randomly dorky link

[egypturnash]

In Japan, the future is still the Eighties. No. Really. Look at that girl's design. Look at that TV-head guy's color scheme. It's like a Nagel print animated by way of Jack Kirby.

Link from Cartoon Brew, which also notes that it's playing 'round here at the Egyptian early next month. Despite my general itchiness at framerates this low, I'm somehow tempted to go. In an appropriately-ironicaly-eighties color choice I'm not sure why. Maybe it's all that graphically-deployed black.

I'm such a sucker for chiaroscuro. I think it borders on fetish.

Comments

[holohedron.livejournal.com]

And this is a discussion we need to have sometime, about the inherent difference between Eastern and Western animation styles. Minimal=! Bad.

I know, I know, you have a trained character animator's eye... but the heart and soul of Japanese animation lies in camerawork, editing, perspective, and design. Not framerate. The Japanese and Korean studios, while under-funded by our standards, have mastered visual narrative -- hence why anime otaku think Americans "can't tell a story", while cartoon buffs believe Japanese "can't animate"...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know this. I do find some Japanese animation interesting despite this, but there's always a part of me that simply sees it as bad animation. More importantly, there's a point at which a low framerate makes something stop being a moving, living thing on-screen, and for me, that point is about 10fps. A lot of Japanese stuff shoots on 3s or 4s - that is, three or four exposures in a row for most every drawing - which works out to seeing a mere eight or six drawings a second. My brain just doesn't want to put that together as a cartoon.

It's hard for me to watch it. It's a big problem for me with the stuff, and it's partially on a neurophysical level.

Some browsing around the site suggests, somehow, that it's really a direct-to-video based on a comic book; I know enough to cut those more slack for framerate. Lower budgets. The context I saw the link in was more of a theatrical-release one, which gives me much higher expectations.

I envy the content they get to bring to life through animation; none of the stories I want to tell are anything ever likely to find funding in the States. But a crucial part is missing, for me. It's like reading a book where every third word's got a confusing typo. Not as a style choice, but as an artifact of the production methods.

I can pull back and appreciate it, knowing that framerate is the core of my issue and they're not big on it... but there's always a part of me sitting here going "Why are all these people calling an animatic a cartoon, and going apeshit over it?"

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

It's a big problem for me with the stuff, and it's partially on a neurophysical level.

I can get pretty annoyed at people dismissing an otherwise excellent work over technical issues -- protocat and postrodent both do this a lot, which is tragic, since they're otherwise great company for movie nights. But I totally sympathize with the neurophysical element. When my brain is off-balance, there's so much of postrodent's techno collection that I want to like on principle, but it reminds my twitchy primate brain too much of claws scrabbling on rock, or a disordered heartrate, and leaves me climbing the walls...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The dismissing-over-technical-issues is frustrating, especially when it's being done to something you like. But above a certain level of technical annoyance, you have to sit there and squirm in pain, get up and leave, or grumble...

I think the neurophysical element is entirely my fault, too. When I was a kid I could enjoy stuff like Star Blazers. Now? Heck, sometimes I've got trouble, for a moment, integrating a live-action movie as the illusion of life rather than twenty-four still images a second. And it makes my mind ache until it passes. (I only get it with live-action stuff on the big screen.)

(Tangent: Times I've been able to enjoy anime and times I've been really low-key; is there a link? I think of one point recently where I was up late, coming off a nasty emotional rollercoaster, and wandered out into the living room to find Ashy watching Dragon Half, which I'd normally definitely have in the 'unwatchable animatic' category. But tired and wiped out, its particularly Japanese lunacy was wonderful and maybe a bit healing; it at least helped me ditch the mind-loop I was in. Thought experiment: me plus mellowing recreational chemistry plus a cartoon that would damn well annoy me normally due to a combination of complex, interesting story that has friends praising it and the lowest framerates possible...)

[ultraken.livejournal.com]

me plus mellowing recreational chemistry plus a cartoon that would damn well annoy me normally due to a combination of complex, interesting story that has friends praising it and the lowest framerates possible...

Almost sounds like a plan... :)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It does, doesn't it.

The choice of chemistry and cartoon, though... that's the hard part.

[ultraken.livejournal.com]

Neither being my field of expertise, I got nuthin'.

apples and grapefruits.

[holohedron.livejournal.com]

Then don't look at it as a cartoon. Look at it as a film that happens to use some form of animation.

Obviously, it's a matter of personal taste. If Japanese animation makes you twitchy I'm not going to argue that you should prefer that style. My point still stands: minimalism=! bad.

(it's a little bit like complaining one of your negative-space tableaus is "too large" and "needs cropping", if you see what I mean...)

Once, I asked a long-time animator what framerate he preferred. He replied that it was irrelevant, that performance depended on the expressiveness of the drawings, rather than their sheer number. Conversely, all the frames in the world won't save a bad design.

