Cel, Stop Motion, or CGI?

[Pic1360]

Which cartoon animation are easy to do and which are hard? Cel animation (Paper, Pencil, and Paint), Stop Motion (Toons made from clay or plastic) or the newest, CGI (Computer Graphics Imaging)?

[Eddie G.]

Which cartoon animation are easy to do and which are hard? Cel animation (Paper, Pencil, and Paint), Stop Motion (Toons made from clay or plastic) or the newest, CGI (Computer Graphics Imaging)?Ever make a cheap stop motion movie with some action figures?

All forms of animation after that are very and equally hard.

[Classic Speedy]

Clay/stop animation isn't too difficult, but it IS time consuming if you want to make smooth movements. Plus, making a character jump is always tricky to do. ;)

Having made quasi-cel animated shorts on the computer, I can say that's also time consuming. A 30 second video has taken me 3-4 hours to make, depending on the complexity of the animation. Plus it's hard on my wrist to draw all those frames.

[Nimbleness]

Easiest = CGI (assuming your talking about 3d)........you know, what with motion capture and all now-a-days.

[Lord Dalek]

Stop-motion obviously. For example: ACTION LEAGUE NOW!

[Roman Legion]

They're all hard to do well.

Though, on the low-budget end, stop motion is probably cheapest and easiest... even if the results won't look great.


Easiest = CGI (assuming your talking about 3d)........you know, what with motion capture and all now-a-days.

Ever try to get a motion capture system working? :p

You forget that animating in 3D CG has a lot of overhead. Modeling for animation is much more complicated than modeling for still images. Motion capture won't do everything for you, either. A lot of animation will still have to be tweaked or completely done by hand. Then, of course, there's texturing and rendering, and so forth...

What I've always wondered is why CG and stop motion aren't combined more often... I see potential, there...

--Romey

[screw on head]

Oooh, what a topic.

I'm partial to stop-motion myself, especially now, it's quite a lot of fun with the aid of a computer and digital camera, instead of a video camera. I used to make goofy stop-motions with legos and a clunky old handycam, but yes, it wasn't smooth but was certainly easier to do than traditional hand animating. I've yet to try my hand at 3-D.

Traditional hand animating is tough, I'm learning though. To even try to translate the images in my head to hand animation, ugh, that'd be a tough chore, but I've found stop motion to be a great medium for myself.

They all have their own sets of challenges, but at least for me:

Stop Motion: For me, it's cheap, fun, and effective.
Traditional: Tough, takes quite a lot of talent, time, and effort, all of which I'm developing over time.
3-D: Sounds fun, but I've yet to explore it.

[FidoMcCokefiend]

Stop-motion obviously. For example: ACTION LEAGUE NOW!
Technically, that was Chuckamation. rather than traditional stop-motion in the first few eps, it started to where they just threw, or Chucked, the characters around.

[Pic1360]

Easiest = CGI (assuming your talking about 3d)........you know, what with motion capture and all now-a-days.
Yes, that's what I'm assuming.

[Swordfish_II]

Ever make a cheap stop motion movie with some action figures?
I made a Tom and Jerry-esque construction paper cut out thing once. It was kinda hard since I was using a camcorder and couldn't really be sure how long I was recording each time.

[Cyporiean]

Easiest = CGI (assuming your talking about 3d)........you know, what with motion capture and all now-a-days.
...

HA! HA HA! Mo-Cap is ****, while yes, if you have a huge budget and tons of man hours to basicly reanimate the Mo-Cap, you'll get a Gollum.. but don't count on Mo-Cap to be worth anything.

*Goes back to working on his CG* heads.. how i hate heads..

[EddieTheEditor]

From my understanding, it's Stop-motion, CGI, and then Cel.