A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING 2D ANIMATION

2D animation is one of the most interesting visual mediums because of the freedom of style the animation staff has to convey their imagination. Unfortunately, many people lack even the most basic understanding of how to judge animation. Often, animation is judged the same way they would judge illustrations, meaning that the viewer focuses on how detailed the art is, and how close to the design sheets the frames of animation are. While these are factors in the quality of animation, judging animation only by these principles completely devalues the movement, art direction, and sometimes even contradicts the core principles of animation. By making this post, I hope that I can change people’s understanding of animation for the better. 

PART 1: BASICS OF ANIMATION 

First, I’ll cover how professional animation is made. On any given animation, there are several different people working on a single cut, or scene. They are the directors, the key animators, and the inbetweeners. 

Animation progresses through several stages: the storyboard, the layout, and the frames. The storyboard is drawn by the storyboard artist, who often is also the director of the animation. It gives a quick look at how the animation will progress, showing a scene similarly to a comic book. Storyboards are generally quick sketches without much detail, like the one seen here. The most important part of a storyboard is how well the scene flows. This tells the animator how to transition throughout their scene, and gives general readability to a scene. 

A storyboard compared to the final images.

The layout is an animator’s take on a storyboard. This gives a more detailed look at how the cut will look finally. Once the layouts are done, the animation moves on to its final stages. 

An example of a keyframe.

Finally come the frames, which are the final drawings. Each frame of animation has its own purpose. There are the keyframes, which show the start and end points of any smooth transition. Then, there are the breakdowns. These drawings define the “arcs” that an object moves in.  In other words, this defines the movement and timing of the object. These are drawn by the key animators. Finally, there are the in-betweens, which smoothes out the movement. These are drawn by the inbetweeners.  

An example of a keyframe.

Unlike still art forms, animation is made to facilitate motion. The detail of the drawings is not the most important part. In fact, detailing the drawings can hinder movement, because of how much harder it is to make a heavily detailed object convincingly move. 

The 12 principles of animation, as described by the Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their 1981 book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation, describe how to make animation look realistic and appealing at the same time. These include technical aspects, like squash and stretch, arcs, and timing, as well as more abstract concepts, like appeal. A good animator knows when and how to use each principle.  

In particular, I’d like to cover timing. Timing refers to how many frames are used for an action, which defines the speed of the action. It also includes the weight of an object, like a bowling ball versus a tennis ball. This principle is especially important because of how it can be used to identify an animator. For example, an animator like Yutaka Nakamura might animate a character action with snappy movement, while an animator like Naoki Tate would animate that same action much looser, like so. If you want more information on the 12 principles of animation, I recommend taking a look at Alan Becker's adaption of the principles.

I believe that’s enough talking about how animation is made. Next up is how to judge the quality of an animation.  

PART 2: HOW TO JUDGE THE QUALITY OF AN ANIMATION 

Animation quality can be judged by several factors, including form, motion, and composition. Form, as it sounds like, is the overall volume, shape, and anatomy of a figure. Form can be played around with, as seen with squash and stretch, but a form should maintain its volume, and not distort in shape and anatomy without reason. In this scene, the character is obviously distorting in volume, shape, and anatomy without justification. Meanwhile, despite the heavy distortion to the shapes in this scene, the character still maintains their volume and anatomy. 

Motion is based on real-life principles like inertia and momentum, as well as simulations of our vision, such as smears and squash and stretch. Animation is what it is because of motion, so an animation without motion may as well be a comic with sound. For example, the following scene from a show called DYNAMIC CHORD has pretty good artwork, but the motion is stiff, awkward, and robotic. This is because the animation was digitally keyframed. In other words, the drawings were built by layering body parts and transforming each body part digitally. As evident by the sheer lack of quality movement, digital keyframing can’t replace traditional animation. 

Meanwhile, the infamous Naruto vs. Pain fight has incredible motion, despite its heavy deviation from the character sheets. Shingo Yamashita, Norio Matsumoto, Kenichi Kutsuna, and the other animators who worked on the scene clearly understand how to show incredible speed in a fight scene.  

Composition, like in all art forms, is about the placement of visual elements. In other words, it is the layout. A good storyboard can make or break an animation, even if the forms are consistent and the motion is good. For example, this scene from Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ has consistent forms and good motion, but is boarded in a uninteresting way. A storyboard can also be too confusing to follow the motions. This scene from Hand Shakers is too complicated for its own good. Because of the constant rotations, it is next to impossible to follow what is happening.  

Now, if an animation is bad, there are several reasons why it could be of poor quality. There are several factors involved, including lack of talent or poor supervision. But the most common problem is rushed pre-production. Pre-production matters because it is when the staff working on a show, including non-animation staff, decide who works on what episode, how much time is allotted to each episode, working on scripting and storyboarding, and more. Pre-production generally takes about 9 months. So when a show has rushed pre-production, the entire show falls apart, from the animation, to the acting, to the writing.  

For example, Dragon Ball Super was announced on April 28, 2015, only two weeks after the release of the film Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’. It is likely that the show was conceived because of the huge popularity of the film, as voice actors stated that they had no idea what the show’s plot would be. The show was released on July 5th, 2015, not even 3 months later. As a result, the animation fell apart as early as episode 5, and the plot of the first 27 episodes were retellings of the previous two films, so there would be enough time to write future arcs.  

