Would you sacrifice HD for better animation?

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by chikorita157

Anyways, the sketches they scan into the scanner will be higher quality (since they use high end, professional scanners, not the consumer models) than just doing it on the computer and afterwards, they can either clean it up or vector it so it will be higher quality (most likely using a graphics tablet of some sort or a mouse) and put it together once the background is completed and digitally color it. Although the animation is above the HDTV resolution, the final most of the time is downscaled...

I have to agree, this topic is pretty much pointless.

nobody draws analog/scans stuff anymore, it's all digital vector graphics to begin with

[grylsyjaeger]

I'd sacrifice both animation and HD for a decent characters and a compelling story. The issue of quality is moot to me if the show is shit.

[KholdStare]

Originally Posted by fallschirmjager

I'd sacrifice both animation and HD for a decent characters and a compelling story. The issue of quality is moot to me if the show is shit.

I see someone agrees with me.

[Rawgers]

Originally Posted by KholdStare

I see someone agrees with me.

I agree as well. Truely, I can care less about a series that has the most spectacular animation if it has a shitty story. Great animation + story is a also a great thing, but extremely rare to find nowadays.

[lubczyk]

Originally Posted by Rawgers

I agree as well. Truely, I can care less about a series that has the most spectacular animation if it has a shitty story. Great animation + story is a also a great thing, but extremely rare to find nowadays.

I kind of understand where you're going even though I don't agree that we can't have both, as you said.

I tend to like DEEN works like Higurashi and Umineko for their story and characters even though they are lauded by the anime community as having awful animation.

By contrast, The 11 episode Eden of the East bored me to tears despite having some of the best animation in the industry.

I can see where you're going with that. I just don't want fans to be content with slideshows for animation with characters and stories being the excuse.

I wonder what do Japanese Otaku demand? I mean, harem shows with some of the worst stories and animation tend to sell pretty well while good stuff gets ignored.

Sometimes I get the feeling that anime geeks will buy anything regardless of quality, a la Haruhi S2 Endless Eight.

[KholdStare]

Enjoyment and entertainment are the things that sells, not animation or even necessarily story. People buy what they think have a good re-watch value, or something they can have handy to show to other people. I guess that would explain the popularity of Queen's Blade.

[Bonta Kun]

This for me falls under the same way I look at games, great amazing graphics mean squat if the gameplay and its entertain value are not there for me.

As KholdStare says enjoyment and entertainment are what I want from what I watch.

well its not like I would go out and buy any of this stuff on Blu-ray, even if I had the money, its a waste really, better just sticking with DVDs for anime.
Like I do with movies I only buy big action packed, big CGI flicks on Blu-ray, ones where it puts blu-ray to good use where as stuff like comedies and so forth I buy on normal DVDs.

[DidCart]

I love watching animes in big screens with 1080p, but...

Animation Quality>>>>>>>>High Definition

That's the truth!

[andy]

People that think anime should only be on DVD or it look just like blu ray when up scale have to be crazy . I don't buy any more dvds Even up scale blu ray look better than dvd. Plus most anime are not even in1080p. The day we get anime at 1080p24frames we would be lucky .

Also even with 32inch Tv you can tell SD VS HD anime and a certain viewing distance.

I do wish more anime would use 5.1 something like macross F would have been awesome with it .

On a side note thanks to sony being asses i won't be buying any more KNK movies . i bought 2 and dvds just don't cut with them .(i won't be milk any more) Hell Index look better than KNK movies thanks to it being on blu ray over dvd.

[Revenger1589]

KnK is going to be released on BD sooner or later, they are just milking the DVDs for all their worth.

[npcomplete]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

nobody draws analog/scans stuff anymore, it's all digital vector graphics to begin with

That's not really true for anime. While it all ends up digital, most of it starts off on pencil and paper.

Took me a while but here are some examples.

Starting with Jubei-chan 2, a 2004 title:
- Trailer , to you give an idea of how the show is like

(sorry, the following have busted audio and missing subs but you'll get the idea)
- making of - clip 1 - VA timing, testing to rough pencil sketches
- making of - clip 2 - animator work; clip begins with vectorized digital paiting, see 2m42s for how such works start off


More recent: Kara no Kyoukai .. still the same - a look in ufotable:

- recommended: 720p version

Drawn on paper--opaque or onion skinned over a light table--and hand flipped through -> TONS of paper for the hand drawn cuts -> scanned, vectorized, painted, composited, CG, edited & FX etc.





- done with a set of cuts



- digitization



- digitization, lots of paper to go through







- coloring


- color keying





- cutting room (some rough pencil sketches still used)

Originally Posted by lubczyk

There has to be a way to further refine the process.

Yes, part of the issue is that it's only vectorized insofar as tracing and painting goes, but most of the motion itself is not vectorized -- as in applying geometric transformations and letting software interpolate the frames for you. Although it's not as easy as it sounds and introduces a new set of challenges.

The ufotable clip above also contains a short preview of KnK and if you look at some of the mundane type of motion, like 7m56s of placing suitcase, hand movement, etc, it is not as smooth as what you'd get with pure vectorized animation:

ex1, ex2, ex3 (btw, and that's entirely done by just 2 guys + 1 animation director)

As I mentioned above, my impression is that it's still easier said than done and introduces other issues, but just in terms of pure manpower required to do the tweening or even generate most of the key frames, it's hard to beat software.

[Revenger1589]

Thanks npcomplete, that was very informative, I had no idea how things were done.

[Solafighter]

Would you sacrifice HD for better animation?

No, not at all.

There are some pretty awsomeness animes in full HD(1080p) with pretty good animations.

