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Animation: The Laziness and the Progression over the Years

munchlaxboy

Catching up on XY
(In a rush? Skip down to the bolded section for what you should be responding to.)

For being such an avid poster in this forum, I'm surprised I've never once made a thread in "Anime Discussion". Huh.

Well, basically, I made this thread to talk about the show's ANIMATION. You know, just the basic graphics and visuals of the show.

Obviously, with advancement in technology and funding, the Pokemon TV series has gotten higher quality animation over the years. In the first season, the animation was pretty decent for it's time, with many high and lows. By that I mean at times I was stunned at how they pulled off such fluent animation, and at times how I was in shock over how still and lifeless the characters were.

As some of you may know, I've been re-watching the Original Series (Kanto, Orange Islands, and Johto) for a while (I'm up to "Fighting Flier with Fire" in Johto Journeys). At this point, the animation standards have been slightly upgraded, but still have those lapses of the animators' laziness. However, I've also noticed this in present episodes as well...

After watching "Ignorance is Blissey" (a Johto Journeys episode), then watching "One Big Happiny Family" (a Diamond and Pearl episode), the animation has improved greatly. I was especially in awe over Team Rocket's motto and how fluently they moved it in (albeit, I don't like the "new show" at all but I still have to give it some props). BUT THEN... Right back to laziness. You just have Ash, Brock, Dawn, and Pikachu it one standstill for fifteen seconds, alternating dialogue lines simply through lip flaps. Not one part of their body moved besides their lips. It was like I was watching the "old show" all over again.

Anyway, to summarize:

- The show's animation/visuals has greatly improved over the years.
- The animators' seem to be "bipolar" in a sense, in that they sometimes produce amazing animation followed up by absolute crap.

Three questions for you all to answer:

1. What is your opinion of the Pokemon TV show's animation/visuals?
2. Have you noticed laziness in animation at times? Explain how you feel about it.
3. What is the best display of animation you have seen in the series? The worst?


For me:

1. I was and always will be content with the show's animation/visuals. I believe they bring a livelier sense to the show and make it very entertaining to watch.

2. The laziness is always apparent to me. I feel as if the animators are having a bad day once in a while, that's fine. What I don't understand is how one episode can have an amazing display of animation that obviously took a lot of work, and then a moment later become dull and lifeless..

3. BESIDES THE MOVIES (duh), in the earlier goings of the series (which is my forte), the best animation display I've seen was probably in "The School of Hard Knocks" (Kanto, Episode 9). It was just very fluent and enjoyable, and is one of my most favorite episodes ever (Top 5 without a doubt). On the other hand, I can't really think of an episode that was completely terrible in animation... "The Mystery Menace" (Orange Islands) had some EXTREMELY poor and noticeable lapses in animation. I specifically remember one moment where Ash, Misty, and Tracey just walked across a still screen, with just their legs moving and x2 speed. It was bad... But it was just a few moments. The entire episode wasn't a drag.

OK, I'm done. Now it's your turn. :D
 
Well the bipolar animation can be explained because different art directors take turns animating the episode. The ones that are bad are usually the ones animated by Kinoshita and Natsumi (who animated the fat Electabuzz in "Enter Galactic")
 
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munchlaxboy

Catching up on XY
Well the bipolar animation can be explained because different art directors take turns animating the episode. The ones that are bad are usually the ones animated by Kinoshita and Natsumi (who animated the fat Electabuzz in "Enter Galactic")

Okay, but do these art directors alternate episodes or change within the same episode?

That's what I want to know.
 

'Ferno

Top-Down Trainer
I usually cut the animators some slack. As with One Piece, this is a long series with no end in sight, so it's smarter to spread the budget evenly across the span of the episodes, even if it means alot of sup-par animation. They're doing good with what they've got.

Though I do get tired of when they reuse animations throughout single episodes, it really starts getting noticeable after awhile.
 

munchlaxboy

Catching up on XY
Though I do get tired of when they reuse animations throughout single episodes, it really starts getting noticeable after awhile.

I just remembered something.

In the first episode with the St. Anne, many trainers called out the same Pokemon. They called out Charmanders and other Pokemon too, all with original animations. Then, they all sent out their Pikachus and they REUSED THE PIKACHUS FROM "POKEMON EMERGENCY"! You know, where it shows the Pikachus jumping over a white wall with a yellow background that does not fit in whatsoever to the context of the ship?

