everyone has his own taste in animation. I for example like Charlotte’s animation and see no problem with it, but I have problems with the animation of the above mentioned NGNL. I didnt like that kind of animation at all and decided not to watch any of the shows.
It’s not very expressive compared to shows of a similar nature. That’s all. It just looks dull.
To you at least. Other people have other priorities. Visuals mean little to me, but if there is a quirk, it’s best to bring it up, because there may be people who hate that quirk.
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Hey, guys, take a look at this:
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He’s not ridiculing, he’s giving his opinion -_-
[quote=“sillylittlemelody, post:164, topic:1313”]
I agree with you that the animation could’ve been better
[/quote]OK, you know, the color plalette stuff… whatever. Dont know why it bothers people, but sure, I can see it. But seriously, Charlotte has TOP TIER animation. I have no idea how it “could be better”…
[quote=“sillylittlemelody, post:166, topic:1313”]
First, this is just your opinion. Don’t try to push it on others
[/quote]He says immediately after he says:
Either way, it is nitpicking, but it isnt meaningless.
No need to get all agressive and defensive here guys. Saying you dont like a work of visual art is the same as saying you dont like a work of writing. No need to get all spazzed out and rude about it.
I tried to explain, Takafumi tried to summarize it also, but you still don’t get it. But just let me say this: good animation is not just the frame rates, the verisimilitude, the technical stuff. You gotta have passion, dedication and inspiration. Charlotte is lacking that.
Definition of nitpicking:“looking for small or unimportant errors or faults, especially in order to criticize unnecessarily.”
By calling this nitpicking you are saying those things are unimportant, but I don’t think so. Even if you consider them to be, as @Takafumi said:
I am not looking for small or unimportant things, because I don’t think visuals are like that. They are important for me, so criticizing them is just like criticizing the story. What I would call unimportant is that joke in the middle of ep 7, that some people were really bothered by it. But I won’t say that is nitpicking, because I know it’s important for them.
I have no idea how you are able to judge the “passion, dedication, and inspiration” put into Charlotte, but the animation is certainly not lazy. It would really help me understand your opinion if you could give some examples/descriptions of how Charlotte could have those things.
Also, animation as an art form is unique in that, while whether you personally like it or dislike it is still a subjective thing, its actual quality is extremely technical and, yes, at least in part objective. While I am certainly no expert, and if someone more knowledgable is able to give solid evidence against I would love to hear it, I find it hard to deny Charlotte has technically stellar animation.
[quote=“sillylittlemelody, post:172, topic:1313”]
Definition of nitpicking:“looking for small or unimportant errors or faults, especially in order to criticize unnecessarily.”
By calling this nitpicking you are saying those things are unimportant, but I don’t think so.
[/quote]You shouldnt tell me Im contradicting myself, and then criticize me for something I didnt say. Im sorry if the way I used nitpicking didnt fit your dictionary definition, but I literally said I didnt think it was meaningless, and by definition not unimportant.
Ehhh. There’s something in what you’re saying. We can look at frame rates, detail and ‘how much is animated’ when looking at animation, and those are objective things.
But as soon as you’re critiquing them you’re completely subjective; high frame rates, large amount of detail and a large amount of animation on their own aren’t an ‘objective goodness’. Some examples of this are good use of still images in animation (I’d use the opening of Kanashimi no Belladonna for that since it’s entirely a panning shot of a tapestry), masterful animation is all about controlling the frame rate (Evangelion’s mechs are a good example of this since they cut frames for a heavier feel) and in a similar fashion minimalism for effect is often pretty good in it’s own right. (Kill la Kill uses that a fair bit. Sometimes well, sometimes less so…) Silly’s critique here is lacking since he still hasn’t expressed what his problem is with the animation beyond how it feels to him. But looking for some kind of ‘objective technical goodness’ isn’t /too/ helpful here.
