Poll of the Day > Why does traditional animation not exist anymore?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Surely there is a market for it out there? And the sad thing is people with knowledge of traditional animation such as Don Bluth are getting old and are almost gone from this earth so there will be no one left to teach it soon.

I understand 3D animation like Toy Story being all the rage when it was first made, but it is clearly visually inferior to traditional animation.

South Korea got too expensive.

It takes more money, it takes more people with more training (which takes more money), and it takes longer to produce (which takes more money).

CG isn't necessarily cheaper (if you look at the budgets for Disney animated films, the 3D stuff generally has higher budgets than contemporary 2D stuff), but it is more consistent and the skills are easier to learn/train. Hand-drawn animation is hard, and there simply aren't that many people out there capable of doing it. That limits what can be made and can make things less predictable, which isn't desirable. With 3D, they can run more projects simultaneously and reliably find people capable of animating the directors' visions.

Remember that the biggest concern with corporate art production is often not quality so much as it is consistency/predictability. Executives don't want to gamble on producing something that might be amazing but also might not, they want to produce something that will almost certainly be decent and yield a predictable return on shareholders' investments.

captpackrat posted...

It takes more money, it takes more people with more training (which takes more money), and it takes longer to produce (which takes more money).

Yeah but you get what your pay for, cutting corners and using cgi is just bad art

adjl posted...

CG isn't necessarily cheaper (if you look at the budgets for Disney animated films, the 3D stuff generally has higher budgets than contemporary 2D stuff), but it is more consistent and the skills are easier to learn/train. Hand-drawn animation is hard, and there simply aren't that many people out there capable of doing it. That limits what can be made and can make things less predictable, which isn't desirable. With 3D, they can run more projects simultaneously and reliably find people capable of animating the directors' visions.

Remember that the biggest concern with corporate art production is often not quality so much as it is consistency/predictability. Executives don't want to gamble on producing something that might be amazing but also might not, they want to produce something that will almost certainly be decent and yield a predictable return on shareholders' investments.

I read that cgi artists are cheaper, or at least were when they switched over, mainly because animation artists were in unions and cgi artists weren't since it was new

Muscles posted...

I read that cgi artists are cheaper, or at least were when they switched over, mainly because animation artists were in unions and cgi artists weren't since it was new

Incidentally, there's a similar reason behind videogame and anime dubs disappearing recently.

Muscles posted...

Yeah but you get what your pay for, cutting corners and using cgi is just bad art

But Corporate Profits are the most important thing. It doesn't matter if it looks like crap; if it puts butts in seats and dollars in the corporate coffers, who cares?
</corporatespeak>

captpackrat posted...

</corporatespeak>

A business that isn't making money, isn't a business for very long.

Questionmarktarius posted...

A business that isn't making money, isn't a business for very long.

You can have quality art and make money, look at B:tas

Muscles posted...

You can have quality art and make money, look at B:tas

That was made in the 90s, before everything around it unionized and Korean animation was still dirt cheap.

adjl posted...

CG isn't necessarily cheaper (if you look at the budgets for Disney animated films, the 3D stuff generally has higher budgets than contemporary 2D stuff)

There's a lot of complications there (like comparing budgets over time, tracking where the money is actually going, etc), but one of the major factors is that, generally speaking, it's easier to get away with shitty CG than it is to get away with shitty hand-drawn animation. While a studio can absolutely choose to invest a ton of money into computer animation, they can also use it as an excuse to cut corners and save. This is even more of a factor when you realize that it's much easier (and cheaper) to make corrections or modifications to CG than it is hand-drawn animation, thus saving even more money in the long run.

Animators have been pointing out for years that studios have been squeezing harder and harder when it comes to budgets, to the point where most CG animation studios barely make a profit. Which is why so many people have been asking "Why does CG look so much shittier now than it did 20 years ago? Especially when any asshole with a computer and a webcam can seemingly put out relatively competent animation as a YouTube video?"

I'm looking up hand-drawn animation movies and they definitely still exist. Also, other stuff that you'd think is all CG at least blends CG and hand-drawn.

Because hand drawn animation is extremely expensive and time consuming, and it also wrecks your hands. Nobody wants to take forever to make something and injure themselves in the process when doing it on a computer is much faster, cheaper, and theres less of a risk of carpal tunnel syndrome.

adjl posted...

CG isn't necessarily cheaper (if you look at the budgets for Disney animated films, the 3D stuff generally has higher budgets than contemporary 2D stuff), but it is more consistent and the skills are easier to learn/train. Hand-drawn animation is hard, and there simply aren't that many people out there capable of doing it. That limits what can be made and can make things less predictable, which isn't desirable. With 3D, they can run more projects simultaneously and reliably find people capable of animating the directors' visions.

Remember that the biggest concern with corporate art production is often not quality so much as it is consistency/predictability. Executives don't want to gamble on producing something that might be amazing but also might not, they want to produce something that will almost certainly be decent and yield a predictable return on shareholders' investments.

The primary benefit of 3D animation is that it is a lot easier to reuse assets and edit.