85 % of all animes i get are in HD or full HD.

[FatalMemory]

Yes I would.
An upscaled DVD doesn't look too different to a bluray when I'm sitting two meters away from my 42" setup in my lounge room.

@ncomplete, isn't that the reason why Kara no Kyoukai looks that way?
You know, as if it were animated H-game art.

[andy]

Originally Posted by FatalMemory

Yes I would.
An upscaled DVD doesn't look too different to a bluray when I'm sitting two meters away from my 42" setup in my lounge room.

As for ncomplete, isn't that the reason why Kara no Kyoukai looks that way?
You know, as if it were animated H-game art.

It does not look different to you ,other people have better eyes. It's one think to say you don't care about it.It's another to say they don't look different.

[FatalMemory]

Originally Posted by andy

It does not look different to you ,other people have better eyes. It's one think to say you don't care about it.It's another to say they don't look different.

Your eyes mustn't be as good as you claim.
I said "too different".

Besides that, most of the "HD" stuff coming out these days isn't that great.
You could buy the DVDs, rip the eps off and even using the least accurate resizer they'd probably look better than most of the "HD" TV rips that seem to be popular at the moment.

[wingdarkness]

Originally Posted by npcomplete

That's not really true for anime. While it all ends up digital, most of it starts off on pencil and paper.

Took me a while but here are some examples.

Starting with Jubei-chan 2, a 2004 title:
- Trailer , to you give an idea of how the show is like

(sorry, the following have busted audio and missing subs but you'll get the idea)
- making of - clip 1 - VA timing, testing to rough pencil sketches
- making of - clip 2 - animator work; clip begins with vectorized digital paiting, see 2m42s for how such works start off


More recent: Kara no Kyoukai .. still the same - a look in ufotable:

- recommended: 720p version

Drawn on paper--opaque or onion skinned over a light table--and hand flipped through -> TONS of paper for the hand drawn cuts -> scanned, vectorized, painted, composited, CG, edited & FX etc.





- done with a set of cuts



- digitization



- digitization, lots of paper to go through







- coloring


- color keying





- cutting room (some rough pencil sketches still used)




Yes, part of the issue is that it's only vectorized insofar as tracing and painting goes, but most of the motion itself is not vectorized -- as in applying geometric transformations and letting software interpolate the frames for you. Although it's not as easy as it sounds and introduces a new set of challenges.

The ufotable clip above also contains a short preview of KnK and if you look at some of the mundane type of motion, like 7m56s of placing suitcase, hand movement, etc, it is not as smooth as what you'd get with pure vectorized animation:

ex1, ex2, ex3 (btw, and that's entirely done by just 2 guys + 1 animation director)

As I mentioned above, my impression is that it's still easier said than done and introduces other issues, but just in terms of pure manpower required to do the tweening or even generate most of the key frames, it's hard to beat software.

After looking at this, I don't know why we even have the right to complain...Yeah animation has actually regressed since the mid-90's when many high-end shows were treated brilliantly in the hand-drawn department, but $hit what these kids have to do in those crappy little cubicals just so I get a laff on a random ep of something like Gintama is incredible...I pretty much worship anime and I have a huge office at work compared to what these guys have to work with (And they ARE anime)...They're tuff...

[andy]

Originally Posted by FatalMemory

Your eyes mustn't be as good as you claim.
I said "too different".

Besides that, most of the "HD" stuff coming out these days isn't that great.
You could buy the DVDs, rip the eps off and even using the least accurate resizer they'd probably look better than most of the "HD" TV rips that seem to be popular at the moment.

Man i am not talking about fan subs HD rips. I am talking about blu ray . HD fan subs rips half the time from crappy sources(TV rips) and when get good source they try to kept the file size down .

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by FatalMemory

Your eyes mustn't be as good as you claim.
I said "too different".

Besides that, most of the "HD" stuff coming out these days isn't that great.
You could buy the DVDs, rip the eps off and even using the least accurate resizer they'd probably look better than most of the "HD" TV rips that seem to be popular at the moment.

Depends on the source for the rip. Using my 22 inch LCD monitor, I can spot noticeable differences between upscaled DVD and a good 720P version of the same anime. On my HD setup - which is similar to yours - it's a bit iffier. I need to be wearing my glasses to spot it from back there despite the fact that my eyesight problem is actually mild enough to have gone undiagnosed for several years.

(Also, while it's not all that relevant because most HD anime is 720P, I'd just like to point out that a person with 20/20 vision can't see all the detail on a 42inch, 1080P image from two meters. You'd need to move up to 50 inches for that.)

Which isn't to say that DVD upscales aren't just fine for 99% of anime watching situations I encounter, just that I can notice the difference in clarity. It's most notable with details in the background - character close ups and the like just get sharper lines.

(A few shows like Macross Frontier benefit from things like extra "texture" on CG assets, but that's not as common.)

If there was a trade off between HD and animation quality, I would go with the latter, but I see no reason to believe HD adds much if anything to the cost of a production unless you have to upgrade your equipment to do it.

(And when I answer that, I should mention that when I say animation quality, I'm not really referring to increased frame rate as the OP did... I seldom like the look of shows that trade frame quality for frame rate.)

[FatalMemory]

Originally Posted by andy

Man i am not talking about fan subs HD rips. I am talking about blu ray

I was also talking about blu-ray earlier and how the difference is....not so different.
My later comment was aimed more at people who erroneously believe that a higher resolution always = better.

Originally Posted by andy

and when get good source they try to kept the file size down

So that other topic about files nowadays being HUEG must be pretty pointless then.