Western Animation - Discuss American, Canadian, and European cartoons here (or just bitch about wokeshit, I guess)

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...to get the thread back on the topic of ANIMATION.
Rewatched this today, Sylvain Chomet is a mad genius in animation my god. France is one of the only western countries that still considers animation a real disciplined art form, and my god this guy is the apex of his craft.

The movie looks like a nightmare to animate, the main character Madame Souza has a lazy eye that she's constantly adjusting, as well as anisomelia with a comedically enormous orthopedic shoe, meaning she is constantly hobbling whenever she walks. And she's the main character, the camera is almost always focused on her, so the animators had to be factoring in her traits at all times.
Movie displays perfect understanding of form and weight but still manages to be cartoony and exaggerated. Worst part of the movie is the incompetent dog, it does nothing but make whining noises.
 
"As the Yellow Submarine became the Fantasia of the 60's and 70's, so does it become the mandate of Strawberry Fields to do so for the 90's..."
This of course never came to be, but there are still some interesting concepts and demos to be found




The Internet Archive also has two half hour demo reels
 
Thiletonomics powiedział(a):
Have people also boycotted AI because of it's association to 🇮🇱, and is another way that they oppress 🇵🇸?
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I saw someone try to unironically compare the two (AI vs Anti-AI and Israel vs Palestine). It was the most ridiculous shit I've seen all month.
ShiftyBoi powiedział(a):
...to get the thread back on the topic of ANIMATION.
Rewatched this today, Sylvain Chomet is a mad genius in animation my god. France is one of the only western countries that still considers animation a real disciplined art form, and my god this guy is the apex of his craft.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=K3l7ZOzOJPw
The movie looks like a nightmare to animate, the main character Madame Souza has a lazy eye that she's constantly adjusting, as well as anisomelia with a comedically enormous orthopedic shoe, meaning she is constantly hobbling whenever she walks. And she's the main character, the camera is almost always focused on her, so the animators had to be factoring in her traits at all times.
Movie displays perfect understanding of form and weight but still manages to be cartoony and exaggerated. Worst part of the movie is the incompetent dog, it does nothing but make whining noises.
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The butt-calves are the only thing I hated about this movie.
 
Ostatnio edytowane:
There seems to be another indie* animation coming out every week at this point, so I decided to binge through a bunch the other day and write my opinions on them. Feel free to read my screed below:
Wastelandia

This shit is The Big Bang Theory for terminally online zoomers. Half of the comedy or "relatability" factor comes from our cast of misfit non-characters referencing shit on the Internet like Reddit karma or Neopets, and the other half comes from them being quirky self-deprecating girl failures. The show is about nothing and the entire first episode is entirely comprised of the main three characters talking about how shitty their day was in a manner that's supposed to be enduring but comes off as annoying.

On the plus side, the art style and character designs are cute. Also, despite the entire episode being nothing but talking, they manage to keep it visually interesting by animating what they're talking about in a similar fashion to Downtown, which this series is no doubt inspired by. Even if there are some redeeming qualities to this series, it lacks purpose overall and could only be enjoyed by weird socially stunted zoomers who think this is somehow relatable.

Screaming Meat

This is an animated pilot made by Lyle Rath, who you may know from OneyPlays. It is an animated podcast-like comedy in the same vein as Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, and also one of the biggest fucking wastes of my time I have ever seen.

There is no reason this needed to be animated. I am not exaggerating when I say that 95% of this 14 minute animation consists of 3 variations of the same shot: one wide angle of the room showing both characters, and two zooms-ins to focus on each of the two characters. Seriously, look at 1:56 of Wastelandia and compare it to any part of this animation and you'll realize why I'm not going as hard as I could on the former show while this shit exists. There's like one 30 second bit in this show where there's slideshow-level visuals to go along with the "comedic" hypothetical scenario the one character is painting but they give up on adding any extra visuals real fast. It doesn't help that the artstyle looks hideous and the animation is jittery as fuck You can listen to this and you'll lose nothing from missing out on the actual "animation" itself.

