Sunday, October 08, 2006

WHY ANIME SUCCEEDS

When I first got into the industry I was really impressed by some of the animatics I saw. I remember thinking, "Gee, you don't need to animate some of this stuff! The story is interesting even without animation! And without animation there'd be more time and money to make the drawings really good!" I remembered how much I liked "Crusader Rabbit" when I was a little kid and that was nothing more than a Leica reel. "Roger Ramjet" and "Astro Boy" confirmed the idea.

Of course the biggest advantage of animatic films like anime isn't the low cost or even the potential for better drawings. The biggest advantage is that having no animation forces the filmmaker to look for other ways to make the film interesting. Even the least imaginative animatic makers are likely to consider drawings with drastic angles and stories with a Sergio Leone sensibility. Animatic producers tend to be more aggressive in their search for new ideas and audience-pleasing techniques. With no animation they have to be! You've gotta hand it to them, the animatic people made an asset out of a liability and generated a whole industry (anime) centered around animated films without much animation.

So how does the rest of the animation industry compete with this? It seems to me that the natural way to compete with innovative still drawings is to create innovative moving drawings. That's what John did with "Naked Beach Frenzy," possibly the funniest cartoon made in the last half century. Funny moving drawings require a new way of writing stories. The stories actually have to be funny and they have to lend themselves to the type of humor that funny artists like to draw. Good plots may be less important than good opportunities for funny drawings. Well, it's a big subject and there's no space to cover it here.

Following the lead of anime, it would be nice if cartoons containg funny movement would be cheaper to make. Sometimes I toy with the idea of making cheap, pencil test cartoon shorts. I don't know how often I've heard studio people say things like, "Well it was a lot funnier in the pencil test" or "You should have seen the pencil test!" The fact is that pencil tests are almost always far, far more funny and gutsy than the finished film they're subordinated to. The only problem comes with trying to color them. How do you put color on lines that are all over the place?

30 comments:

Clinton said...

This industry I am trying to get into seems to get more anime every year. Anime makes up with story where it lacks in animation. Very few actually succeed in both, giving the viewer a moving comic-book to at. My favorite anime is Dead Leaves by Production IG. The animation is full of weird shapes bouncing off each other. You should check it out, Ed.

stiff said...

One way to get past coloring a pencil test could be to use shading instead; I did a few pencil-based animations for Ohio Stadium, and that's how I did 'em. If you're interested, check out "frying pan hit," "go crazy," and "trip down" here.

They're weak, but I was kinda shootin' from the hip at the time; I haven't animated anything since I started learning about the right way to do it from John.

Eric C. said...

Eddie, What's it like working with John Kricfalusi?

Anonymous said...

Say, do any of you folks remember the old "Marvel Superheroes" cartoons from the mid sixties? The ones with the snappy theme songs ("Doc Bruce Banner/Belted by Gamma rays/turns into the Hulk/(ain't he unglammer-Rays)")? Them bad boys were pretty much sub-animatics, and they STILL managed to entertain a generation or two of impressionable youths (of course, when you shoot your animation directly from the pages of a comic book, you can't help but at least get the story right!).

I guess my point is that it's the story, not necessarily the execution, that people will remeber (otherwise, the entire Jay Ward/Total Television oeveur would go straight into the ash can!)

But that's just me...

Anonymous said...

>>How do you put color on lines that are all over the place?<<

Don't. Leave it B&W.

I love this idea, btw. I've wanted to do something similar for the longest time.

Jennifer said...

Uncle Eddie which cartoons are those screen shots (in this post) from? I love them! They're so cute - especially the rabbit.

Unknown said...

Q: "How do you put color on lines that are all over the place?"

A: You don't! It ain't a pencil test if it's colored!

Max Ward said...

Do you animate at all? If you do, do you have anyway to shoot pencil tests at your house? I'd love to see some of your funny movements animated

I.D.R.C. said...

I guess my point is that it's the story, not necessarily the execution, that people will remeber (otherwise, the entire Jay Ward/Total Television oeveur would go straight into the ash can!)

But that's just me...


It seems to be you and lots of people. It ain't me, though. Cartoons and animation are about watching stuff move entertainingly. If it don't move entertainingly it can't entertain me. It can be stacatto, it can be sparse, but it has to be well-done. Robotech was crappy animation but at least the action was paced and staged pretty well. It also had a pretty coherent and relatively adult story, but as for how it was done, I could've read a synopsis and just watched the action shots. Pokemon is crap all the way through. I don't know why it succeeded, except that it's about action and power, whether it ever really delivers any or not, and it was aimed at people who are not that critical.

That's my theory. Crappy Anime succeeds because people watch things indiscriminately and with no critical eye.

Watching a cartoon for the story is no different to me than looking at a painting for the story. The story may be the force compelling the images but the images are key. A great story in the hands of a mediocre storyteller is now a mediocre story, even if the subject or characters appeal to you. To contend otherwise is either indiscrimination or charity.

I love the idea of giant fighting robots and planet-munching superheroes as much as anybody. I don't love them so much that I will watch them even when the execution is painfully dull. Or when the hero's hair has too many points.

Jenny Lerew said...

