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Gar For Archer said:
in what world is modern Western animation technically high quality?
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Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and The Thief and the Cobbler is pretty much peak Western animation quality if you ask me, but they're barely "modern" at this point in time since I guess everything post-9/11 is "modern" now.

Kubo and the Two Strings is a fantastic watch, though, so there's your modern high quality Western animation.

Western TV animation is a lost cause at this point.
 
Sonny Boy has been great so far, the visuals are a pretty good trip and there's some really nice shots, really makes up for the waste that was WEP for me. Would definitely recommend at least checking out the first episode.
I honestly enjoyed the 6 minute monologue about monkey baseball after thinking about it for a while.

As for western animation, its all gotten rather samey outside stuff like Studio Laika, as far as western tv animation while there's stuff out there that tries to break the box its not that much and they usually falter to kiddy shit/comedy anyway.
 
Kari Kamiya said:
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and The Thief and the Cobbler is pretty much peak Western animation quality if you ask me, but they're barely "modern" at this point in time since I guess everything post-9/11 is "modern" now.

Kubo and the Two Strings is a fantastic watch, though, so there's your modern high quality Western animation.

Western TV animation is a lost cause at this point.
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Primal by Genndy Tartakovsky is pretty great. In modern terms at least.
 
Gar For Archer said:
I didn’t even bother reading the post fully… in what world is modern Western animation technically high quality? Most of not all of it is either tweened puppets done in After Effects (very prevalent in adult animation like Bojack and Archer) or it’s intentionally ugly or highly stylized (like Bob’s Burgers or any number of Calarts clones). Anything with animation that’s of a higher caliber (say, Avatar or Castlevania) is explicitly trying to copy anime.

I’m genuinely interested in hearing about what shows this guy thinks can match up with the better-animated stuff on the anime side.
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I don't really know any current series, some older shows had some great animation (though that might be nostalgia talking), but I'd at least say that on the feature length side there has been a growing level of interest in higher quality releases which is nice. Did watch a bit of the new Carmen Sandiego series and thought it had some pretty great animation with an interesting art style. There's also Gumball which I know is highly praised, only seen clips myself but thought it looked pretty interesting.

Kari Kamiya said:
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and The Thief and the Cobbler is pretty much peak Western animation quality if you ask me,
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I'd say the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie was pretty great, was traditionally animated and looked amazing:
That along with Spiderverse stand out to me.
but they're barely "modern" at this point in time since I guess everything post-9/11 is "modern" now.
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If you go that far back there's still a bunch of really great animated films coming out in the 'modern' era, that it'd be hard to list them all. Still have a lot of traditionally animated films from studios like Disney or Dreamworks during the 00s. Personally, I'd say what has really plagued 'modern' animation, especially with films, is the overreliance on cgi to an almost lazy degree. Disney is the biggest culprit of it.
 
Kari Kamiya said:
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and The Thief and the Cobbler is pretty much peak Western animation quality if you ask me, but they're barely "modern" at this point in time since I guess everything post-9/11 is "modern" now.

Kubo and the Two Strings is a fantastic watch, though, so there's your modern high quality Western animation.

Western TV animation is a lost cause at this point.
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That's fair, I wasn't really thinking of movies since anime immediately begs a comparison to animated TV, where the West is sorely lacking. I can indeed think of a ton of animated movies off the top of my head that are pretty damn good, and I'm not even a movie guy.
 
Moguro Fukuzou said:
I'd say the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie was pretty great, was traditionally animated and looked amazing:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=bmBsbLbB6IQ
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It has lovely animation, but you could tell Disney didn't want anything more to do with traditional animation during its production despite the poor animators doing their best (and tbh the Winnie the Pooh movies' quality were pretty much the same past the original '77 '66 version). Disney cared more about its traditional art department in the '90s, but you just know they were super butthurt about Shrek while at the same time seeing where the winds were blowing and didn't want to be "left behind". I will never understand how CGI is any less expensive than 2D animation, of which yes, the technology for CGI animation has improved exponentially since then (Moana is honestly beautiful), but the magic of animation is in one's own hands.

Everything about Disney's treatment of its roots depresses me in this day-and-age.

Moguro Fukuzou said:
That along with Spiderverse stand out to me.
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Never watched it, the trailer honestly made me think I was having a stroke because of how janky the frame-rate was. It's apparently not as bad in the film itself, but that trailer made me think otherwise.

