Is the Ghibli standard to animate on 3's?

They seem to do a lot of stuff on 3's, with the odd 4s for slow actions, the odd 2s for quick actions, very rarely on 1s for superfast movement.

pkoduah said:
Is the Ghibli standard to animate on 3's?

They seem to do a lot of stuff on 3's, with the odd 4s for slow actions, the odd 2s for quick actions, very rarely on 1s for superfast movement.

That's how they actually approach quasi-realistic high quality animation, if I'm not mistaken.

AnonBaiter said:
That's how they actually approach quasi-realistic high quality animation, if I'm not mistaken.

Right. Disney is on 2s and 1s, I think 3s is rare and 4s pretty much unheard of for them.

But Ghibli seems choppier than other big name anime movies. I'm thinking Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Metropolis, Memories etc. Could be wrong, but they seem choppier. I was shocked going through Princess Monoke when I saw they had a walk cycle on 4s, it looked good though

The Wind Rises is all in 1s and 2s, mostly.

I'm new to animation, please explain to me what the hell you guys are talking about...2s? 3s? wut? You mean how many frames they complete an action with? Or what?

The're talking about the number that has no real bearing on the quality of the animation

Naisora said:
I'm new to animation, please explain to me what the hell you guys are talking about...2s? 3s? wut? You mean how many frames they complete an action with? Or what?

1s, 2s, 3s and 4s are used when you talk about how many frames one picture is shown. Most animation in general, is done on 24 fps (frames per second). Since a picture that lasts 4/24 seconds lasts longer than a 1/24 picture, the action will seem slower, or in many cases choppier than it would've looked, if it had been on a lower frame-count. Hope I explained this somewhat understandably..

Naisora said:
I'm new to animation, please explain to me what the hell you guys are talking about...2s? 3s? wut? You mean how many frames they complete an action with? Or what?

Most film/TV is made with with 24 frames per second, so when it comes to animation a scene drawn on 1s is one which has 1 new drawing for each frame (of that 24 block). However to draw and animate 24 frames for 1 second of footage can often be very time consuming and expensive, so animators developed methods to ease their workload. For example when they only draw every other frame out of that 24 frame block, is known as working on '2s'. 3s as you can guess is when they only draw every 3rd frame, and so on.

Classical Disney animation was often drawn on 1s and 2s as they had the manpower and money to do so. Japanese Animation on the other hand is a varied ball park. Few anime productions use a strict rate, ones that do are often those that have some form of vision or financial backing behind it.

If anything, I think Japanese animation is generally defined by variable frame rates, where animators will increase and lower the rates according to what they are drawing.

Habarudo said:
1s, 2s, 3s and 4s are used when you talk about how many frames one picture is shown. Most animation in general, is done on 24 fps (frames per second). Since a picture that lasts 4/24 seconds lasts longer than a 1/24 picture, the action will seem slower, or in many cases choppier than it would've looked, if it had been on a lower frame-count. Hope I explained this somewhat understandably..

Like a flipbook has pages for each drawing, film animation has "frames". There are generally 24 frames in a second of film animation. When there is a different drawing for every frame it is called animating on 1s. This animation is the most fluid, expensive and time consuming. It is usually used to show very fast movements. Most animation does not require this level of fluidity especially when the characters movements are more slow so each drawing is shown for more than one frame. When each drawing is shown for 2 frames, its called animating on 2s, 3 frames its called 3s etc. This cuts down the number of drawings needed for each second of animation (2s - 12 drawings for each second, 3s - 8 drawings, 4s - 6 drawings)

Animating on 3s and 4s works better for slow movements and is more cost effective, but can look "choppy" when used on fast movements.

'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' is an example of film animated entirely on 1s and is fluid throughout.
http://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/1749/animated-artist_unknown-western-who_framed_roger_r

P.S.
You might find this page helpful understanding animation more generally.
https://app.hiive.co.uk/swarms/animation-tips-tricks/111/#/

pkoduah said:

Animating on 3s and 4s works better for slow movements and is more cost effective, but can look "choppy" when used on fast movements.

I suppose that explains why mainstream Japanese animation is so rigid and stiff. I always thought the term for that was "limited animation" though. Anyway thanks for the information.

Naisora said:
I suppose that explains why mainstream Japanese animation is so rigid and stiff. I always thought the term for that was "limited animation" though. Anyway thanks for the information.