(Oh and for a comparable medium to doubley show this: frame rates in games. There’s some kind of ‘movement’ that every game should have 60fps or is defacto a bad game. Visual novels, turn based games, and text based games should really make it clear that whilst there is some merit to those claims sometimes, it really isn’t this objective thing people should aim for at all.)
What’d be nice is some interesting examples of what the issues are. But that’d be asking alot of Taka and Silly so I’m not too fussed about it. It’d just be nice to begin to understand what they’re getting at ^^
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First of all, animation is a study of conveying movement. Yes, animators had to study how real people move in order to achieve a good level. Yes, they worked hard (okay, not all of them, cuz there are some who leave two times of the frames to the inbetweeners, but…) to put a lot of detail in it. But like any other form of art, there are people who have talent and there are others who don’t.
As a study of conveying movement, animation has to give the viewer the “illusion of life”, the impression that those drawings are really moving. Thus, they have to obey a lot of things from real life, in order to take those movements to the screen. So, they study how people walk, they study perspective, they study how water moves, they study how animals move, how gravity attracts objects, etc. This is a factor of the ‘objectivity’ of animation, as you say. For example, when they portray a ball swinging in the air, they have to know how uniformly varied movement works. If they animate the ball in a way it gets slower until it hits the ground it will not look natural and they would fail. Objectively speaking.
But something that is known in the field of animation, is the some of those rules can be broken, and it’s even encouraged to do so. Animation is not a copy-paste of real life. Its wonderfulness lies in the fact that you have control over it. You can change as you want. And then, we get into the field of creativity and subjectivity. A way a character walks for example can tell a lot about his personality. There are a lot of walks in animation that ‘break’ the rules of RL. You can swing the shank the other way, like it’s broken, and it still looks natural, for example. One of the reasons Goofy from Disney became remarkable in people’s minds is the way he walks. The animator put lot of creativity into it, and it became unique, adding much more to the character.
There are limitless possibilities when it comes to animation, but you gotta have creativity to explore them. You have to know how can you break the rules and still be alright. You have to work on a character’s expressions to make the viewers empathize with them. This is where animation is subjective. Did the animator do a good job in bringing that character to life? How unique was the way the characters move, was it natural? People can have different opinions about it. This is my case with Charlotte…
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(Psst. That’s not quite how animation in studios works. Or at least is supposed to work. Everything going wrong in animation production is kind of a thing but yeah. And I can assure you inbetweeners aren’t lazy as opposed to underwaged and overworked, in most cases)
No, but some animators actually do that. I’ve read some other animators criticizing them. I don’t know if it happens in anime, but at least in West, some animators leave a lot to the inbetweeners. However, I think this doesn’t happen in action scenes for example, when they gotta have more key frames.
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Ah fair enough. I think I misunderstood what you said there slightly. My bad. You’re on fire today it seems O.O I’m hella impressed.
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Ahhhhh, OK. I misunderstood what you meant my animation. Probably because, as you said, we were just thinking about it differently, including different elements in our own definitions. Thank you so much for explaining in such detail, really interesting to read! (b^^)b
You might as well have written “please look down on me”
For whatever reasons, you seem to get most passionate about things that you misunderstand. I’ll try to explain the situation as well as I can this time.
So imagine this discussion as a real-life situation, where all participants (including you, me and Kotarou) are sitting in a room, talking about that girl all of us know. Let’s call her Girl C. We met Girl C at a party last night. Once again, Girl C is getting criticized for all kinds of things.
As we are about to run out of things to talk about, Kotarou mentions Girl C’s eyelashes and proceeds to talk fiercely about them for 10 minutes, about how he doesn’t like her eyelashes, about how her eyelashes could’ve been more beautiful and why she’s didn’t use the same eyelash extensions as the girls in Girl U’s family.
My reaction to his talk is that I’m giving him a weird look, saying “Seriously? You’re talking smack about her because of her eyelashes?” Prompted to explain myself, I elaborate: “In the first place, who cares about that? Her looks are somewhat average to above average. She’s fine. Her eyelashes didn’t stand out in any way and neither does the rest of her looks, so why are you focusing on that? It’d be a different matter if her make-up was particularly weird or if she was the only girl on the party not wearing any make-up. I don’t see how the eyelashes of all things are a reason to think badly about her. You ought to stop the nitpicking.”
