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What exactly makes a badly animated show's animation bad? Is it the off model designs, the inconsistencies? What is it?

Anything that looks like it's made in Flash counts.

Granted, a lot of modern cartoons are made in Flash, but many make it work.

I don't like inconsistency, Im not interested in Flashy scenes i want all scenes to look great not 90% look bad and 10% look Bloody briliant!

stiffness

Well, I think preference has a lot to do with it. I think all American cartoons look like ****.

Honestly the biggest pet peeve of mine is when [especially in anime, less common but still present in American cartoons] there are a bunch of people in the scene and so the artists don't bother drawing any of them well, so there is a scene but everyone looks derpy because why make everyone look pretty there are too many of them

Also when animators try to get away with animating as little of the scene as possible [usually because of budget], for example when a character is standing still and only their mouth is moving even though in real life moving your mouth causes your JAW and FACE to move too.

basically the quality anime meme encompasses the things that bother me, I'm sure there are nitpicky things for others but unless it's glaring it really doesn't bother me. If it flows and is drawn well I am happy.

^honestly in my opinion, American cartoons tend to be better //animated// because the individual characters are less detailed. So they can look clean and be animated well in each shot because they're so simplistic, whereas in anime everyone is trying to look good and realistic and detailed and so the animators have to get lazy somewhere and it shows because of that contrast

there are obviously amazingly animated anime and terribly animated cartoons, but as a trend this is what I've seen

I REALLY HATE POKEMON! wrote:Well, I think preference has a lot to do with it. I think all American cartoons look like ****.

Avatar would like a word with you.

Don't start.

Stuff like this:


J/k. I din't really notice "bad" animation, I just notice "good" animation. Some examples of "good" animation to me are Atlantis, El Dorado, etc. I don't necessarily mean the drawings themselves, but they way they move... which is more or less the animation... I'm not good with words.

Because you're clearly going to get this Penny Arcade reference right away

I REALLY HATE POKEMON! wrote:Well, I think preference has a lot to do with it. I think all American cartoons look like ****.

You don't seem to know what you're talking about so I'm going to cut you some slack. Trust me. Just turn around, and walk away.

if it's not smooth i don't like it

Honestly... I personally think that some animation styles really ruin stuff for me. I don't mind bad proportions and obviously exaggerated features and stuff, but when it gets too ridiculous...

There's a limit, you know? Anime has to be at least a -little- realistic. At least for me. And if the story is compelling, I can overlook a lot of stuff.

I guess I shouldn't have been so Sith about it. I just watch a lot of anime as an adult, and have watched lots of cartoons as a kid, plus my nephew watches cartoons so I have a lot to draw comparisons between. Even 80's anime many people think looks like crap today (DBZ gets flak) looks better to me than almost any current American cartoons (like Nicktoons). It has to just be preference, I guess. Everything just looks like...basic shapes, and colors to me. I think that's because more anime is geared to teens rather than children, and vice-versa.

Smooth transitions between things (as in more frames to complete the motion than a flipbook) consistency in appearance and structure from moment to moment, natural looking motions. Things like proportion, shading, are important but also affected by style.

^^ that's less about the animation and more about the style and artwork, though. Those are completely different bags of bologna.

An anime can be drawn well and ****tily animated, just like a cartoon can be drawn simplistically ['not as well' according to some] and animated well. And of course, a cartoon can be drawn well and badly animated, and an anime can be drawn poorly and/or simplisticly but well-animated.

OR IT CAN BE AWESOME AT BOTH OR ****TY AT BOTH WHEEE

the point being the two are different things IMO

When you color the wrong set of legs skintone, it's sure to turn a few heads:

[video=youtube_share;3rOvLv7B4XI]http://youtu.be/3rOvLv7B4XI[/video]

hot

I think is the plot of the anime is important!

Inconsistent art and animators working outside of their scope and budget.

^^ I agree on that point. Even if the art is crap, if it has a good story and good characters I'll watch it gladly.

...Unless it's the case of xxxHOLiC in which the art is crap and also the story is told nowhere near as well and coherently as it was in the manga, in which case you should just read the manga which is drawn better anyway

My biggest issues with animation are generally just caused by a lack of budget to make it look decent