Moguro Fukuzou said:
If you go that far back there's still a bunch of really great animated films coming out in the 'modern' era, that it'd be hard to list them all. Still have a lot of traditionally animated films from studios like Disney or Dreamworks during the 00s.
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Most definitely, although I'll be honest, comparing something like the first Rugrats movie (or Rugrats in Paris) and SpongeBob SquarePants movie alongside Disney and DreamWorks at the time is kinda uncanny. Like the quality is still varied enough to notice the differences between movies, but at the same time they strangely enough have the same feel and look to them. It was definitely a transitional period where studios were making that fated decision to stick to traditional or go straight to digital.

Anime was going through the same growing pains at the same time, as well, but somehow Japan still has the integrity to adapt and continue to respectfully carry over the roots of animation into the digital era. CGI for TV anime is still catching up as the animators (finally) learn how to use computers to their advantage while still on time crunches, meanwhile, our TV animation suffers despite being at least ten years ahead of Japan. Some years ago I chose to watch Gon and the quality of it reminded me of Nickelodeon CGI shows that were airing at the time I watched it in 2014 even though, technically, Nickelodeon shouldn't have cheap-looking TV CGI in the modern era. Yet they do,. (Gon wasn't a bad watch FWIW, just takes getting used to.)
 
Gar For Archer said:
That's fair, I wasn't really thinking of movies since anime immediately begs a comparison to animated TV, where the West is sorely lacking. I can indeed think of a ton of animated movies off the top of my head that are pretty damn good, and I'm not even a movie guy.
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I find more soul in Western Animation Movies compared to Anime Movies nowadays. Kubo is a definite watch but that was 2016, back when In This Corner Of The World and A Silent Voice were ignored because many newfags were fapping to Shinkai's Your Name, a gruesome telling to the direction of anime movies, unhelped by many franchise linked movies like SAO and MHA being in the rise.
 
Kari Kamiya said:
I will never understand how CGI is any less expensive than 2D animation, of which yes, the technology for CGI animation has improved exponentially since then (Moana is honestly beautiful), but the magic of animation is in one's own hands.
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Because with CGI you can use models and tweak them all you want which means you can save a lot of time compared to drawing things. Even computer animation doesn't let you save as much time as CGI, and that's why they keep using it.
Kari Kamiya said:
Anime was going through the same growing pains at the same time, as well, but somehow Japan still has the integrity to adapt and continue to respectfully carry over the roots of animation into the digital era. CGI for TV anime is still catching up as the animators (finally) learn how to use computers to their advantage while still on time crunches, meanwhile, our TV animation suffers despite being at least ten years ahead of Japan. Some years ago I chose to watch Gon and the quality of it reminded me of Nickelodeon CGI shows that were airing at the time I watched it in 2014 even though, technically, Nickelodeon shouldn't have cheap-looking TV CGI in the modern era. Yet they do,. (Gon wasn't a bad watch FWIW, just takes getting used to.)
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Japan CGI is all over the place in terms of quality. The early stuff (anything before the mid-00s) is pretty janky but you can see stuff made in the 00s like Macross Frontier that looks just as good or better than recent shows. I think it's a matter of how good the animation direction is since if you don't seemlessly incorporate it or use tricks to hide the CGI it's going to look mediocre at best.
 
Save the Loli said:
Because with CGI you can use models and tweak them all you want which means you can save a lot of time compared to drawing things. Even computer animation doesn't let you save as much time as CGI, and that's why they keep using it.
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I guess that explains why almost every Chinese animated show is CGI and looks like PS2 era video game cutscenes.
 
Save the Loli said:
Because with CGI you can use models and tweak them all you want which means you can save a lot of time compared to drawing things. Even computer animation doesn't let you save as much time as CGI, and that's why they keep using it.

Japan CGI is all over the place in terms of quality. The early stuff (anything before the mid-00s) is pretty janky but you can see stuff made in the 00s like Macross Frontier that looks just as good or better than recent shows. I think it's a matter of how good the animation direction is since if you don't seemlessly incorporate it or use tricks to hide the CGI it's going to look mediocre at best.
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Yeah, CGI is at its best when it’s used to complement 2D animation. Doing anime characters in CG is still gonna look janky because the art style was never meant to be animated that way and has a lot more character when allowed to go off-model, but CG allows for more dynamic shots that would be impossible or exceedingly difficult in 2D and allows for more interesting mechanical designs (though this can easily go overboard as well) since compared to hand-animation there’s way less of a difference between rendering a complicated, detailed model versus a simpler one.