That was BY FAR the laziest moment of animation in the Pokemon series. EVER.
 

lolipiece

Pictured: what browsing Serebii does to a person
Staff member
Moderator
It's not laziness


It's budget problems


millions of anime have this
 

Somorio

Waiting for a hound.
Well the bipolar animation can be explained because different art directors take turns animating the episode. The ones that are bad are usually the ones animated by Kinoshita and Natsumi (who animated the fat Electabuzz in "Enter Galactic")

oh man I completely forgot about that, he was a total lard *** in that episode:p
 

KibaLG8

Well-Known Member since the DP Series.
Well the bipolar animation can be explained because different art directors take turns animating the episode. The ones that are bad are usually the ones animated by Kinoshita and Natsumi (who animated the fat Electabuzz in "Enter Galactic")

Ironic, this guy animates bad and his name includes s-h-i-t in it.xD The animation has improved greatly, look how Ash got shocked by Pikachu in the first episode and compare it to now. Or compare how a Pokemon came out of its Pokeball to how it looks like now. Some animators do a splendid job while some suck.:p I'm desperately trying to remember a DP Episode which really sucked animation-wise, I can't put my finger on it though.
 

Anime-Ash

Well-Known Member
Ironic, this guy animates bad and his name includes s-h-i-t in it.xD The animation has improved greatly, look how Ash got shocked by Pikachu in the first episode and compare it to now. Or compare how a Pokemon came out of its Pokeball to how it looks like now. Some animators do a splendid job while some suck.:p I'm desperately trying to remember a DP Episode which really sucked animation-wise, I can't put my finger on it though.
Pokemon DP 4(Dawn of a New Era) and also Sleight of Sand(DP episode with butch and cassidy).
 

GetOutOfBox

Original Series Fan
The newer series animation is definitely much, much better than the Original Series, even though midway through the Original Series they switched from hand drawn to computer painted animation.

One of my biggest peeves, especially in Pre-Johto Pokemon, was when rather than lots of frames being drawn for motion (close up of a pokemon blinking, walking into the distance, battles, etc), the animators would be lazy and just draw 2 frames and create a fade transition between them (i.e a blink is done by having one frame with the eye open, and one frame with the eye closed, and simply have the first frame slowly become transparent revealing the next frame creating an effect where the eyelid seems to materialize into place).

There's even some horrible scenes in which Ash's face is horribly deformed, i.e his top lip sticking out 2 inches farther than his bottom one, luckily mainly in distant shots. Or how about Brock and his famous contortion acts, such as turning his head a full 180 degrees, or holding pots with his hand bent completely inwards. I'll post some pics when I get the time.

Probably the biggest consistent issue with the animation in the older series was the lack of details in backdrops, tree's that were made of blobs of green, etc. There was virtually no depth at all, especially in scenic shots with a landscape behind or adjacent to Ash and Co.

One thing I really like about the newer series is that the color is much more vivid, the older series video seemed to have a beige tinge to everything (you only really notice it when comparing it to BW stills). This may be more an issue with color gamut loss when the show was transmitted over older cable networks back in the 90's before the move from analogue to digital cable was made in North America.
 
Three questions for you all to answer:

1. What is your opinion of the Pokemon TV show's animation/visuals?
2. Have you noticed laziness in animation at times? Explain how you feel about it.
3. What is the best display of animation you have seen in the series? The worst?

I'll try to answer these the best I can:

1.) I guess my opinion on that matter will always change, because, over time, the animation is going to get better and better.

2.) I don't notice laziness at all. Unless it's really, really noticeable. I just watch the show for what it is.

3.) Again, sort of similar to my answer to question 2, I just watch the show for what it is, so there's not really any display of animation the I hate/like best.
 

GetOutOfBox

Original Series Fan
Here's some pics to elaborate on some of the issues I noted in my first post:

[img139]http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/8080/img0123c.png[/img139]
Arghh, look at Ash's lip O_O.

[img139]http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/9138/img0122i.png[/img139]
Brock the Magnificent performing his his famous act of holding/stirring things in the most painful way possible. Also, observe the beautiful scenery behind Ash and Co, look at the, uh, "trees" and the "mountains"!

