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The New Animation Style

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Soniman

Break the Limit
How do you feel about it? I think it's one of the more progressive things the anime as had with the abolishment of stock backgrounds for the most part and much more fluid animation overall, but others apparentley feel differently.

Where do you stand? Is it an improvement or a regression?
 

Vintrial

Whouffle.
Most of the times is a proguession (Example high action scenes), aldo in simple dialogues the characters that are just listening give some Cardboard dummy vibe lol.
 

Everlasting

Everything stays.
I'm so mad they took away Iron Tail's metal effect and put the simple white glowing instead, like before. Ugh. That just gives me the feeling of regression.
Otherwise I'm so happy with what we've got actually. It makes me smile to see the clean animations and moves. So fresh. :p
 

The Great Butler

Hush, keep it down
The stock backgrounds aren't completely gone, nor is stock footage. Watch XY004, it sure looks to me like Inkay uses the same animation over and over when it uses Psybeam.

I don't think getting mostly rid of the stock backgrounds and giving the characters fingernails was worth how poorly done the artwork is done in episodes like today's and the Rhyhorn racing one.
 

The Great Butler

Hush, keep it down
So, I hear there are some issues with XY's animation. Does anyone know if a new animation studio and/or team is being used? That could explain why.

What I heard was that staff from Pokemon Origins had moved over to the main series. If that's true, the problem is coming from the style they used not meshing well with the previous style. It would look at least a little better if they were animating in the style they were used to instead of trying to combine it with the old style.
 

Lorde

Let's go to the beach, each.
The animation is more fluid and the battle animation is general is nice, but I'm not too enthralled by it. One of the changes that I did love was Iron Tail's animation change; I never liked the BW animation and I'm glad that the tail just glows now instead of turning into metal.
 

wiitard119

Well-Known Member
i actually like it, i wish they would go back to DP style more though. That was my favorite animation style out of all of them.

(we just have to see how volt tackle looks in the new animation now once ash uses it in the league :p)
 
What I heard was that staff from Pokemon Origins had moved over to the main series. If that's true, the problem is coming from the style they used not meshing well with the previous style. It would look at least a little better if they were animating in the style they were used to instead of trying to combine it with the old style.

If that is true, then I think the animation could improve. The rough draft-like quality of the animation seems to indicate that the studio is probably still getting used to trying to keep their style of animation pitch-perfect to the show. That's what I think. I see some missing gaps that can easily be filled when they are spotted.
 
Looks almost exactly like BW and DP's to me. What's the difference?

I thought so too. Then, Butler provided a photo on another thread to prove his point about the animation. The heads seem a bit disproportionate, and he mentioned other things I forgot. But I've seen it up close, though I can't really say it's terrible. I think it's more like the studio's trying to get the hang of animating this according to the show.
 
The stock backgrounds aren't completely gone, nor is stock footage. Watch XY004, it sure looks to me like Inkay uses the same animation over and over when it uses Psybeam.

I don't think getting mostly rid of the stock backgrounds and giving the characters fingernails was worth how poorly done the artwork is done in episodes like today's and the Rhyhorn racing one.
Ash's poses are stock. Pikachu's attacks at times are. And the art work is poor at times. Weird framerate at times.

I think XY animation has its share of flaws just like BW was ridden with stock footage. DP had awful artwork too IIRC. BW's artwork seemed better (?), but I don't really have an eye for these things. But I agree, XY animation has its flaws.

But the battle scenes are a bit upgraded and good. A few scenes are golden like Bunnelby vs Heliolisk. But a few like Manetric verus Maiika seem weird.
 

The Great Butler

Hush, keep it down
I thought so too. Then, Butler provided a photo on another thread to prove his point about the animation. The heads seem a bit disproportionate, and he mentioned other things I forgot. But I've seen it up close, though I can't really say it's terrible. I think it's more like the studio's trying to get the hang of animating this according to the show.

Here is the image in question, for reference:

[img139]http://25.media.tumblr.com/bcf47257a1d14eb48b52ffcd166a8f81/tumblr_mxq67jmdQi1smmou4o1_1280.png[/img139]

The heads and bodies are frequently out of proportion. Bonnie is the best example, because even in her stock art, her head is the size of her entire torso.

Something seems off to me about the faces, too; I've noticed multiple times where characters will just be staring off into space or the faces are drawn strangely.

