Gedo Senki (Tales from Earthsea)

1st March 2006

Number 44 - Simplicity for the purposes of "movement"

A couple of days ago I wrote that a reason for aiming for simple pictures was to transmit the "words" more strongly.

There are other reasons for making character art simple.
That is, in relation to "movement".

Remember the little cartoons you drew in the corner of your textbook pages.[1]
Animation is the technique of the animator drawing each instant of the movement, sheet by sheet, and when linked they create the illusion of movement.
In other words, at the risk of saying it a bit roughly,
if the characters are drawn in fine detail,
the effort expended on each page is larger, and the burden on the animator increases. Oppositely, for characters with few lines the effort per page decreases.

Realistically there are limits to the time that can be spent on production, and the energy of each animator.
The result is that animation with detailed pictures, rather than showing things through movement, often tends to become about showing the detail filled pictures themselves.

So I don't think it's true that pouring time and effort into making detailed pictures move as much as you want necessarily produces a better movie.

Translator's Notes

[1]: That is you draw a similar picture on each page and ruffling the pages produces the illusion that the pictures are moving.