[img139]http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/584/img0125r.png[/img139]
And Brock the Magnificent performing an amazing feat of flexibility and "watching his back"! And Ash really needs to trim his eye brows, at least in this scene, lol.


I would say the show has definitely improved a lot in the drawing/animation department since it began. Another issue that really used to bug me was the frequent scenes where one person would be talking, and everything/everyone else would freeze, like Ash would be talking to some stranger, and while he was talking Misty and Brock would be standing like zombies, staring at who knows what.

I adjusted the Color/Brightness levels manually, they were pretty bad before. Sorry about the blur, especially in the first picture, but I had to really lower the bitrate when I converted my DVD's video to h.264 MP4 for my 32GB iPod Touch.
 
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munchlaxboy

Catching up on XY
Here's some pics to elaborate on some of the issues I noted in my first post:

[img139]http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/8080/img0123c.png[/img139]
Arghh, look at Ash's lip O_O.

[img139]http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/9138/img0122i.png[/img139]
Brock the Magnificent performing his his famous act of holding/stirring things in the most painful way possible. Also, observe the beautiful scenery behind Ash and Co, look at the, uh, "tree's" and the "mountains"!
[img139]http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/584/img0125r.png[/img139]
And Brock the Magnificent performing an amazing feat of flexibility and "watching his back"! And Ash really needs to trim his eye brows, at least in this scene, lol.


I would say the show has definitely improved a lot in the drawing/animation department since it began. Another issue that really used to bug me was the frequent scenes where one person would be talking, and everything/everyone else would freeze, like Ash would be talking to some stranger, and while he was talking Misty and Brock would be standing like zombies, staring at who knows what.

I adjusted the Color/Brightness levels manually, they were pretty bad before. Sorry about the blur, especially in the first picture, but I had to really lower the bitrate when I converted my DVD's video to h.264 MP4 for my 32GB iPod Touch.

But those aren't all that bad.

The "derp" one is just because that is one frame and looks awkward because its frozen on one image. The only scene isn't bad.

The hand thing is barely noticeable, and while it would be awkward, it is possible for the wrist to bend like that.

I think Brock's head turn actually makes sense. He's not twisting that far.
 

'Ferno

Top-Down Trainer
Out of all the sagas in terms of Animation, I've gotta say that I loved Advance generation out of all of the others, I loved how deep and vivid the colors were. So it was kind of a neutral "whoa!" from me when DP started and everything was so 'bright' again, and there were those jarring blue trees everywhere. Now, granted it is a new region and it needs a different feel, but still, blue trees man, 'never really got used to that. :s

Also, one thing that bothers me nowadays especially, is the rising usage of CG in the anime. The kind they use in the show (like stuff on electronic score boards, water attacks, and ground attacks like rock climb,) it kinda clashes with the surroundings, especially when the CG effects move at a much different "framerate" than the hand drawn stuff around it. I liked just seeing those effects in the movies anyway, when it was still a novelty because of how expensive it was. Seeing that CG floating battleship thing in the second movie was epic, but nowadays, when we're seeing flying pyramids and CG bubble attacks every week, they novelty is kinda lost.
 

GetOutOfBox

Original Series Fan
But those aren't all that bad.

The "derp" one is just because that is one frame and looks awkward because its frozen on one image. The only scene isn't bad.

I extracted the frame from the video manually, as I realize that due to "B-Frames" there is normally some blending between frames in H.264 video. It's not a screenshot or anything.

The hand thing is barely noticeable, and while it would be awkward, it is possible for the wrist to bend like that.

It's possible to bend it like that, but in the actual video, he's stirring the soup (or whatever it is) with his hand in exactly the same position. It's not impossible, it's just a very "unusual" and odd looking way to stir something. It definitely doesn't look natural.

I think Brock's head turn actually makes sense. He's not twisting that far.

He's almost completely turned his head around, lol, the most normal people can manage is a 90 degree turn (aka "looking over your shoulder"). I'm not really saying that mistakes like this bother me, they actually give me a good laugh when I'm watching some of the older eps. I'm just pointing out some of the frequent "odd" footage.

Mistakes like that don't bother me (as I mentioned previously, they're actually pretty funny), but they are mistakes as a result of lazy editing (they really should have been noticed during a test screening).