If a scene comes out a certain way but test screenings didn't like it, it's a lot easier to go reanimate a scene than to redraw a scene. It gives creators a lot more flexibility.

The 2D equivalent of 3D animation is, of course, Family Guy style animation where characters are very stiffly modeled and posed and every single angle is the same so that they can be reused and re-edited.

VioletZer0 posted...

The primary benefit of 3D animation is that it is a lot easier to reuse assets and edit.

Yep, that too. You draw a character model once, then just copy-paste them and move them as needed for each scene they're in, as opposed to needing to draw each scene. For studio-wide workflow, this means you can have multiple people working on different scenes with the same character at once without having to worry about different drawing styles creating inconsistencies between scenes, since none of the people doing the animating will be redrawing the character.

VioletZer0 posted...

The primary benefit of 3D animation is that it is a lot easier to reuse assets and edit.

Filmation was already doing that with hand-drawn cells fifty or sixty years ago.

Its still out there. Its just not popular, and the people who do it are underrecognized and underpaid.

I prefer wD animation over 3D. Grant it, I aeen some 3D animated films that ain't from Disney, Pixar or a Dreamworks, I take both 2D and 3D animation over live action.

Also as of right now 3D animation is still considered to be "cutting edge" but it is rapidly losing that status.

adjl posted...

Yep, that too. You draw a character model once, then just copy-paste them and move them as needed for each scene they're in, as opposed to needing to draw each scene. For studio-wide workflow, this means you can have multiple people working on different scenes with the same character at once without having to worry about different drawing styles creating inconsistencies between scenes, since none of the people doing the animating will be redrawing the character.

You bring up a good point that 3D scales up a lot better for large productions.

Muscles posted...

Yeah but you get what your pay for

Do you, though?

Pretty much all of the high-gross animated films are 3D/CGI.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_animated_films

Human laziness, CGI shortcuts, and AI generation.

Sad but true.

But every once in a while I'll stumble across a good anime that seems to have some traditional anime sprinkled in there.

A few recent examples:

B: The Beginning
Castlevania
Dandadan
Chainsaw Man

There was a lot of rotoscoping, and a little bit of CGI, but there was also a lot of hand-drawn beauty where you could tell they put some time and effort into the animation.

HValle posted...

Do you, though?

Pretty much all of the high-gross animated films are 3D/CGI.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_animated_films

I would like to see that adjusted for inflation and population size because most of those are also from this century

Also just because something makes a lot of money doesn't mean it's good, I'm not sure why this constantly has to be repeated

The blurb at the top says that Snow White would rank at the top if adjusted for inflation, but it's also very difficult to compare the box office take of any movie from that era to modern figures because moviegoing was just so different (no home viewing options, significantly fewer movies coming out in a given year).

Muscles posted...

Also just because something makes a lot of money doesn't mean it's good, I'm not sure why this constantly has to be repeated

It does from the company's perspective. If you're trying to suggest that they'd get something worthwhile if they spent more, you need to do better than "you'd make a movie that I'd personally like better."

Check out animation from other countries. Plenty of traditional animation coming out of Asia and Europe.

slacker03150 posted...

Check out animation from other countries. Plenty of traditional animation coming out of Asia and Europe.

The French film Mars Express melted my brain.

It's on Prime to rent or buy.

I HIGHLY recommend it.

Fruntporch
Drue Langlois
Miles Langlois
Slouch
Oatyos
Malumvir Prodcutions

Some of the most talented names in the game that you probably have near seen or heard of

GreenKnight127 posted...

Human laziness, CGI shortcuts, and AI generation.

Sad but true.

But every once in a while I'll stumble across a good anime that seems to have some traditional anime sprinkled in there.

A few recent examples:

B: The Beginning
Castlevania
Dandadan
Chainsaw Man

There was a lot of rotoscoping, and a little bit of CGI, but there was also a lot of hand-drawn beauty where you could tell they put some time and effort into the animation.

all of those are cgi

Idk Bruh

Muscles posted...

You can have quality art and make money, look at B:tas

But if you can make cheap, junk art and people are willing to buy it, you can make more money!

ConfusedTorchic posted...

all of those are cgi

Not entirely. They contain a lot of parts that are hand-drawn. Although some are rotoscoped. But I'll take rotoscope over CGI any day.

3D assets are easier to manipulate, substitute, alter, etc. via scripting. The artistry not only involves illustrators, but also scripters and advanced CG technology, like shaders and physics engines. Which can be tweaked relatively easily to get the desired effects.

Even non artists can buy well made 3D assets at cheap prices, and with good engine, animate and pose them with proper scripting. these engines includes features like varying physical size / scale, facial expressions, body language, skin color, hair styles, clothes, camera angles, environment, lighting, etc. with extreme ease.

we've gone far beyond that uncanny valley is no longer a concern for animation.

Hand drawn will always be true animation.

GreenKnight127 posted...

The French film Mars Express melted my brain.

It's on Prime to rent or buy.

I HIGHLY recommend it.

I havent seen it yet but it is on my to watch list. Glad to hear it will be a good watch. There are so many amazing movies that people dont even hear about because they arent one of the big Hollywood studios. Cartoon saloon has received 5 academy award nominations and yet most people dont know them. Even the people who vote in the academy awards say they didnt even bother watching the films and just voted for the Disney movie their kid went to see.