Put another way: when you see Haku whipping through the wind in Spirited Away, do you think "that needed a few more in-betweeners"? Or "that should've been shot on twos?" Or simply, "that was beautiful"?

As per your original thread, I'm not going to recommend films "for you". I would like to recommend films that challenge your pre-set expectations. Watch Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust or the Utena film, if you get a chance -- both good examples of camerawork and design over framerate.

(*Okay, and the monsters and crypto-lesbianism don't hurt either)

Re: apples and grapefruits.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Look at it as a film that happens to use some form of animation

I think this's splitting hairs - my usual analogy for how lots of Japanese animation, except for theatrical-level stuff, makes me feel, is that I'm watching an animatic, a storyboard shot and cut to sound/dialogue/music, to work out the film before really shooting anything. Whether an animatic of a cartoon or some other species of film, it's still a work in progress, still an approximation of the final film, and it's annoying to have this presented as the final thing.

I perfectly agree that minimalism != bad; I experiment with it constantly in my work!

The framerate that matters is the one that works with the drawings at hand. There's value in a hold, where you hit a pose and stay there, still but for a blink or something to keep the drawing alive; this contrasts with violent or fluid motion. Watch almost any good animation frame-by frame and you'll see a mixture of that; how it's deployed is something that varies a lot. (Don't watch anything Roger Williams directed for this, though; ones are his religion.)

An experiment: Take a video clip. Just some random bit of live video, whatever you like. Preferably something with some life, not a talking head newscaster. Start playing with video editing software to change the framerate. Keep the time constant; just drop frames, so that one image is shown for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... 10... 20... 30... frames in a row. Is there a point as the length of time an image stays on-screen increases where your brain stops hooking them up as something in motion, and sees a series of still frames with sound over it? Related stills, but a slideshow, not a motion. Where does this happen - what's the minimum rate you need?

Bonus round: Apply some filters to the video, too - posterize and/or find edges. Does this effect the minimum rate? Up or down?

Final round: Get a movie or TV show that a trusted friend recommends highly, that you haven't seen yet. Don't watch it. Encode it into the computer, process it into a framerate below this threshold. Now try and watch it. Can you believe in the characters, in the acting, in the story? Or is it just a series of pictures flashing before your eyes?

Never watch the "normal" version of the film. It does not exist for you. For you, there is only this slideshow that other people mysteriously call a movie.

That's me and most of the anime made on small-screen budgets. It's all beneath that threshold for me; mine is probably higher than most people's. Including lots of folks in the animation industry! I don't know why it's like this, and it frustrates the hell out of me sometimes.

Also see my reply to Postvixen above, with a possible experiment for me to try. n.n

Re: apples and grapefruits.

[holohedron.livejournal.com]

The framerate that matters is the one that works with the drawings at hand -- exactly.

An interesting experiment and one I'll have to try, whenever I get my hands on video-editing software...

[holohedron.livejournal.com]

On another note, that does look nifty. :> Perspectives bring to mind a more toony Takeshi Koike (http://www.catsuka.com/interf/bideo/courts.htm) (download the Party 7 clip, you will NOT regret it).

Anime really is a director's medium.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

(download the Party 7 clip, you will NOT regret it)

I think I almost came. I need to watch that again later tonight when there isn't tons of light seeping in from outside.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of seeing it myself. I figure that after Tamala 2010, nothing's ever going to disturb me as much.

[lediva.livejournal.com]

Can I move to _that_ Japan when US society falls apart?

[ghostangel.livejournal.com]

I don't like it, but then again, its NOTHING like the original Ghost in the Shell either. :/

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

Wow. "Dead Leaves" reminded me of something out of the old "Strange Days" comics, and some stuff from 2000 A.D. And it does say "retro" in the preview.

I'm with you on most anime as far as the actual animation goes. It looks clunky. I remember first seeing Akira and thinking that a lot of the effects shots were fine, but a few scenes of the kids just walking around looked horrible. There are also parts of Miyazaki films where the low frame rate -gets in the way- and I notice that things are moving poorly. The Japanese have basically mastered economical animation. It gets the job done, but to me, sliding a frame across the screen isn't animation. I've just yet to see anything made by the Japanese that competes for sheer beauty of movement with the best from Europe, the US and Canada. Disney may not be telling stories that otaku want to see, but they're animated better.

-T'

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I think "Retro" is the name of Mr. Monitor-Head. It's hard to tell, though...

Different priorities in storytelling and viewing; see discussion above. And it's so hard to explain just how much the framerate issues can jar you back into your seat, watching a movie, instead of the world of the movie, to someone who just doen't care about it as much.

[slinky-treecat.livejournal.com]

Woo! I'll have to keep my eyes open for this one.. thank you for the ooral. :)