2013-01-20, 01:08 | Link #1 |
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2009
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Anime Animation Laziness
Why do most Japanese cartoons have lip flapping instead of actual lip animation? Like, why do they animate the scenes before recording voices??? I never understood this, and it's especially jarring to see next to otherwise gorgeous fight and hair animation.
Why so lazy? |
2013-01-20, 01:15 | Link #3 |
Last Engage
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Florida
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It's not a matter of laziness as much as it is cost-cutting (since comparatively, anime has a smaller budget) and an artistic choice. Lip flapping can still be immersive, because anime is already erring on the side of unrealistic.
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2013-01-20, 01:17 | Link #4 | |
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Join Date: May 2009
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For the most part it is cost-cutting, but then I think for the 10% it is artistic choice. Maybe b/c of modern Japanese animation's roots in being done by comic artists (I heard)? I heard the early modern stuff was done by people who had no knowledge of how to animate, like gravity or the animation laws. |
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2013-01-20, 01:20 | Link #5 |
Princess or Plunderer?
Join Date: May 2009
Location: the Philippines
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Because the script may undergo unexpected changes that may nor may not affect the scene entirely. They production team cannot afford to rework an entire snippet of an animated scene to compensate on that.
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2013-01-20, 02:09 | Link #7 | |
Banned
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Probable reason? Not actually lazy but the budget and the time. |
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2013-01-20, 02:12 | Link #8 | |
Me at work
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You even have cases of ad libs, voice actress Aoi Yuuki said the director of ben-to asked her to improvise some of her character's lines.
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2013-01-20, 02:26 | Link #9 | |
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Join Date: May 2009
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2013-01-20, 04:29 | Link #12 | |
Tch.
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Australia
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2013-01-20, 13:12 | Link #17 |
AS Oji-kun
Join Date: Nov 2006
Age: 74
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The last show I watched where the actors' performances were recorded before the animation was done was Kurenai. You can see how effective this is in episode three where there is a frantic three-way conversation. It adds a lot of realism since we know that, in real life, people do not patiently wait for someone to finish speaking before speaking themselves. In that Kurenai episode, the director encouraged the actors to talk over each other and left the animators to work out how to translate that to the screen. I suspect there was some ad-libbing as well.
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2013-01-21, 04:35 | Link #18 | |
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Join Date: May 2009
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2013-01-23, 15:05 | Link #19 | |
Licensed Hunter-a-holic
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 35
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Of course, I could imagine why such methods are normally not used, since they depend greatly on how talented the Seiyuu involved are and how good the chemistry between the cast is, otherwise it could end up with a very mixed result. That and ironically, since anime dialogue is scripted, having natural sounding dialogue might come across as being odd. Regarding lip animation, as mentioned, it would cost a lot of money for something that mundane, not usually very noticeable and can go by so quick, so it wouldn't make much sense to spend that much effort into that area when they could manage their creative force on other more noticeable areas. That said, the fact that there is little focus on animating lips can actually give scenes where they do focus on a character mouth even greater impact. I remember Pandora Hearts trying to pull that off once when an important character made his debut, where once he said his name the camera shifted focus to his lips and we seen a very quick but fluid animation that managed to give the scene importance and ended the episode on an exciting cliffhanger. Recently, Shin Sekai Yori had done something to that effect as well but rather for a more ominous effect, with a character silently mouthing a word. It could be argued that the camera work is more important in such cases, but in a way, I don't think that those scenes could be as potent if the entire show had the same level of animation when it came to that particular area. There is also cases where lips animation can be used effectively in an anime opening and endings, where a character might sing the same verse as the singer of the theme, and that could give off a very strong impression as well if done correctly (Off the top of my head, Bleach had used this twice at least, and Fullmetal Alchemist had done it in it's first opening). And that is only on that area, if someone gets really creative with it and could manage to make the lack of animation into a strength by juxtapositioning it with a few moments of importance in the show where the animation quality is upped, and that emphasis the importance of the scene.
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2013-01-23, 15:24 | Link #20 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2007
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It's a shame this isn't a trend; yes I'm aware it might produce results that are either bad or just downright horrific but I'm willing to take that risk just for the good parts. |
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