West vs. East
Eastern “Perfection and
Workaholism” is a myth. Not everyone works that hard on animation
in Japan. Honestly, American and Japanese studios are BOTH toning
the work. They just have different procedural and production strategy
methods to go about it.
But there are key
differences in what techniques are used to harness team energy in an
animation studio.
I'll explain:
Tokyo, Japan:
In Japanese
animation, fewer key frames are produced and drawn out, to save time
and linger on key frames in each cut. But the Japanese animators
compensate by embellishing each individual frame and animation cell.
Less actual motion is used. Motion is made static and sacrificed
most of the time (especially during dialogue scenes) to put more
emphasis on individual frame and cell detail. This means the timing
and motion in anime, especially during the 80s before the production
of AKIRA, tended to be more motionless and herky jerky, with the
exception the gradual slide over multiplaning effect.
Los Angeles, California:
In American
animation, characters are more often more fully animated, especially
in Disney and Pixar films, but also in LA Based Television
animation. We want freer movement and a freer range of motion in the
American animation production industry. So as time passed, and
animation in America on TV simplified and evolved, with the more
frames America animators put into western style shows (not eastern
styled ones, which go against the tide and mimic or “swipe”
Japanese techniques), it would appear drawings got simpler and
simpler by their utilitarian nature, and got simpler and simpler in
scope, as the key frames and in-betweens (24 frames in a second of
animation) cell counts got denser and denser.
Compensating in lacking areas
In the end, it all evens
out. Both sides work equally hard, but they spend more time and work
on different aspects of the studio animation production process.
With computers, your
moving a model or structure along a wire. To be honest I kind of
hate that way of animating. It feels fake, and like it's not real
animation because nothing is being animated with a pencil or pen,
other than storyboards and conceptual art, which the audience never
sees.
When drawing American
art, always remember, this is America where drawing simple art isn't
just NORMAL, it's encouraged and expected in animation and American
cartooning. No one is comparing you to Japan who matters anything to
this country. You don't have to draw in a Japanese way, this is not
Japan. It's McFarlane Town, USA. Home of Horatio Alger and big bucks
and innovation and simple art in cartoons. No ones forcing you to put
a lot of detail in all of your comic book or graphic novel or
webcomic's pages just because you're putting incredibly high
vibrational-energy level into your work that it flies off the richtor
scale