Why does traditional animation not exist anymore?

It does, we just dont see it as much anymore.

And the answer basically boils down to: money.

Only someone who doesn't understand how traditional animations are made would ask this question.

main thing I realized after seeing a bunch of ads for that Bad Guys movie is that animated movies aren't heartfelt anymore

all just dumb comedies with no substance. Remember og Land Before Time? That shit hit hard but there's nothing like it anymore

Is Shrek to blame for this?

MomSpringfield posted...

main thing I realized after seeing a bunch of ads for that Bad Guys movie is that animated movies aren't heartfelt anymore

all just dumb comedies with no substance. Remember og Land Before Time? That shit hit hard but there's nothing like it anymore

Is Shrek to blame for this?

I never vibed with Shrek. Kung Fu Panda is better.

My fave animated film was Fivel goes West.

MomSpringfield posted...

main thing I realized after seeing a bunch of ads for that Bad Guys movie is that animated movies aren't heartfelt anymore

all just dumb comedies with no substance. Remember og Land Before Time? That shit hit hard but there's nothing like it anymore

Is Shrek to blame for this?

Id blame Aladdin before I blamed shrek. Not that shrek helped, but the absolute marketing campaign Disney ran pushing robin williams as the genie set the tone for celebrity talents over story and voice actors. The comedy taking attention from the story. Aladdin was successful and they wanted to copy the easy route of getting big names to draw people in. Instead of relying on story and art.

slacker03150 posted...

Id blame Aladdin before I blamed shrek. Not that shrek helped, but the absolute marketing campaign Disney ran pushing robin williams as the genie set the tone for celebrity talents over story and voice actors. The comedy taking attention from the story. Aladdin was successful and they wanted to copy the easy route of getting big names to draw people in. Instead of relying on story and art.

Aladdin and Shrek do work really well, but I would agree they started some pretty bad trends. Though of course that's also a reflection of studios becoming hyper-focused on chasing blockbusters and coming up with formulas designed to ensure a film is a blockbuster, but that diverges a bit from the topic at hand.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to see many of the classic '90s Disney movies on the big screen (and you can throw Titan A.E. in too, the last of the major Don Bluth animated films) and they're all absolutely gorgeous films. 3D is fine and can look great, but the ceiling on hand-drawn is so much higher, IMO.

Kallainanna posted...

3D is fine and can look great, but the ceiling on hand-drawn is so much higher, IMO.

I might argue that they have the same ceiling, but it's harder to hit it with 3D because you have an extra dimension to perfect. Cameron's Avatar looked amazing (even if it didn't offer much beyond that and usurped its name from the true Avatar), but getting it there was such a huge investment that he had to sit on the idea for a decade before it was even possible to realize it. The ceiling for 2D is more attainable, if rarely realized because it's still not exactly easy to get there.

Did you watch Fixed?

Traditional animation is an objectively inferior medium. Unlike other mediums, you don't get any physical aspect, it's always the translated light at the end, so digital cuts out the unnecessary bits. If you mean "2D vs 3D" like everybody seems to be arguing, it's because it's a tonne of man hours. People are willing to pay for extremely detailed stills, or a highly animated scene, but an extremely detailed set of frames to have a lot of animation is extraordinarily expensive.

adjl posted...

I might argue that they have the same ceiling, but it's harder to hit it with 3D because you have an extra dimension to perfect.

I'd argue the opposite. For Demon Slayer, they used 3D models to use as references for perspective as it's inherent to a 3D medium, then drew the panels on top to keep their frames consistent. 3D keeps a lot of fuckery constrained algorithmically.

2D has in its arsenal the potential to do technically impossible representations that are emotively real, but that requires an immense level of understanding to not make an impossible image look jarring and convey a real feeling.

I've got a pretty good answer for this. Learned this both through my mass media class and through being a creative myself.

The answer is Disney.

It's Disney's fault because the animators were starting to get rightfully upset over how they were being treated. Rather than treat them better, Disney decided it was easier and cheaper to just switch to 3D -- and that's how Toy Story was born. Creatives are always taken advantage of in business because business knows that they're passionate about their work and are willing to take some hardship if it means sharing that passion. But there becomes a point where it's too much. Then creatives get let go, they lose the rights to their own work, the network takes over their show, and the company saves money at the cost of that work's integrity. Disney also single-handedly ruined copyright law in this country for similar reasons. They fucking suck.

2D animation now mostly persists through indie work or for personal emjoyment. The 2D works you see on TV nowadays are mostly puppets (characters and their body parts are drawn in every angle needed and pieced together and animated for the scene), so basically nothing is animated frame by frame anymore and you can really catch the stiffness if you look for it. Characters also face just the one direction or have a consistent head shape to accomodate for ease of use as a puppet. Family guy is the posterchild for this. It's faster and cheaper than classic 2D animation.

However, classic 2D animation persists in other countries. American corporations just ruin everything, including the things we use to express ourselves or to escape our reality.