Best and Worst Animators

[paparapa!!]

I was wondering who the best and worst animators for the series were and who were everybodies favorite and least favorite and why. I was wondering this because a lot of the credit or blame for how good or bad an episode looks goes to whoever was supervising that particular episode. As has been noted before on this forum, however, the best animated episodes tend to have many of the best animators and studios working on the key animation while the worst tend to have many of the worst.

[DarkPrince_92]

http://www.kanzenshuu.com/forum/viewtop ... on+Studios


This should answer any questions.

[OzzyApu]

Oh yeah that thread's a gem. The triangle one, to me, is the worst. Just an awful design quo that looks very low quality.

[Metalwario64]

This thread is a good source, and is more organized, though it only covers the better animation studios.

[DarkPrince_92]

That one I was considering, but it only shows good studios, not so much the bad ones.

Also, I think Maeda and Seigasha (excluding the caveman animator) were the best of the studios.

[Metalwario64]

That one I was considering, but it only shows good studios, not the bad ones.

Oh, right.

Either way, both are good sources of information.

[dprez]

Very informative. I've noticed that triangle and pale cartoony look for the longest time. Same with what I always thought of as, the "scrunched up nose style".

[DarkPrince_92]

Also, your avatar Metalwario64 is a prime example of good DBZ animation.

[dprez]

Also a prime example of how the movies are of better quality then the TV series.

[Attitudefan]

Metalwario's animator for his icon is Maeda Minoru the Chief Animator.

I prefer, him and Aoshima (Guy who did DBZ episode 2 and the first episode of Vegeta vs Goku)

My favourites are the animators from DBZ episode 2 and 3 plus Maeda Minoru who mainly stuck to the movies in the Z portion.

Too bad they all left by Z midway.

I also don't mind the angry eye style animator. He was really good in the Ginyu arc.

[JulieYBM]

The Last House episode were by far the worst once we got to the Artificial Humans arc. Once Uchiyama Masayuki began doing key animation himself regularly and two or three of the regularly credited key animators left those episodes really did hit the pits.

I actually don't mind a lot of Studio Live's (supervised by Ebisawa Yukio for Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z) work. It's an interesting look, espicially once Kanno Toshiyuki begins to key animate.

[csl002]

By animation do we mean the quality of motion? I feel like when people talk about animation sometimes, they mean the specific styles of character drawings that they prefer or dislike. Things can still look & move well even if they aren't on model or have less detail than usual, or contort in wacky ways. I mean if you were to take a still from a Shinya Ohira (non-DBZ animator fwiw, I just used him as an example because he's one of my favorite animators) cut, it would look probably look pretty silly because he likes to go off model to convey motion. And it's not like he's the only one either! That's why it's important to look at how things come together in motion when judging animation imo.

To me, one of the worst animators is Uchiyama. Decent effects, but his character stuff is so awkward, stiff, and weightless. Especially his action. No feeling of weight or impact, it's like watching two action figures being posed and bumped into each other.

[DarkPrince_92]

By animation I mean both quality of motion, and character model design. Last House (excluding Uchiyama) did have some animation I didn't see any other studio even come close to doing (Kid Goku vs. his Doll clone comes to mind, or Kid Goku vs. Kid Krillin). The thing is with Last House and Studio Live, the character designs were very poor, far from Toriyama. Maeda was definitely the closest, and I would say Seigasha is the second (that's debatable). Seigasha had some really dynamic animation, action-wise i thought it was the best.

[OzzyApu]

The Trunks vs Freeza and Cold episode(s) are some of my favorites. Just to see him introduced like a badass is a great watch. However, someone screwed up tremendously on letting different studios work on them. That's why it's a mixed bag to watch the episodes, despite the content. Here are some samples - find where it went wrong. Notice Trunks' Capsule Corps jacket logo missing details later on.





Behold, the worst of the worst for this episode. So many things wrong, from the characters to the sword and including the animation to match the terrible Freeza slice-up aftermath above.

[JulieYBM]

Animation is at it's best when it doesn't necessarily try to stay on model (or at least takes on its own look). That's why Studio Cockpit's episodes are some of the best in Dragon Ball Z despite exagggerated key frames. This rings true for other series' which have even higher budgets, whether they're like Naruto Shippuuden or Bleach, which are both long running titles like Dragon Ball, or shorter titles like Bentou or Hagane no Renkinjutsushi: Fullmetal Alchemist.

Despite having incredible depth in the art, the episodes overseen by Maeda, Satou, or Nakatsuru didn't always have terribly fluid or interesting animation. As gorgeous as the key frames on Dragon Ball Z episode #120 were there were only two in-betweeners to the seven key animators. Maeda's episode #154 had ten key animators and one in-betweener. Maeda's last episode as supervisor had twelve (pretty sure that's a record for Dragon Ball episodes) key animators and one in-betweener. Gorgeous for still frame screen-captures, but not so much for watching, in my opinion.