Jennifer, I think that's "Crusader Rabbit", which was on in the late 50s and early 1960s(before my time, I've never seen it). it wasn't "anime", was it? I don't think so, wherever it was animated.

Thad said...

Jenny,
Crusader Rabbit was Jay Ward's first cartoon show... From 1949!

- Thad

Jennifer said...

Thanks Jenny! That was Crusader Rabbit.

Brubaker said...

Yep.

"Crusader Rabbit" is notable because it's the first cartoon made for television.

The series ran 1949 to 1953, with a second series in late 1950s.

I wouldn't REALLY call it animation, since the animation was VERY limited...heck, there are more movements in Hanna-Barbera cartoons!

But fortunately, Jay Ward would make better shows later on.

Anonymous said...

Just thought I'd let you know, I saw the hip-hop promo for R&S on YouTube, as well as the R&S christmas special (no, not Son of Stimpy; it's the rare one where the reindeer uses the bathroom).

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Anime recommendations: I've jotted them down. I'll check out YouTube first for clips.

Stiff: Interesting! I'm constantly amazed by the number of venues for animation!

Eric: Working for John? I'll post about that sometime soon!

Jennifer: People beat me with the answer. Crusader Rabbit had almost no animation but it had a creepy atnosphere. An image from that show is one of my very earliest memories.

Max: Thanks! I'd love to animate at home. What's the best program for that? A friend gave me some help on that a while back and I still intend to take his advice!

Jenny: Referring to an earlier comment you made: I want to resist putting up word verification as long as I can. Typing those things is a nuisance!

J. J. Hunsecker said...

Hmmm...interesting concept; animated cartoons without the animation. Not for me, though. I like full animation. Even the best limited animated cartoons leave me bored.

I, too, think the advantage of animation is to see characters moving in interesting ways. How they move also defines their character, if done correctly.

Anonymous said...

John Sparey worked on both the black and white and later color versions of "Crusader Rabbit" and he'll be glad to tell you all about the experience.

Anonymous said...

RE: putting colour on pencil animation

One Possible solution is by drawing on a seperate sheet some shapes that would delineate certain areas of colour. You would do this for each pencil drawing as one would with clean up.

You would then scan, click and fill with desired colours.

Then in compositing you throw your scanned pencil test as a multiplied layer atop your colour layer.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Anonymous #1: Thanks for the tip about John Sparrey.

Anonymous #2: Hmmmm. Interesting color idea. Let me think about it.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

It occurs to me that a short promotional film made up largely of pencil test samples would be a great way to promote a short film.

Anonymous said...

Just some minor stuff: when you talk about the people who created an industry out of extremely limited animation, it was really almost entirely Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy, etceteras). And despite it being as limited as it was, he was still losing money!

He funded his animation (at a loss) from the money he was making from his much more profitable comics, purely out of the love he had for the medium.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Soos: !!!!!!!!!!!!! That's amazing!

Anonymous said...

Haha, yeah, I really think so too. Tezuka is hardcore. The numbers have probably been embellished, but he's said to have seen Bambi in theatres over 70 times to study the animation (as well as the audience's reactions to each scene). With Snow White, he's alleged to have seen it over a 100 times. He also loves the Fleischer shorts - you can see a lot of Betty Boop in particular in his designs.

Although he was never able to do anything with animation besides make [barely] moving versions of his comics (which remains an unfortunate stigma on the medium in Japan even today), he brought a lot of filmic qualities into his cartoons. Anime still stands out from American animation for allowing for more dramatic stories.

I think a lot of people are attracted to the melodrama of some these stories. It's unfortunate that the animation used to tell them hasn't improved nearly as much as it should. I get the impression that big studio Japanese animation [especially out of TOEI] has a lot of the same problems as American animation today.

Anonymous said...

Haha, yeah, I really think so too. Tezuka is hardcore. The numbers have probably been embellished, but he's said to have seen Bambi in theatres over 70 times to study the animation (as well as the audience's reactions to each scene). With Snow White, he's alleged to have seen it over a 100 times. He also loves the Fleischer shorts - you can see a lot of Betty Boop in particular in his designs.

Although he was never able to do anything with animation besides make [barely] moving versions of his comics (which remains an unfortunate stigma on the medium in Japan even today), he brought a lot of filmic qualities into his cartoons. Anime still stands out from American animation for allowing for more dramatic stories.

I think a lot of people are attracted to the melodrama of some these stories. It's unfortunate that the animation used to tell them hasn't improved nearly as much as it should. I get the impression that big studio Japanese animation [especially out of TOEI] has a lot of the same problems as American animation today.

Anonymous said...

You've probably seen this video, which has a really cool pencil-testy feel. It woulda been ruined in clean up.

That's testy not teste.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Ape: Some good "Bluth"-type animation. What a weird subject for a cartoon!

I.D.R.C. said...

Maybe one day you can do a post on why Bluth-style motion makes everything suck.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Ape: ...But I liked it! Did you do that cartoon?

Anonymous said...

I had nothing to do with that cartoon but I like the look of it. And the band is pretty keen too.

I.D.R.C. said...

...But I liked it!
I like the cartoon style, but the motion... it's so... Bluth-y, or something. I wish someone more articulate or insightful could explain it...