Super Animation Catalogue 2.0

[Ajay]

The best piece of animation Dragon Ball has ever had goes to Hisashi Mori.

It is absolutely insane. There is just so much going on that I don't even know here to begin. The camera movement, the background animation, the rotations and effects; it's all crazy.

Shida's Battle of Gods work is a close second, but it is not nearly as complex as what Mori has on show here, despite showcasing some insane rotations and beautiful effects.

Mori's cut is definitely the best the series has ever seen by a pretty big stretch, I reckon.

Picking the best from Dragon Ball (Z/GT) is pretty hard. While it has its moments, it has very few stretches of exceptional animation that was either good at the time, or holds up today.

• Hisada & Shimanuki's Goku vs Freeza is probably the lengthiest and most dynamic cut that I can think of. It feels incredibly modern, and with some better inbetweening, it could very easily hold up today. Fantastic work all around.
• Shimanuki's SSJ Goku vs Freeza is very impressive, too, though it relies on a lot of repeated frames to pad out the rest of the cut. A little stiff and dated by this point, but otherwise, very nice.
• Of course, Yamamuro's Majin Vegeta vs Goku has to make the list. Despite being quite a slow cut, it's very dynamic -- speeding up when it needs to to create a nice flow. The character art is 10/10 and the smoke towards the end is really nicely drawn. Probably Yamamuro's last great scene.

Most of the highlights are from Z, but Dragon Ball and GT sure have a few moments of their own. Admittedly, I'm only halfway through my 'animation lookout' GT rewatch right now, so there may be work further on that I've missed. Here're the few standouts I can think of:

• From Dragon Ball, you have Yamamuro's Blue vs Goku fight. Pretty simple choreography brought to life through wonderful rotations.
• Shida's Goku vs Kuririn is short and sweet, but definitely a highlight. Uncharacteristically smooth work for the show at the time; it really brought the action in the show to new heights.
• GT mostly got by on stunning character art, but highlights from Hisada and Shimanuki are worth noting. There may be more towards the end of the series that I'm forgetting, so if I notice anything, I'm sure I'll end up posting them somewhere.

I'm kinda breaking my own rules since this thread is supposed to be about Super''s animation, but dear god, I don't want to talk about Yamamuro's character designs anymore. Nope. No way.

[Lord Beerus]

For some reason I love this cut to this day. I think its one of the best.
https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/18385 ... l-dragon_b

I absolutely adore the animation and art style of Path To Power. It's among the very best the franchise has ever produced.

[ArchedThunder]

That Goku VS Blue cut doesn't really look very good to me, it looks pretty jank and weightless, and despite that Goku vs Kuririn being really good I'll always somewhat resent it, but only because for some reason tons of people on the internet seem to think that's what Dragon Ball's animation looked like at all times. I have similar feelings towards Yamamuro's Majin Vegeta vs Goku cut. They're still awesome pieces of animation, but man am I tired of the rose tinted goggles force using those two pieces of animation as proof that the original shows had amazing animation most of the time.

[Lord Beerus]

So, I remember everyone stating their favorite animators in the beginning of this thread. Anyone change their opinions?

Ishikawa followed by Tate. But that's what it's been for quite some time.

I still think Tate has been the standout animator for Super since the beginning.
[spoiler]

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[Noah]

I'm kinda breaking my own rules since this thread is supposed to be about Super''s animation, but dear god, I don't want to talk about Yamamuro's character designs anymore. Nope. No way.

Great analysis, I'm curious about: what would be your 'dream team' to ever animate a Dragon Ball episode?

[MonkeyKing16]

I wanted to repost what Ajay pointed this out on his twitter (I hope Ajay doesn't mind me using the images he posted on twitter ) and is that Karasawa is deviating his style from Yamamuro and he's starting to fix problems like the noses and the jaw width.

Karasawa on the left and Yamamuro on the right.

I really dig the picture on the left. It just looks so....organic.

[Ajay]

What would be your 'dream team' to ever animate a Dragon Ball episode?

Oh man, where to even begin:

• Yutaka Nakamura - His recent work on Concrete Revolutio was so bizarre and experimental; I absolutely adored it. It's a little weightless compared to his best work from other productions, but I thought it was an interesting attempt and would love to see more of it.
• Shingo Yamashita - An incredible webgen animator who thrives on loose minimalist work. His animation can entirely abandon form, reducing characters to simple shapes, and yet it's some of the most impactful work found in the industry. Considering the absurd reaction to his incredible Shippuuden #167, I doubt he'd be particularly popular outside of those who follow animation, but whatever.
• Hiroyuki Imaishi - One of the most stylish animators out there. Sometimes he abstracts characters, other times it goes from dramatic pose to dramatic pose. He's so versatile and his timing is absolutely unreal. Love it.
• Norio Matsumoto - Don't even know what to say. It's Norio Matsumoto! The guy is incapable of doing anything wrong. His action is out of this world.
• Naoki Tate - I've said enough about him to last a life time. You know why I like him, I'm sure. The above names should tell you the type of animation I really enjoy.
• Yoshimichi Kameda - One of the best animators around. He's currently blowing everyone's minds leading Mob Psycho 100. Watch that show if you aren't already.
• Naotoshi Shida - There's something about Shida's ridiculously over the top style that I adore. His shading style is so appealing and I love the way he uses the camera in ways that only animation could ever achieve.
• Yuki Hayashi - Thick lines, sharp angles, the way characters bob around. It's all so good. Would love to see him produce work for Super away from Yamamuro's hand.

Okay, I'm gonna stop. I could go on forever.

