New Animation VS Old Animation

[ParkerAL]

Maybe not, but its pretty fucking bad. It's stiff, uninspired, and lazy.

All very true, but it also lasts less than four seconds.

[thomas1up]

Maybe not, but its pretty fucking bad. It's stiff, uninspired, and lazy.

All very true, but it also lasts less than four seconds.

Yeah I don't think I'd notice how bad it was if it wasn't for the fact it was a constantly repeating gif.

[Lord Beerus]

Maybe not, but its pretty fucking bad. It's stiff, uninspired, and lazy.

Animation from Dragon Ball since day 1 has had some shots which seemed stiff, uninspired, and lazy.

[nicolas_3d]

I must admit that I prefer this, to the new animation...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsskkT3HJwU

[Noah]

I must admit that I prefer this, to the new animation...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsskkT3HJwU

And how is this bad?

[VintageSaiyan]

Maybe not, but its pretty fucking bad. It's stiff, uninspired, and lazy.

Animation from Dragon Ball since day 1 has had some shots which seemed stiff, uninspired, and lazy.

That's a really inane argument and I don't understand it. Nobody is saying the old days were perfect, but as a whole there has been a stark difference in the overall quality of the series since DBZ and now. The production value has severely dropped and you'd really have to be biased to not see it.

I must admit that I prefer this, to the new animation...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsskkT3HJwU

Sigh, what could have been..

[MrWalnut4]

Maybe not, but its pretty fucking bad. It's stiff, uninspired, and lazy.

Animation from Dragon Ball since day 1 has had some shots which seemed stiff, uninspired, and lazy.

That's a really inane argument and I don't understand it. Nobody is saying the old days were perfect, but as a whole there has been a stark difference in the overall quality of the series since DBZ and now. The production value has severely dropped and you'd really have to be biased to not see it.

If we're speaking in terms of overall quality, I think both eras of animation are about the same. The difference between the two is that the older Dragon Ball had higher highs and lower lows, while modern Dragon Ball has lower highs and higher lows. The quality difference between episodes was sometimes extremely dramatic.





Modern Dragon Ball on the contrary seems to never be as bad as DBZ's worst animation, but it also never quite looks as good as DBZ's best. You get something in the middle. I personally wouldn't mind having the same lows in Super as DBZ had if we also had the same highs that DBZ had. But not everyone thinks this way. I'm sure some people would rather have consistent animation and they are entitled to that opinion (Toei sure seems to agree). I only hope that we see more flexibility in Super than we have with the last two movies.

[Metalwario64]

The thing is, even if Uchiyama's style was overly simplified, at least until the Cell arc, it animated pretty well, and there were other animators like Shida at Last House who made some great cuts.







Of course, starting at the Cell arc, when he had to do most of the work himself, it all hit rock bottom, which is unfortunate. Also, Ebisawa's work was always very bad, but there were moments of solid animation by Toshiyuki Kan'no throughout Studio Live's episodes.

[MrWalnut4]

Agreed, especially Kan'no's later work. I wonder if modern animation being stiff has more to do with the directing at Toei than the animators themselves. It seems the animation teams had more leeway in Z than they've had in recent years.

[irreality]

It's significantly worse than the 90's movies, which is stupid when you consider the fact that BoG and RoF were THEATRICAL fucking releases that were reviving the franchise.

All DBZ movies were theatrical releases, AFAIK. I think Path to Power is the only DB movie that was not a theatrical release.

[Cursemark505]

To be honest, especially in the later films, I haven't noticed anywhere near the amount of scenes that made me cringe like I did in the recent ones. The 90's DBZ movies were pretty terrible from a story standpoint, but the animation really came together. It's significantly worse than the 90's movies, which is stupid when you consider the fact that BoG and RoF were THEATRICAL fucking releases that were reviving the franchise.

I went and skimmed through some of the DBZ movies and you're right. The animation was much much better than I remembered. I also find the artstyles and shading more aesthetically pleasing than BOG and ROF but that goes without saying.

Also true. It's downright terrible when compared to the others.

That's pretty sad too. I think even the 2014 Fairy Tail anime looks better and that looks bad more often than not.

[Attitudefan]

Last House looked plain and off model pre-Cell but the actual story boards, fluidity of animation, and the backgrounds and colors were overall way better than modern DragonBall. As one had pointed out, Last House and Studio Live might have looked bad at times but had great animation more often than modern DBZ.