The reaction was outrage and backlash internationally. All over the world, people were angry about the poor quality of the continuation of one of the most well-known series in the world, big enough to surpass the cultural barrier. For example, Kotaku wrote an article about the poor animation of episode 5. It took two years for the show to enter a state of near-normalacy, and it went off-air after episode 131 in order to redo the pre-production.  

Moving back to judging animation, there’s no one true way to do so. What I have listed above are guidelines to understand animation; it is up to you to decide what you like and don’t like. But a person dismissing an animation by calling it “lazy” or “low-budget” because they cannot differentiate between poor quality and distaste only makes only them sound like an uneducated ranting idiot. Similarly, looking down on the effort put into an animation is quite honestly insulting, even if it’s poor quality.  

Finally, I would like to show examples of outstanding animation, both from shows, as well as from the internet. 

PART 3: EXAMPLES OF OUTSTANDING ANIMATION 

The first animator I would like to talk about is Arifumi Imai. Famous for his work on Attack on Titan, he is an outstanding action animator who has worked on many big shows, such as One Punch Man, Fate/Apocrypha, and Naruto Shippuden. The CG environment allows Imai to go crazy with camera movement, as one can see with these cuts. The fight scene that this cut from episode 39 of Attack on Titan is part of took Imai about a month to animate. 

Up next is Keiichiro Watanabe. A fairly recent animator, his first work was on Naruto Shippuden in 2013. Despite this, Watanabe has climbed the ranks quickly, working on shows like Space Dandy, Mob Psycho 100, and Fate/Apocrypha. His animation has an “otherworldy” feel to it. Notably, his animation on episode 5 of Mob Psycho 100 season 2 features object morphing of insane degrees. The changing of forms, the liquidy feel of the shapes, and the abstract nature of the movement all contribute to this “otherworldy” feeling.  

Now, I’d like to talk about Naoki Kobayashi. After graduating from a vocational school in NEEC, or the Nippon Engineering College, he started out in the animation industry by being recruited to work with Studio Pierrot by Naruto animator Hiroyuki Yamashita. Inspired by Yamashita and Yutaka Nakamura, Kobayashi mixed the two styles to make amazing action animations.  

This minute-long cut from Boruto: Naruto the Movie involves outstanding choreography and effects work. The characters move at blistering speeds, yet it doesn’t feel hard to follow at all. Kobayashi’s inspirations are obvious with the usage of Nakamura’s trademark Yutapon cubes for debris. Yutapon cubes are a form of debris that are cube-shaped.  

Of course, I can’t just talk about Yutaka Nakamura without showing off his work. Starting on Neon Genesis Evangelion, he is one of the most famous animators in the industry. He has worked on many top-notch shows, such as Cowboy Bebop, Fullmetal Alchemist, Mob Psycho 100, and My Hero Academia. He is granted the unusual freedom to storyboard his own cuts, and for good reason: his cinematography and timing are outstanding. Nakamura’s older works are more grounded, as seen with Cowboy Bebop. There’s a weighty feeling to the movement, and every action is given time to shine. His newer works are much faster-paced, but keep that same weighty feeling of movement. This can be seen with Nakamura’s work on My Hero Academia.  

One specific cut I would like to talk about is Nakamura’s work on Bakugo vs Midoriya. This cut is a perfect fusion between his old and modern works, combining his older grounded movement with slices of rapid action. Hand-to-hand combat is combined with Bakugo’s explosions and Midoriya’s rapid speed.  

I’ve talked about animators that are famous in the industry, but there are many talented animators who work primarily on the internet. I’d like to cover a few of them. 

First, I would like to talk about an animator I have personally talked to on the internet. He goes by the name of Dongos. Despite inspirations from Toei Animation animators Ryo Onishi, Naoki Tate, and Naotoshi Shida, his animation is more abstract. Dongos’s character art is more similar to Naoki Tate and Ryo Onishi, since it’s very loose, but the movement is very quick and flashy, like Naotoshi Shida.

Next up is Joao do Lago. Despite being primarily a web animator, he has worked on several shows, such as Revue Starlight and Castlevania. Joao’s timing is reminiscent of many of the greats in the industry, but his personal art style is more reminiscent of that of Studio Ghibli, as seen with his original animations. 

I would now like to talk about Kay Animate. He is working on the opening for the latest entry in the video game series Shantae, but primarily works on original projects on the internet, such as Black Crystal. His style is like that of modern Yutaka Nakamura, and he self-storyboards his own animations.  

Finally, I’ll talk about the most famous webgen animator, who goes by Gem. She has climbed from being a web-only animator to working on some of the biggest shonen series, like Black Clover, Boruto, and Mob Psycho 100. Heavily inspired by Shingo Yamashita, Mitsuo Iso, Gem is on the way to becoming one of the top animators in the industry. Despite this, her work is incredibly loose, and filled with abstract shapes, as seen with her cut on Mob Psycho 100 season 2, episode 13. Every fight scene Gem touches has a sense of place and time, giving the world a more “real” feeling. Frankly, I have so much praise for Gem that it would take another whole post to finish, so I’ll just leave off by saying Gem is the animator I aspire to be. 

CONCLUSION

Animation is the art form I respect the most because of the personal touches behind every part of the animation. I don’t want to see people calling animators “lazy” or saying this or that animation is “low-budget”, because that’s just incorrect. Hopefully, this post has given you a bigger appreciation for animators, the time and effort they put into what they do, and the stylistic choices behind the art. Until next time.