[laughing]
Alright, okay. Let’s watch an animated McDonald’s commercial. Humor me.
And that’s why I’m laughing. C’mon. If you haven’t worked at McDonald’s yourself,
you know somebody who has. Is this the story that they tell you? Of course not.
It’s an adorable commercial. In English this style of animation is called anime. Anime
originated in Japan and is a hundred years old. The biggest hallmark of the style is
large eyes, but there are tons of anime that use realistic eyes or even solid black dots
for eyes.
What sets anime apart from other cartoons is the method of storytelling. It draws more
on emotion and feeling than it does plot or goals. Sure, the characters often work towards
a goal like saving the world, but it’s the relationships between the characters that
make the story. Even in this short commercial you can see that.
A Western version of the commercial would show the employee training every day to become
the manager, probably to solve some kind of problem like not having enough tuition money.
The Western formula is problem: solution. The anime is about the flustered new employee
and her interaction with the manager and customers. Anime is about characters. For that reason
there are lots of popular anime that are literally about people living their everyday, normal
lives, just like you and me. No magic powers, no monsters, no futuristic technology. Lucky
Star is an example of that.
The commercial is short so it’s more animated than a typical anime, but I can still use
it to show you anime efficiency secrets. Anime is very good at cutting down on character
motion and putting the saved time into backgrounds and widely varied character designs.
First is camera panning. Don’t animate anything. Just pan along a nice background. Play music
or character narration or offscreen dialogue.
If somebody is talking, point the camera somewhere else so that you don’t have to animate their
mouth moving. Pointing the camera at somebody’s reaction to the thing being said is common.
Only animate part of the character. Everything else stays still.
Crowd shots. Don’t animate the crowd. Draw people frozen in place and only animate the
character who is speaking, or only animate the main characters walking. In this shot,
tiny animations on the still characters give the illusion of action. The commercial goes
the extra step to animate the hands on this guy in the background. Normally he’d be
still.
Extreme closeups. The less of the character you have to animate, the better.
One thing the commercial does that anime tends not to do is reuse backgrounds. And anyway,
reuse of this background is done on purpose, not to save time. It’s meant to show a cycle
of life - how people start from one role and move to another.
You’d think that considering everything else anime does to cut down on actual animation
they would reuse backgrounds, but they don’t. Even if half the episode takes place in the
same classroom, they redraw it from different angles, positions and perspectives.
So. Which do you think is worse - working at a fast food place, or working as an animator
in Japan? I hear the industry is cutthroat and stressful with long hours. Then again,
I hear that about everything in Japan.
Friendship time! I collected art where I’m together with others. This is me and Bluescar.
Sometime we have to part ways. I have a few pieces of art with Scribbles and Cyn Wolf
together. This one is by Talonsoficeandfire.
Taking naps on dragons is always a good idea. Nightcomet doesn’t seem to mind. Yet.
I actually do eat raw lemons. I had one yesterday.
Is that a heart tattoo on Raven Blade Kitty’s face, or is her fur just naturally like that?
A bunch of me’s in a bunch of styles together with Bumble Flow.
Start the episode with anime, end the episode with anime. Hummingbird watching with CattiMadi
and DannyFox.