[Kudryavka]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

Well many of them are copying how Japan does things.

Also, those countries do fine inbetweening work and what not, but none of them have produced anything of any real quality themselves. I don't see many good shows in Korean, Hindi, Chinese or Tagalog. At least not yet. Maybe in the future, but so much the better.

My only point was that that's part of how Japan can produce animation for such a low cost, but it is still efficiency since it is international trading and the rest of Asia has a relative advantage in animating. Inbetweening is the vast majority of what we see on the screen, so that's no small amount of work.

And you know Japan animation originally copied American animation too, right? Then they built off that to make something uniquely Japanese. Copying can bring about new ideas and styles.

Well, part of why the Japanese do it well is that they know how to use limited animation skillfully. When other people do it, it just looks stiff and cheap (well anime can look cheap too sometimes...).

Low wages is an issue for Japanese animators though, but I don't think the cost difference is purely down to wages, but then I'm no expert on the nitty-gritty of animation.

I agree. The best Japanese animation houses have found this nirvana of full animation with the cost of limited animation, yet as little limited animation as possible.

Nowadays, since most Japanese and American animation studios export the vast majority of their work to other Asian countries, the only major differences in the costs of the two is basically domestic wages and to a lesser extent animation techniques (American TV cartoons still tend to lean toward techniques that cost more, like recording voices before final animation. I think every Japanese studio today do the voice recording after the rough or final animation is done, which saves money). Though American animators get paid way less than they did in PPG's time.