Animation vs music

[myhead3]

Now I already posted this in the animation forums but I wanted to keep it as non-bias as possible so I'm just going to copy and paste what I said there to get the opinions musicians themselves.

Probably going to get a bunch of blow back for this but, animation vs music, which do you guys feel is more labor intensive on average. This isn't me saying ones better then the other but I've been having this back n fourth with my mate about this topic for months. I say making music is easier to do than making an animation, he says there both on even footing and take similar effort which I disagree with *to an extent if were considering the length and scope of the music*, but what I'm referring to, is a animation of similar quality to music, and about roughly the same length, as someone who has done both music and animation I find music to be easier *and fun* to make, you can just zone out and produce the music without a lot of coordination right on the spot were as animation takes a lot of pre-planning and communication before hand. but what do you guys think?

[SkankyMojo]

There are so many ways to look at this. On the surface animation, specifically frame by frame, that's more labour intensive for sure, compared to say an "average" 3-4 minute song production. That's only considering the specific temporal frame of those two acts though. When you consider things for a musician, like the decades of practice taken to become proficient at an instrament. Then that's another way to look at it. Then the equivalent example can be given for animation. Ultimately what this reveals in my mind, is the fact you can't make accurate objective statements about broad-stroke concepts like this. We could compare the effort taken in one specific animation and peice of music, but inevitably any statements about the wholes, will be sweeping, and overlook the outlying edges of the bell curve. Well, that's my take.

[myhead3]

At 1/23/24 11:12 AM, SkankyMojo wrote: There are so many ways to look at this. On the surface animation, specifically frame by frame, that's more labour intensive for sure, compared to say an "average" 3-4 minute song production. That's only considering the specific temporal frame of those two acts though. When you consider things for a musician, like the decades of practice taken to become proficient at an instrament. Then that's another way to look at it. Then the equivalent example can be given for animation. Ultimately what this reveals in my mind, is the fact you can't make accurate objective statements about broad-stroke concepts like this. We could compare the effort taken in one specific animation and peice of music, but inevitably any statements about the wholes, will be sweeping, and overlook the outlying edges of the bell curve. Well, that's my take.

For sure man, there are many factors that go into both mediums, thanks for your input.

[Leavesz]

Animation essentially being a bunch of images played one after the other I think makes it more comparable to an entire album of music. I'm pretty sure you could make an entire 1hour album in the same amount of time it'd take to make a 5 minute animation, I think at least, I'm not really sure. The time it takes depends a lot on the quality standard and the experience of whoever's working on the thing etc. etc. etc.

They're not really directly comparable things so you can't say that one is objectively harder than the other. Only subjectively.