Animation Production - Work Distribution, Comparing America and Japan

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

• Japan sacrificed time spent generating more fluid motion to give a more graphic, comic booky look to the general cell and frame composition structure to save labor by doing fewer drawings on each production than American animators do.

• The U.S. Sacrificed detail and structure in the model sheets to make characters easier and less complex to animate, while still generating the same amount of energy and work as Japanese cartoon shows and movies.

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