The big examples of lazy animating (i.e scenes in which only the character speaking is actually moving, no one else blinks, etc) are only seen in video form, so unless I post a video, which is kind of pushing the whole "copyright" issue (which is why I added the copyright disclaimer at the top of the image), I can't really give examples.

The only thing that really bothers me when watching an episode is:
[img139]http://i51.*******.com/20kc1na.png[/img139]
*Should appear as an animation (APNG) in Firefox/Opera, for those using Chrome/IE it will be a single frame. GIF's suck at compressing high detail images.
1. The "Ash throwing a pokeball to begin a battle" clip that is reused in about every episode he battled someone (back in the Original Series, at least). Yes, it's classic, it shows his determination, enthusiasm, blah, blah, but when you see it every episode for 5 years, you begin to hate it.

2. When Ash and Co make a single, fluid movement. As in, they all turn around at exactly the same time. I realize that sometimes this makes sense, but movements perfectly in sync for no apparent reason seemed to be pretty common back in the Original Series, especially before the switch to computer animation. I don't think this is really "lazy" animation per say, but it's annoyance that could be easily avoided.
 
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GetOutOfBox

Original Series Fan
Also, one thing that bothers me nowadays especially, is the rising usage of CG in the anime.

I agree with you, for the most part, mixing CG and anime doesn't really work, but there are some notable exceptions, such as Studio Ghibli, who in recent years have combined the two with beautiful success.

Now if only Studio Ghibli could take up animating for the Pokemon anime...

*prays* ;)
 

'Ferno

Top-Down Trainer
The pic you posted with Brock stirring look normal to me, I think it's just the angle.

The last one, with his turned head, again looks like an angled shot, it looks like he's just turning his head to the right at most.

I don't think the animators fret to much if a certain animation looks sub-par or even kinda weird, after all, it'll only be on screen for seconds at best and they know kids won't be too much into the production values and details of the shots, though I understand for us older fans it is quite weird to look at.
 

GetOutOfBox

Original Series Fan
The pic you posted with Brock stirring look normal to me, I think it's just the angle.

It doesn't look like it to me, but regardless, he's actually held things that way quite often in the Original Series, and after seeing it at various angles, it still looks odd.

The last one, with his turned head, again looks like an angled shot, it looks like he's just turning his head to the right at most.

I agree, it's not freakishly odd, but it's definitely a little painful looking.

I don't think the animators fret to much if a certain animation looks sub-par or even kinda weird, after all, it'll only be on screen for seconds at best and they know kids won't be too much into the production values and details of the shots.

Yeah, I understand that the animators aren't going to make a big deal about everything being perfect, but little things like that wouldn't require a lot of time to fix, especially after the switch to computer painted video was made.

And regardless, lazy animation is the topic of this thread, whether or not it's a big deal isn't really the question. It personally doesn't bother me that much (Except for overused footage), but it is some good examples of obvious mistakes/oddities that could be fixed with minimal effort.

It's not laziness


It's budget problems


millions of anime have this

Besides how off topic this is, there is such thing as taking a little pride in your work. Sure, the studio can't afford to hire top-notch animators, but one of the biggest issues with the anime is the constant reuse of footage, often even footage from within the same episode. There's a difference between being good at drawing and actually putting the effort into drawing unique frames rather than reusing clips constantly.

I can let bad quality backdrops and such slide, but when scenes turn into stills in which the only movement is Ash's mouth opening and closing, or when the animators actually have the audacity to reuse clips from the exact same episode, such as in "Current Events" (EP199), where Ash gets trapped inside a wind mill power plant, a clip of him running down a corridor and bumping into team rocket is used 3 times throughout the episode, with no changes made to it.)
 
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'Ferno

Top-Down Trainer
It doesn't look like it to me, but regardless, And regardless, lazy animation is the topic of this thread, whether or not it's a big deal isn't really the question. It personally doesn't bother me that much (Except for overused footage), but it is some good examples of obvious mistakes/oddities that could be fixed with minimal effort.

Good point, also, seconded on the overused animation. Sometimes they reuse the same animations within the same episode.

Recent example, when Dawn's Piplup had a little squabble against her new Cyndaquil in an episode which it's name escapes me. I recognized the same footage of Pikachu breaking the two up at least twice in the episode. Small thing, but still a little annoying.
 
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