(no subject)

[kradeelav]

Cool bit in a Spencer Wan animation text interview that stood out to me for a certain trend in US animation....

> original interview source


Jerry Nguyen, [6/27/2024 5:05 PM]
I'd bet on that too. I think they should just convert half of the American board team into just animators haha, feel like most of them wish they could animate

Jerry Nguyen, [6/27/2024 5:06 PM]
I always suspected that might have been why they feel the need to put out such over-realized animatics

Jerry Nguyen, [6/27/2024 5:06 PM]
at least part of why*

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 5:06 PM]
I’m certain most of them could animate. I’ve tried to encourage that but I almost never see people take the plunge

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 5:06 PM]
I think they WANT to animate

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 5:06 PM]
I think they’re afraid of job security

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 5:08 PM]
You’d have to be pretty insane to pick animation over storyboarding in America if you were thinking about money

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 5:08 PM]
I mean, when I first started, there were hardly even any jobs for animators here

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 5:09 PM]
It’s wild to see those start to creep back in

Jerry Nguyen, [6/27/2024 5:12 PM]
feels pretty great. Personally speaking everytime I've had to work on an animatic like that I have always thought "why don't you just get the board artist to just animate this".

I'd claim that animatics like that hold back the potential of the entire pipeline if you have talent like Flying Bark.

Jerry Nguyen, [6/27/2024 5:14 PM]
the animatics really force the hand of the animators to produce extremely snappy, darting motion because that's pretty much all you can afford to do while still stringing together the poses in each scene

Jerry Nguyen, [6/27/2024 5:15 PM]
particularly when there are that* many panels

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 5:34 PM]
You know if there’s a sheet timer involved the animators that get that are forced to use all of those poses too. They don’t get a choice

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 5:35 PM]
I think it’s probably different for Flying Bark since they work entirely digitally, but I’m speculating

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 5:35 PM]
But yeah I’d agree with you. If you made me use all of those poses it would seriously hold back my work

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 5:36 PM]
Luckily I’ve never been contractually obligated to. I would cut poses all the time and no one was ever the wiser

Jerry Nguyen, [6/27/2024 5:39 PM]
yea, I have also been very fortunate to bend rules and get away with it

Jerry Nguyen, [6/27/2024 5:39 PM]
first time hearing about a sheet timer

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 6:53 PM]
So when America started outsourcing animation to South Korea, they needed a way to communicate the timing of the animatic and the lip sync to the animators there

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 6:53 PM]
So some old animation people became sheet timers who write this episode long x sheets that include all that info including compositing direction

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 6:54 PM]
I’m summarizing a lot here, but that’s basically how it went

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 6:55 PM]
And the sheet timers are ancient now. They don’t really train new sheet timers. Every sheet timer I’ve met has been in their 60s at least

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 6:55 PM]
But as an animator on one of these productions, you just get your section of x sheet that pertains to your scene and all the timing and posing has already been decided for you

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 6:56 PM]
You basically just make it on model and add breakdowns

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 6:56 PM]
So now picture you’re handed a scene where the storyboarder chose to draw over a dozen poses and they didn’t understand animation

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 6:57 PM]
You can see how frustrating that would be

Spencer Wan, [6/27/2024 6:58 PM]
Most of the union productions I’ve been on call them scenes by the way, not cuts

Jerry Nguyen, [6/27/2024 8:07 PM]
just sounds like all of America's pipeline problems are concessions to having to make overseas outsourcing work yet again

Jerry Nguyen, [6/27/2024 8:10 PM]
Scene lengths are also getting tighter and tighter too,,

Comments

[amado1]

Read this to my brother and he agreed completely. Basically said he was trained this way at his American art school -- with the assumption that, when they got to their "real" jobs, they wouldn't be allowed to actually do the thing they wanted to do (animate). They would only be allowed to storyboard, and they wouldn't know the animators or be able to speak to them. As a result most of the animators became very controlling. They'd think, "How is this outsourced animator going to know the timing? How can I trust him to do this right?" So their storyboards became overly detailed, and this is how we get stiff shows like Castlevania, where there's no fluidity between poses.

[kradeelav]

oh my gosh i thought i was loosing my mind with Castlevania!!!! I wanted to like it, I really did, but the stiffness just keeps taking me out every single gif much less watching it fully through. Honestly Voltron had the same issues as well and it's wild just now connecting the dots with lived examples thanks to you and your bro. Here's hoping that changes....

[amado1]

Lmao right?? I remember being so flummoxed. The promo material looked great. The finished product...