So the animation sucks, what about the writing? The majority of the conversation involves "comedic" banter from Lyle himself and some weird giant homunculus thing that lives in his apartment (yeah I don't get it either). Such hilarious and original dialogue involves riffing on the trolley problem, joking about how Sigmund Freud wanted to fuck his mother, and talking about the Confederacy or something. The dialogue is supposed to come off like it's off the cuff and unscripted but you can clearly tell that it isn't. The phony laughter accompanying every other "joke" doesn't help either.

This, like Wastelandia, comes off as another show about nothing that was just made to jump on the ongoing indie animation craze, but this one has zero charm on top of feeling even more forced than the other. And that's the term that I'd best use to describe this one: forced. Why was this animated if you're only going to animate two characters talking to each other with minimal accompanying visuals? Because he wanted to make an indie animation. Why are these two characters with zero chemistry talking the entire duration of the show? Because he wanted to make an indie animation. Why are they going on for so long when they clearly have nothing to say? Because Lyle Rath wanted to make a indie animation, god dammit.

Jumpcut!

Jumpcut! is about a group of amateur (college?) filmmakers who can't seem to get along on anything getting into hyjinx over their differences. Every line of dialogue in this comes off as overly-expository and it isn't that funny. Not sure why I included this one lol.

Espresstoe Beans

Comedy animation with a really cute concept. Follows a couple anthropomorphic cats working at what is essentially a role-reversed cat cafe. Half the comedy comes from the cats doing cat things and the other half comes from this universe's weird tiny gremlinoid humans getting into antics. It succeeds at what many indie animations try and fail to do by being very cute and quirky in a way that rarely comes off as annoying. Dare I say, it is even quite wholesome. The animation is limited but does the job. Overall quite good, but I don't feel like it should be a series. I think the pilot explores the concept well and has some pretty good gags for what it's working with, but I think any more would be stretching it too thin, especially for the 19 additional episodes the creator has planned. I have not yet watched the other episodes so I could be wrong on this, but that's my hunch.

Planetronika

This one absolutely nails the mid-2000's style that it's going for, but in terms of plot or character there is essentially nothing. Also the goonbait is way too obvious.

We Cool?
​

This short animation features a gay bird furry who goes on an awkward Grindr day with a gay goat furry before coming home to his nerdy trans roommate to smoke weed and listen to xer yap about some gay anime series. This is the kind of show that's entertainment value relies entirely on its relatability factor, but if you can relate to this you should probably be hate-crimed. The tranny character doesn't even bother trying to do a female voice and the pinned comment from the creator is this:
1780270446795.png

Which got a laugh out of me. That's more than I can say for the entirety of the animation itself.

The animation is good I guess, even if the framerate is low, but holy shit this is some insufferable faggotry right here. I'm sure this would be great to watch while dilating though.

PxAY OFF

Great animation and amazing style, both in terms of art and direction. It's a good thing it has a whole lot of style though, because there really isn't much of substance here. If you're a big fan of GAINAX/TRIGGER like I am you'll love this, but if you're looking for an engaging story / well-developed characters then you should look elsewhere.

OVERALL
Best Animation: PxAY OFF
Runner Up: Espresstoe Beans
Worst Animation: Screaming Meat​

Edit: Spelling/Grammar mostly
*Actual indie animations, not shit produced by billion dollar companies like Hazbin Hotel or shit made with government funding like any Glitchslop show
 
Ostatnio edytowane:
WiggerNationalist powiedział(a):
This one absolutely nails the mid-2000's style that it's going for, but in terms of plot or character there is essentially nothing.
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I saw everybody talking about this so I watched it and I was genuinely astounded how literally nothing happened. The pilot doesn't try to exposit or explain what it's about, nothing is really indicated about the setting, and the characters do nothing other than play a totally wacky game of basketball. It doesn't even work as a comedic short because the characters barely do anything funny. I think the girl is hot too, but if you want me to actually watch the show, it should actually be a show.
 