As with most things, CGI is a tool that can be used well or used poorly. At the very basic level you can speed up the process for generating props and backgrounds (at this point CG cars barely register at all to me unless it really is god-awful), someone with a good eye can use it to create interesting and dynamic shots, and in the wrong hands you get Berserk 2016.
 
Gar For Archer said:
Yeah, CGI is at its best when it’s used to complement 2D animation. Doing anime characters in CG is still gonna look janky because the art style was never meant to be animated that way and has a lot more character when allowed to go off-model, but CG allows for more dynamic shots that would be impossible or exceedingly difficult in 2D and allows for more interesting mechanical designs (though this can easily go overboard as well) since compared to hand-animation there’s way less of a difference between rendering a complicated, detailed model versus a simpler one.

As with most things, CGI is a tool that can be used well or used poorly. At the very basic level you can speed up the process for generating props and backgrounds (at this point CG cars barely register at all to me unless it really is god-awful), someone with a good eye can use it to create interesting and dynamic shots, and in the wrong hands you get Berserk 2016.
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It's also a matter of experience. As studios learn how to apply CGI to their projects, it stops sticking out quite as much; it's still noticeable if you're looking for it, but it's less jarring. Look at Golden Kamuy for instance: the first episode's CGI bear threw me for a loop, but by the third season Geno Studio was using it appropriately, generally using it for smaller details in wide shots while improving the animation quality. Zombieland Saga also had a major improvement in the CGI used for some of the performance scenes between the first and second season; I still prefer 2D, but it's easier on the eyes.

Like you said, it's a tool, and the outcome all depends on how you use it.
 
For some anime related stuff the IM@S concept movie just released a little bit ago, at least I think the whole thing. It's nice to see characters from all the games included, though I know there being guys from sideM would make some seethe.
Bonus:

Kari Kamiya said:
It has lovely animation, but you could tell Disney didn't want anything more to do with traditional animation during its production despite the poor animators doing their best (and tbh the Winnie the Pooh movies' quality were pretty much the same past the original '77 '66 version). Disney cared more about its traditional art department in the '90s, but you just know they were super butthurt about Shrek while at the same time seeing where the winds were blowing and didn't want to be "left behind". I will never understand how CGI is any less expensive than 2D animation, of which yes, the technology for CGI animation has improved exponentially since then (Moana is honestly beautiful), but the magic of animation is in one's own hands.
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It especially stings when you look at Disney's treatment of things like Treasure Planet where they wanted it to fail because they considered it "too expensive" and wanted to switch away from traditional, just needing an excuse. Think similar things happened over at Warner Bros with The Iron Giant. Speaking of Shrek, I do miss the Dreamworks from that period that seemed driven entirely by bitterness towards Disney and specifically tried creating films that in some way mocked Disney. Their short string of traditionally animated films were some of the best.
Everything about Disney's treatment of its roots depresses me in this day-and-age.
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It really does when looking at the steep drop in both quality and care, even if the older films were also just made to make money and sell merch they at least had some heart. Makes me feel that the people that actually made those old films what they were have either long left the company or just aren't allowed to do much anymore.
Never watched it, the trailer honestly made me think I was having a stroke because of how janky the frame-rate was. It's apparently not as bad in the film itself, but that trailer made me think otherwise.
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I only ever watched it when it aired in theaters and it did take a little to get used to, but once it clicked the entire experience was wonderful. It also accomplished the feat of making Miles a nice character after all the garbage I'd heard about his comic intro. Would consider it my favorite spider-man movie after the Raimi trilogy.
 
More Muv Luv info dropped, and I'm honestly digging the designs, even if they got rid of the hair vents and Tama's hair. What I'm not feeling good about is the BETA CG, however, since it looks so weird.

muvluv.jpgmuvluvanime.jpg
 
bigoogabaloogas said:
More Muv Luv info dropped, and I'm honestly digging the designs, even if they got rid of the hair vents and Tama's hair. What I'm not feeling good about is the BETA CG, however, since it looks so weird.

View attachment 2478883View attachment 2478884
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>skipped EXTRA and UNLIMITED
>got rid of most of the old VA's
>all the BETA is CG and the TSFs have also been CG so far
>no JAM Project OP
>tama's design
AND WORST OF ALL
1629906192241.png

THEY GOT RID OF THE HAIR VENTS

I had no expectations and I'm still disappointed.
 
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