Limited animation is when you only animate certain elements (eg. mouth, hair) but leave the other elements still. This is common for many "rigid" anime talking scenes. But limited animation can be on 1s, 2s, 3s or 4s. (eg. A character standing still as only their hair is animated blowing fastly in the wind on 1s, or sitting still talking with only their mouth moving on 2s)

pkoduah said:
'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' is an example of film animated entirely on 1s and is fluid throughout.
http://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/1749/animated-artist_unknown-western-who_framed_roger_r

People probably already know this, but they mainly did that to match the actors. There are some scenes that are animated on twos since the animated characters don't move around so much. If I remember correctly, Richard Williams did say in his book that a general rule in big Western productions was to have fast actions on 1s and slower actions on 2s.

pkoduah said:
Limited animation is when you only animate certain elements (eg. mouth, hair) but leave the other elements still. This is common for many "rigid" anime talking scenes. But limited animation can be on 1s, 2s, 3s or 4s. (eg. A character standing still as only their hair is animated blowing fastly in the wind on 1s, or sitting still talking with only their mouth moving on 2s)

Here's an interesting example.

http://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/514

You'll notice that the head only has around two unique drawings for that cut. I'm guessing Iso wanted to put the focus on the loading and firing of the gun. A problem though is that in any given scene viewers will tend to look at a characters face first if it's visible.

Anyway, I think this example is closer to what "full limited" means as opposed to the "drawing every frame" definition.

Trisection said:

Here's an interesting example.

http://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/514

You'll notice that the head only has around two unique drawings for that cut. I'm guessing Iso wanted to put the focus on the loading and firing of the gun. A problem though is that in any given scene viewers will tend to look at a characters face first if it's visible.

If you ask me, I think he was just being lazy. The body looks amazing in the loading and firing of that gun, and the head would have too. Seems to me like he just didn't want to bother to animate the head responding to the movement.

pkoduah said:
'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' is an example of film animated entirely on 1s and is fluid throughout.
http://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/1749/animated-artist_unknown-western-who_framed_roger_r

Trisection said:
People probably already know this, but they mainly did that to match the actors. There are some scenes that are animated on twos since the animated characters don't move around so much. If I remember correctly, Richard Williams did say in his book that a general rule in big Western productions was to have fast actions on 1s and slower actions on 2s.

I think it's 'The Thief and The Cobbler' nearly all done on 1s. 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' have some 2s shot. Richard Williams is the guy who wants to animate everything on 1s.

Naisora said:
If you ask me, I think he was just being lazy. The body looks amazing in the loading and firing of that gun, and the head would have too. Seems to me like he just didn't want to bother to animate the head responding to the movement.

Nonsense.
It would be out of character if he showed reactions to the gunfire.
That guy is a professional, he is used to it.
I don't think he would be able to aim if his head was moving.

When the nurse was firing the gun she went nuts because she never did that before.

http://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/8369/animated-blood-_the_last_vampire-character_acting-

Jesus christ, move it to the forums or something.

geso said:
Jesus christ, move it to the forums or something.

Why not just discard this discussion altogether and enjoy every uploaded shot of this film/movie? This is getting old real fast and I can't stand arguments about "limited movement" part vs. "superfluous movement" part anymore.

Seriously guys.

Naisora said:
If you ask me, I think he was just being lazy. The body looks amazing in the loading and firing of that gun, and the head would have too. Seems to me like he just didn't want to bother to animate the head responding to the movement.

Iso Mitsuo is a god, animation in 1 and 2 is OVERRATED and can look very bad too. Treasure Planet is filled with examples of full animation that didn't work.

Casshan said:
Iso Mitsuo is a god, animation in 1 and 2 is OVERRATED and can look very bad too. Treasure Planet is filled with examples of full animation that didn't work.

I think the problem with that was the idea of using heavy CGI and trying to match the framerate of the hand-drawn stuff to that.

Doesn't help that the designs look, for the most part, ungainly to work with. And besides, bad animation knows no frame rate. Doesn't matter if it's on 1s or on 3s, timing's everything. Mess that up and it looks horrible.

Naisora said:
If you ask me, I think he was just being lazy. The body looks amazing in the loading and firing of that gun, and the head would have too. Seems to me like he just didn't want to bother to animate the head responding to the movement.

When animation is more fluid the inbetween frames are usually done by an inbetweener or junior animator, not the key animator, so less inbetweens is usually a matter of budget, time or stylistic choice, not laziness (its not the key animator's job anyway).

They usually just animate the keys leaving instructions for the inbetweens such as in the genga.
http://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/12549/animated-fighting-genga-hiroyuki_yamashita-naruto-

Anyway I guess some folks getting tired of this discussion, so happy to let it rest, but thought I'd just make that last point.

Have a good weekend.

From this line on, everyone stops this discussion.

0:00 - 0:12: Hiromasa Yonebayashi
0:13 - 0:16: Atsushi Tamura