Purple fur Pomeranian powiedział(a):
Wyświetl załącznik 9071282

He's walking back on AI, most likely due to backlash.
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I know I've been busy because I missed on reacting to this one in real time. About two years ago I attended a panel with Jorge Gutierrez I mentioned on my original post about Cartoon Network LA (that's Latin America, not Los Angeles btw) and he was asked about AI back then. He said something to the effect that AI was only good in realism and couldn't compete with real art. And then he drops his technique for staying competitive in the animation industry as an artist and it amounts to drawing a lot without minding perfection. Even then it struck me as if he didn't like AI because he knew he was talking to a bunch of bright eye students that looked up to him rather than genuinely disgusted at generative art.

I'm personally mixed on the matter. My current job forces me to relay on AI as a tool by setting SEO and reducing "noise" in images (read, getting rid of of moles, fat folds and things in the background) because as artistic as my job is, it practically is assembly line work. Which I realised isn't any different than most jobs in the industry.

I decided to run an experiment on the side on what little spare time I had just to test the true capabilities of AI and my autism gave it a semi-professional animation workflow based on a little concept I've been working on as a healing endeavour. After about two months of doing it semi-seriously I can say that nothing short of an extremely streamlined workflow where you make every decision by the book is going to yield anything of use and that is going over one character on a white background.

I assigned an input idea and then fed it some art. Mashed it all together. Generated several different poses and emotions of the same character, made a selection and then made an average. Then I had to make a turnaround. And it became an endless ordeal of assigning what the AI called "anti-drift" commands to ensure the character stayed on model (design and palette) while I still had to include the references and every so often make clarifications. Created an expression and pose library, lighting and photography presets, a colour palette and advanced colour theory for stuff I didn't make, colour correction because it kept drifting, compared and contrasted attractiveness (male vs. female gaze), corrected, created a closet, a lifestyle, came up with a personality that had to be communicated through the design and corrected accordingly. It basically felt like a very abridged experience of being a whole art department and I understood from the get go that anything too complicated (lighting or background) was going to completely derail progress so every time something changed slightly I had to reset. I still had to reset because the AI would forget the subtleties of the character every 2-3 generations.

My autism made the AI had the character adapted and fleshed out on two different art styles and I still needed to steer it to the point that it did feel like another job. The difference is that I was paying for this one because free AI isn't shit (hell, the hundreds of generations I was entitled to wouldn't be enough for anything in animation. It was sort of a fascinating ordeal tbh, but it think it's very obvious why mostly only artists like Emily Youcis do it. Is like commissioning all the fun parts of the animation workflow to someone that may draw better and faster but also may neglect things like anatomy or proportion while you get to do the boring stuff. It still isn't much of an improvement outside of saving a bit of money.
 
Ostatnio edytowane:
The Cartoon Aesthetics guy did an interview with Ren & Stimpy alumnus Bill Wray...
 
The Wise Shaman powiedział(a):
https://youtube.com/watch?v=envMzAxCRbwThis video is a rare example of how AI can be used effectively for animation. Current AI models are great at mass production but struggle with consistency, composition, logic, etc. In this example, they still used a variety of competent artists, but AI technology allowed them to get rid of most of the busy work. I believe AI is used best when it complements human work. I wouldn't be surprised if techniques like this get more popular in the future.
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While their way of using AI isn't terrible, the animation still suffers from that weird plastic-y artificial look that people are gonna notice and focus on more than the work itself as a whole. Even if it's just being used as a tool, it wouldn't matter to all the artfags who'll still whine about AI being used at all and dismiss the approach of using it all together.
WiggerNationalist powiedział(a):
Planetronika
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4niV7OYZXYE[/]
This one absolutely nails the mid-2000's style that it's going for, but in terms of plot or character there is essentially nothing. Also the goonbait is way too obvious.
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Kept skipping to see if anything would actually happen, and to my utter shock...
nothing did, cool.
 
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