On the animation side of things, it fluctuates wildly, which isn't good. Look at the scene where Ash sends out Fletchling in today's episode, for example. When it chirps after being sent out, its beak is animated amazingly fluidly and smoothly. But then when the view switches to its back, it's flapping its wings with only two frames, one with the wings up and one with them down. That's not the first time either, because in XY002 there was a scene of Clemont running with only two frames.

I think XY animation has its share of flaws just like BW was ridden with stock footage. DP had awful artwork too IIRC. BW's artwork seemed better (?), but I don't really have an eye for these things. But I agree, XY animation has its flaws.

BW's flaw was its stock footage everywhere, in my opinion - Woobat barely had anything that wasn't stock footage - but the artwork seemed on the whole more consistent overall. DP had atrocious art directors like Kazue Kinoshita and Yusaku Takeda bringing down its art. It seems like a lot of new animators joined over Da! and into XY, which is probably where these issues are coming from.

But the battle scenes are a bit upgraded and good. A few scenes are golden like Bunnelby vs Heliolisk. But a few like Manetric verus Maiika seem weird.

Agreed on both counts. Bunnelby VS. Heliolisk was a great example of what the animation should look like, while Manectric VS. Inkay was a complete mess.
 

Ace Kenshader

Dreaming sexy
I'm sure that, given time, the fluctuations will happen less and less as the animators refine and improve their work. Though I honestly don't get why they have to change it up every new series; if the story is essentially going to have the same elements, then they are just simply window dressing the same product.
 

An00bis

Wicked Witch
The backgrounds are really lush and vibrant but the stuff going on in the foreground's pretty terrible.

Butler's post hits on most of it. The anime's always had scaling/proportion problems but they seem especially bad here. I'm hoping it's just a slew of new animators who haven't found their footing yet.

The drop in " frame-rate " is noticeable, too, and is even in the opening. The animators skipping so many frames makes the resulting animation look choppy.

I appreciate that they took a step back from the CGI and are using more conventional special effects. It doesn't look as cheesy now.
 

The Great Butler

Hush, keep it down
Taking everything into account, I kind of wonder if the new animators aren't trying to do something entirely new, but are hedging their bets and playing it safe, creating a weird blend of the old and new styles that's the source of the problem.

I'm reminded of Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos, which adopted an entirely new art style compared against the series itself. It was strange and had a lot of problems (including plenty of proportioning and scaling errors) but it had a strange sort of charm to it. I think it was because it jumped fully into the new style, so it developed a look fully its own. XY seems conflicted between sticking to the old style and using its new style, and honestly, I think it would be better off if they fully embraced the new things they want to try instead of attempting to merge their ideas into the old style.

EDIT: I should also mention, I do like the coloring in XY, so not everything is bad in my eyes.
 
I'm gonna be honest here: I miss Ash's more predominantly blacker eye color from the OS-DP myself-- I really miss it.

Other than that, I like the XY Animation style very much.
 
Taking everything into account, I kind of wonder if the new animators aren't trying to do something entirely new, but are hedging their bets and playing it safe, creating a weird blend of the old and new styles that's the source of the problem.

I'm reminded of Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos, which adopted an entirely new art style compared against the series itself. It was strange and had a lot of problems (including plenty of proportioning and scaling errors) but it had a strange sort of charm to it. I think it was because it jumped fully into the new style, so it developed a look fully its own. XY seems conflicted between sticking to the old style and using its new style, and honestly, I think it would be better off if they fully embraced the new things they want to try instead of attempting to merge their ideas into the old style.

EDIT: I should also mention, I do like the coloring in XY, so not everything is bad in my eyes.

Yeah, I think that could be the issue. Animators are unsure of what to do with this right now. It's usually this way whenever a show experiments with a new style, whether it be animation, story, characters, etc., etc.

There's only two outcomes to this type of thing:

1) It goes disastrously for them, and whatever happens next likely involves chaos and hatred from fans.

2) The animators become more accustomed to what they're doing, and with this developed confidence, the show can fully embrace this new style, and everyone is happy.

I think we should give XY it's time animation-wise. If the animators are struggling to maintain their footing this new style, then they need to get themselves accustomed, see what they're doing, get the whole jist of it all.

My kind of reasoning.
 
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