Not picking you outta the crowd at all Mike, you just put two things into the same post conveniently... Thanks.
Everyone, we're dealing with animation... DUH! Some artists are better than others, so our characters WILL look "off model" from time to time... Even Disney characters have this problem.
Remember SDF Macross had some really unbelievably horrible art in certain episodes... seemed like every 3rd or 4th eps was done by animators with no talent at all... Go re-watch the scene where Miriya and Max have their knife fight in the park, ending with them falling into each other's arms. We were well invested in the characters by that time, so it plays quite emotionally... but the animation SUCKED! BIG, HARD, RAW, NASTY, SUCKING animation. SO far off model that Max looked like a midget and Miriya like a mannequin. And there were endless examples that were even worse! But it was an awesome series, and still plays well all these years later because the ideas and characterizations made you care.... Well they made ME care anyway...
Thank goodness Macross Frontier hasn't suffered from any shows as poorly animated as those!
What we're dealing with here is a failure to communicate... between the Character Designer's model art and the Artist. AND probably a fight against the clock. See, while we are all sitting here arguing about what's going on and whining about when the next episode is going to hit air, there are animators killing themselves to crank out the animation... Blue line, inbetween, check, outline, ink & paint, get it sequenced, composited, recorded, and readied for broadcast. Sometimes due to rewrites, shortages of supplies, confusion of scheduling, and a hundred other little things, the studio gets behind and then has to rush it. That means simplified art, off model characters and just plain weird looking animation....
Sheryl is not Mannish. She's HOT! That's not to say there haven't been problems with how she's been drawn in various places during the series. Look closely at some of the concert footage, or how she looks in the scenes flying in Alto's arms in the sunset... downright unattractive, and not like herself at all. Check out how terrible Mihail looks just before Sheryl comes up the stairs in this episode... Same problem as Sheryl at the Saotome home. Something got rushed in this show...
As for Ranka's odd puffy appearance in the "puppy dog" shot we're all referencing. THAT was the artist approximating the distortion you get from lensing a shot really close. The camera bends the subject and makes the closer areas look "puffed up" while the rest of the background falls away. This doesn't actually happen in animation cameras, because everything is shot flat. And even less so if you're using a digital process, because there's no camera at all. But it's an "effect" that the artists like to draw as a way of emphasizing the character by making them look like they have their nose right in the lens, for impact. It looks strange and warped on purpose and isn't meant to be examined so critically.
Can we stop sniping at how the characters look in these scenes now please folks?
Loved that shot ^^
Graphic Designer
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