Give the storyboard and character design to Shinji Kimura and let Tatsuya Ishihara direct, even if that doesn't make any sense. I just wanna see it happen.

[ArchedThunder]

Seeing great One Piece animation makes me hopeful that Super will get to a normal schedule in the nearish future and that we're going to start seeing talented animators pop in now.
The schedule has gone from 3 weeks to animate to 7 1/2 (maybe 8?) in a matter of a few months, a few more breaks and and some easy to produce filler (redo the end of Z maybe?) could get us there in maybe 6-12 months.
In the shorter term I REALLY hope we start seeing more talent pop in now that the schedule isn't absolute hell anymore. I really hope Shida's cut (and continued work on the series) will be a message to other animators.
As far people that have already worked on the series and Dragon Ball in general recently I hope Otsuka Ken and Takahashi Yuya start showing up more regularly now. With the schedule potentially being around a maximum of 8 to 9 weeks for an episode after the next break maybe they'll try to add to their roster of supervisors, and while he didn't actually supervise the new stuff in the extended cut of F I can only hope that his large amount of work on that was like a trial run for Takahashi Yuya to become a new supervisor for Super.

[DragonBalllKaiHD]

Dragon Ball Super still needs at least 16 to 20 weeks before we can say the schedule is normal. Otherwise the schedule is still bad.

Naotshi Shida and Naoki Tate both would get a lot of benefits from these weeks. Futoshi Higashide, Oonishi Ryo, and Ootsuka Ken will be able to utilize their utmost talents to produce something great on a consistent basis.

Let's designate Yamamuro and have Karasawa as the character designer of the series and add BANK animation to the staff.

If all these happens, who knows how much water it will be able to blow the previous three series out.

[ArchedThunder]

Dragon Ball Super still needs at least 16 to 20 weeks before we can say the schedule is normal. Otherwise the schedule is still bad.

I don't think any "never ending" weekly anime has a schedule like that. Isn't the average around 6-8 weeks for a normal episode and around 12 for an important episode?

[DragonBalllKaiHD]

Naruto Shippuden has about 4 to 6 months of time to produce an episode. The Uchiha Madara arc has so many spectacular episodes due to giving production staff more than enough time to draw high quality cuts. That's what Super desperately needs right now.

[ArchedThunder]

Naruto Shippuden has about 4 to 6 months of time to produce an episode. The Uchiha Madara arc has so many spectacular episodes due to giving production staff more than enough time to draw high quality cuts. That's what Super desperately needs right now.

Looking at staff lists I'm seeing animation supervisors having their episodes come 6 to 12 weeks after each other. This is also how One Piece and Pokemon are.

[FortuneSSJ]

Let's designate Yamamuro and have Karasawa as the character designer of the series and add BANK animation to the staff.

I know this was already explained before but I forgot. What is BANK animation? Can someone give me osme examples?

[ArchedThunder]

Let's designate Yamamuro and have Karasawa as the character designer of the series and add BANK animation to the staff.

I know this was already explained before but I forgot. What is BANK animation? Can someone give me osme examples?

Animation that is made to be reused, so things like transformations in a magical girl anime.

[FortuneSSJ]

I know this was already explained before but I forgot. What is BANK animation? Can someone give me osme examples?

Animation that is made to be reused, so things like transformations in a magical girl anime.

Like Sailor Moon or Digimon tranformations for example?!
In what kind of scenes, Dragon Ball would benefit from that? Did we have BANK animation before?

[ArchedThunder]

Like Sailor Moon or Digimons tranformations for example?!
In what kind of scenes, Dragon Ball would benefit from that? Did we have BANK animation before?

Dragon Ball has not really made use of bank animation (it has reused animation from time to time though), but the benefit is that episodes that use bank animation have less original animation that needs to be produced, that's something that would help Super since the schedule isn't great.

[nite_jay]

I think a good idea for good bank animation would be some detailed explosions, clouds moving, or even something like them flying. All of these would be very versatile and changing the background for simple things like these should be relatively easy.

[ArchedThunder]

I hope they start using more animators, they've been going pretty low on the number of animators on a lot of episodes this arc, this episode only had 7 and we've had other with similar numbers and even lower (not counting Yashima episodes). Comparable shows like One Piece, Naruto and Pokemon generally use more animators than that. I'd like it if they tried to do have at least 10 animators per episode, with some going a bit lower. I wonder why they've had so many episodes with a lower number of animators, going as low as 5 on episode 55. We've still had episodes with higher numbers, for instance 50 had 16, which was totally fine for the kind of episode it was and 56 had 19, but an important and action heavy episode like 57 only having 7 animators is weird as hell.

[Lord Beerus]

Naruto Shippuden has about 4 to 6 months of time to produce an episode. The Uchiha Madara arc has so many spectacular episodes due to giving production staff more than enough time to draw high quality cuts. That's what Super desperately needs right now.

Looking at staff lists I'm seeing animation supervisors having their episodes come 6 to 12 weeks after each other. This is also how One Piece and Pokemon are.

I think Studio Pierrot and Toei Animation have different schedules given that Pierrot work on less long running shows.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Naruto Shippuden has about 4 to 6 months of time to produce an episode. The Uchiha Madara arc has so many spectacular episodes due to giving production staff more than enough time to draw high quality cuts. That's what Super desperately needs right now.

Looking at staff lists I'm seeing animation supervisors having their episodes come 6 to 12 weeks after each other. This is also how One Piece and Pokemon are.

I think Pokémon is what should be compared to DBS since they both don't have source material to follow from. Super though is also bound by Toriyama ans how long he takes to get these drafts out.