Yes, the lows often looked REALLY bad in DBZ, but most of Dragon Ball looked really good even on the bad animation studios episodes. The episode where Yamcha gets hit in the nuts by Kami is by Studio Live yet looks amazing. It looks nearly as good as Maeda's episode that comes after.


Piccolo growing as a giant is also Studio Live and still looks just as good as anything. I like that it has a bit of style. It didn't always look too triangular. There's moments that you can cherry pick where it does look that way but most of the work by Last House and Studio Live, on average look good with good animation if you look at the overall series when it began in the mid 80s to its end in the mid 90s.

[dougo13]

Been wondering what software Toei and others use to animate their shows. Found this on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RETAS

But does anyone know for sure. And exactly how many frames per second are we talking here? Toei was never known for using a lot of frames back in the 80s when it was hand drawn and painted. With the software they have now it should be more instead of less but some of their newest stuff looks markedly worse than stuff from 20 or more years ago.

Also found these interviews:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/video/301/#play-1

[Doctor.]

Modern animation has had some nice cuts so far. There's cuts like these: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (both cuts) and probably a few more that are slipping my mind at the moment, Battle of Gods and Resurrection 'F' certainly are filled with a few gems here and there, even if the animation is sub-par as a whole. It's about whether or not the people like the style of the new animators, because animation-wise I have to say some of these cuts are extremely fluid and most likely the best animated scenes we've seen of the franchise yet.

[JulieYBM]

Dragon Ball Super Episode #5 will have Ootsuka Ken as a key animator, so with any luck we'll have our first really nice in-episode display of good animation. Hayashi Yuuki's work in Episode #2 was nice despite it's short length, but with any luck Ootsuka will be able to do more for Gokuu's fight with Beers.

Been wondering what software Toei and others use to animate their shows. Found this on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RETAS

But does anyone know for sure. And exactly how many frames per second are we talking here? Toei was never known for using a lot of frames back in the 80s when it was hand drawn and painted. With the software they have now it should be more instead of less but some of their newest stuff looks markedly worse than stuff from 20 or more years ago.

Also found these interviews:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/video/301/#play-1

Toei Animation still uses hand-drawn animation, not computers, to animate. Key animation and in-between animation drawings are done by hand as they always have been.

[ErikB]

Well here it is in motion:

It doesn't strike me as OMG THIS IS THE WORST THING EVER! But that's just me.

Yeesh. OK seeing it in motion now, yeah, that is pretty bad. It looks like there are 5 or 6 drawings in there which isn't terribly ideal, but it would be enough to create some contrast between poses. Instead he goes from one pose to basically the exact same pose just with tiny shifts (and, obviously, his one arm extended). Plus the drawings are very evenly spaced so the timing of his movement is very robotic; it doesn't properly cushion on either end of the animation. Not to mention the already-pointed-out wacky right arm.

I'd do something more like this, with the line of action contrasting from the first pose to the last pose:

Although this is already 5 drawings and it's still missing at least 2 in-betweens.

[dougo13]

Toei Animation still uses hand-drawn animation, not computers, to animate. Key animation and in-between animation drawings are done by hand as they always have been.

If so, then cels should be available. Are they though? They used to have cel sales all the time back in the 80's and 90's. That's how I got a lot of stuff over time. Anyone got anything from a newer Toei series or movie?

[Ajay]

No, he means the actual animation itself. The hand drawn paper that gets scanned in and digitally coloured is still hand drawn. There are no cels.

[Attitudefan]

In Japan they use Paintman and Drawman software programs.

[DBZMerciter2005]

Well here it is in motion:

It doesn't strike me as OMG THIS IS THE WORST THING EVER! But that's just me.

Yeesh. OK seeing it in motion now, yeah, that is pretty bad. It looks like there are 5 or 6 drawings in there which isn't terribly ideal, but it would be enough to create some contrast between poses. Instead he goes from one pose to basically the exact same pose just with tiny shifts (and, obviously, his one arm extended). Plus the drawings are very evenly spaced so the timing of his movement is very robotic; it doesn't properly cushion on either end of the animation. Not to mention the already-pointed-out wacky right arm.

I'd do something more like this, with the line of action contrasting from the first pose to the last pose:

Although this is already 5 drawings and it's still missing at least 2 in-betweens.

See this is what I'd like to see when people complain about animation being stiff or ugly. I rarely see people support their point other than "just because." Thank you for the example. It made it very clear why, although well drawn, the movement was stiff and not necessarily exciting or showing strong action.