.

[Squidbit]

You don't need a fancy studio to animate well, you just need to put time and effort into making it look nice.

Also, they don't have great animation. Half of the time it's only the faces that are animated. And if they're walking or something, it's usually just a small animation on loop while the background scrolls.
The only time they ever really animate a lot is if there's a fight scene or something.

Watch some old Looney Toons, they animate like fucking bosses.

[BumFodder]

At 12/11/11 08:16 AM, Squidbit wrote: You don't need a fancy studio to animate well, you just need to put time and effort into making it look nice.

Also, they don't have great animation. Half of the time it's only the faces that are animated. And if they're walking or something, it's usually just a small animation on loop while the background scrolls.
The only time they ever really animate a lot is if there's a fight scene or something.

Watch some old Looney Toons, they animate like fucking bosses.

You should see some of the anime these days. Full HD and fully animated both background and foreground. And the studios who make the anime are plenty and filthy rich. The anime that has been out this year has been especially good looking, I dont think there has been one that ive seen that looked less than amazing.

At 12/11/11 08:13 AM, MikeyS9607 wrote: I prefer western animation to anime. Sometimes with anime you are just looking at the same thing too long.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

As said before, old Disney movies were so well done, then the the late 80's with Ren and Stimpy, and hell even today with MLP.

MLP is so similar to anime that I just stick it in with the time of night that I watch anime.

[MaartenC]

Because they work 24/7.

[ifureadthisdie]

As has been said, Anime has good art, they put detail into the drawings, but the actual animation is horrendous. Constant looping about 4 frames over and over again. They worry TOO much on detail and sacrifice animation. It's annoying too watch, i find it as an eyesore, no amount of detail on a background or character makes up for shitty stiff repetitive movement, and they don't seem to realize that (probably since they don't get that feedback as much as they get fans slurping their cocks screaming so kawaiiii). Eyecandy.
Very few Animes actually put that into consideration and improve animation quality, and usually the ones that do and keep the detail, don't have too many episodes. Which isn't bad, this means less filler and actual plot progress. More money is going into making the show so no time to fuck around with an episode of everyone going to the pool when there's bad guys about to kill everyone.

Quality over quantity Japan!

[II2none]

Anime has limited animation, mouths don't move realistically and characters are stiff unless it comes too an action scene. And even then the fight scenes also tend to reuse the same animation scenes for action scenes as well.

[HollowedPumkinz]

At 12/11/11 04:33 AM, ornery wrote: Look at disney (movies, not shows) or even some of the older nickolodeon cartoons and you will see much more dynamic and fluid animation. Shit, even some of the lazy adult swim shows have more lively animation.

Oh god, please don't make me compare Anime to Disney films please. I like some anime but no one animates like old Disney and especially Pixar. Also, diregard what I said about the animation parts, I meant to say that I wonder how a lot of it looks very detailed and what not. I've seen my fair share of barely changing faces and repetitive style, I at no point, would like to praise that kind of animating.

It just looks good to me, I like realism, growing up on American cartoons, I get use to the "cartoon" style of animating where nothing looks real and everything is stylized to the specific style of the cartoon. Anime has a much more realistic style to it (although of course, within reason of a cartoon), and so I find myself being able to take it more seriously and action scenes seem to have a greater effect because of the seriousness that is usually lacking in western cartoons. Also the detail in the background is something else, in almost all western cartoons, nothing is detailed. Some older Disney films have wonderfully detailed backgrounds like the Fox and the Hound but other than those old movies, nothing these days has detail.

[II2none]

At 12/11/11 03:12 PM, HollowedPumkinz wrote:
It just looks good to me, I like realism, growing up on American cartoons, I get use to the "cartoon" style of animating where nothing looks real and everything is stylized to the specific style of the cartoon. Anime has a much more realistic style to it (although of course, within reason of a cartoon), and so I find myself being able to take it more seriously and action scenes seem to have a greater effect because of the seriousness that is usually lacking in western cartoons.

This is aesthetic not animation. Yes anime has more detail but they lack in acutal animation noticed instantly from the way they speak to how hardly anyone moves while they're talking.

[Lintire]

Anime cuts a lot of corners when it comes to animating, and there's a bunch of established tricks in the trade when it comes to creating a final product. They're just getting better at it as a whole.

But I'm not too fond of it.

[PowerRangerYELLOW]

anime is ussually not very well animated at all because it is pumped out quickly and any anime you have seen with amazing animation is an exception such as akira for example.

Remember the exception proves the rule.

[amplefied]

They trace a lot of their action segments frame by frame from video sources.

It's a pretty old technique

[Freaki-boy92]

anime is very good at giving an illusion of quality through shoddiness with some cheap tricks and decent art.

[Zippy-MyMusic]

Everything Americans can do, the Japanese can do better.

[Idiot-Finder]

At 12/11/11 04:24 AM, Devilshadow666 wrote: maybe they drug/hentai deal on there own time

There's some truth to it.

Gainax admitted that the staff were drunk when they came up with "Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt".

Then there's the fact that CLAMP started out making Saint Seiya yaoi doujins...