On another note, I just looked back at episode #178. Incredibly, Uchiyama and Ohara are not the only credited-by-name key animators who worked on this episode.

原画 ： ラストハウス Key Animation : Last House
内山正幸 Uchiyama Masayuki
小原太一郎 Ohara Taiichirou
清水博明 Shimizu Hiroaki
三柴直樹 Mishiba Naoki
伊東美奈子 Itou Manako
新井洋子 Arai Youko

I have to wonder, were these four brought on specifically for this episode or were they previously credited only under Last House? I find it strange that this one episode suddenly credits six key animators by name instead of the regular two. What's more, I find it astonishing that Uchiyama is credited at the top of the list. First credit typically means that they did the most work on an episode. Why would he take on that much key animating on his own when he also has to supervise the key frames?

Another oddity I find interesting is with episode #177.

原画 ： 動画工房 Key Animation : Doga Kobo
奥澤明裕 Okuzawa Akihiro
的場　敦 Matoba Atsushi
佐山さとる Sayama Satoru
スタジオカーペンター Studio Carpenter
袴田裕二 Hakamada Yuuji
福島伸一郎 Fukushima Shinichirou
真中孝之 Manaka Takayuki

If I'm reading this correctly, two studios did the key animation for this episode (and it's still stiff as Hell). This is something I haven't come across before for this series, which really leaves me wondering what happened with behind the scenes production.

[Jackal puFF]

That episode of Trunks and Frieza is so hard to watch because of the bad animation.. I just don't understand why they would make the previous episode one of the best, lol.

[JulieYBM]

There's rarely a rhyme and a reason to which episodes receive the good animation teams. Typically we have our usual rotation of Shindou Pro, Seigasha, Studio Live, and Last House, with the occasional in-house episode supervised by Maeda Minoru, Nakatsuru Katsuyoshi, Satou Masaki (episode #64), or Miyahara Naoki. I would have to assume it was Maeda (as Chief Animator) or Series Director Nishio simply saying to himself "hey, I've got enough time in my schedule to direct/supervise an episode myself, I think I'll do it!" and then somehow drag along some of Toei Animation's finest animators. Kei can correct me if I'm wrong, though. :P

As for episode #120 specifically, maybe the appearance of Trunks (the second Super Saiyan) was considered important enough that Nishio felt it was worth breaking into the piggy-bank for. Or heck, maybe he was told to use Battle Power Infinity to help promote it and decided to give the episode a big budget. Who knows, really.

One time where it really seems like the production staff planned ahead was with Dragon Ball Z episode #179. Nishio Daisuke directs the episode himself and it really turned out to be one of the biggest episodes of the series. It's Studio Cockpit's second episode in the series and their first fight episode, so it really felt like all the elements came together to make a real special episode, akin to what we see with Naruto Shippuuden episode #75, #123, #131, #135, #137, #138, #143, #166, and #167 (to just name a few). Arguably, we see something similar with episodes #279 (Studio Cockpit) and #280 (Miyahara Naoki as animation supervisor) where it really seems like Toei planned ahead to give the final battle with Majin Boo the best animation teams they could.

[kei17]

Metalwario's animator for his icon is Maeda Minoru the Chief Animator.

The key animator in that scene is Ide Takeo, who is one of my favourite animators in the DB series. Animation supervisors are mainly responsible for keeping characters on-model, so you should mostly or entirely give key animators credit for motion.

As for episode #120 specifically, maybe the appearance of Trunks (the second Super Saiyan) was considered important enough that Nishio felt it was worth breaking into the piggy-bank for. Or heck, maybe he was told to use Battle Power Infinity to help promote it and decided to give the episode a big budget. Who knows, really.

Speaking of episode 120, though the episode's animation is phenomenal, the next episode preview on the previous episode tells us one of Nakatsuru's weaknesses; he is slow to get work done. The NEP shows how episode 120 was still terribly incomplete when they were filming episode 119.

*Oops, sorry for double posting and letting you edit my posts.

[Attitudefan]

Metalwario's animator for his icon is Maeda Minoru the Chief Animator.

The key animator in that scene is Ide Takeo, who is one of my favourite animators in the DB series. Animation supervisors are mainly responsible for keeping characters on-model, so you should mostly or entirely give key animators credit for motion.

Well, I meant him and his team. I usually go by the lead animator or studio of each episode. It isn't the right thing to do but it gets the simple point across.

Animation is at it's best when it doesn't necessarily try to stay on model

But an animator wants to still stay true to the model when going off model (paradox??) The in-betweens can take liberties but should still be close to the source. An arm can go wonky for a couple of frames and make the motion look very fluid but overdoing that looks terrible. The triangle crap episodes take way too much liberty in that.

[DarkPrince_92]

Agreed. There can only be so much liberty between keys and inbetweens, Triangle Type just needs to die....I'd much rather have some decent animation from the better half of Last House in replacement.