I’m annoyed, since the whole eyelashes talk seems like nitpicking to me, maybe even an excuse to join in on trash-talking Girl C. That may or may not be the case, but the focus on the eyelashes is definitely weird.
Suddenly, silly’s passion is triggered. He shoots up, slamming his hands on the table. “OH GOD HOW WRONG ARE YOU. Don’t look down on make-up! You’re underrating girls who are putting a lot of work into their outfits and make-up every time! It may not be important to you, but it’s very important to me!” And then he goes on about how Girl C’s looks are lacking passion, dedication and inspiration.
I never said that it makes no difference whether girls are putting on make-up or not. I pointed out that, since Girl C’s looks aren’t that outstanding (neither exceptionally good, bad or weird), it’s strange, and to me, even annoying, to go into so much detail over the eyelashes, and even criticize her for them.
What I did say was how I don’t like the trash-talk on Girl C and that there was no real reason to criticize her eyelashes.
The thing is, we didn’t run out of things to talk about. It’s just an issue, like all others.
[quote=“Naoki_Saten, post:180, topic:1313, full:true”] Her eyelashes didn’t stand out in any way and neither does the rest of her looks, so why are you focusing on that? It’d be a different matter if her make-up was particularly weird or if she was the only girl on the party not wearing any make-up. I don’t see how the eyelashes of all things are a reason to think badly about her. You ought to stop the nitpicking."
I never said that it makes no difference whether girls are putting on make-up or not. I pointed out that, since Girl C’s looks aren’t that outstanding (neither exceptionally good, bad or weird), it’s strange, and to me, even annoying, to go into so much detail over the eyelashes, and even criticize her for them.
What I did say was how I don’t like the trash-talk on Girl C and that there was no real reason to criticize her eyelashes.
[/quote]
Do you think Charlotte’s story is outstanding up to now? I don’t. I don’t think it’s exceptionally good or bad. So should we stop discussing it? As well as all other animes that have a story with average story?
Your example was really funny. But it would be much more appropriate to represent visuals as all of her looks. Isn’t that what visuals really are? When you reduce those things to eyelashes, you are still putting them down. And that’s what you think, but I don’t.
But… Isn’t not liking it enough of a reason to criticise it? Whether you see it as pointless, or weird, or whatever… It matters to other people. That’s what criticism exists for. To point out things that people may not like.
If someone cares about something, or is let down by something, and feels the need to bring it up, then their criticism is worth at least some recognition… I don’t agree with Silly’s opinion, but I can understand it, acknowledge it, and argue for it. It’s a worthwhile opinion.
I can understand if you’re just annoyed by the negative reaction to Charlotte, or if you aren’t bothered by the same things Silly is… But don’t tell someone their opinion doesn’t mean anything. That’s just insulting.
The argument has been clarified multiple times now. If you still don’t understand or agree, then we should all just agree to disagree. Repetitive clarification won’t solve anything.
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All of us are either expecting, hoping or losing hope for the story of Charlotte to become outstanding. Thus, we discuss it. Discussing is fine. It’s the nitpicking that annoys me. Remember the “not this pizza sause shit again” complaints about earlier episodes?
The equivalents are:
eyelashes = color palette
looks = visuals
Girl C = Charlotte
Girl U = an Ufotable anime
That’s why I found it nitpicky. Color palette is just a fraction of the overall visuals.
The more you criticize something, the worse you’re making it look. The amount of criticism on Charlotte bothers me because it makes the anime look quite bad, which it isn’t. And let’s be honest, most of the criticism stems from the difference between what we expect and what we get. Yes, everyone has the right to criticize things. But overdoing it is kinda bad. As I mentioned before, the negativity is ruining my mood and the piling up of things to criticise (and repeating them) has been happening every week lately.
To me, visuals are rather low-priority and I don’t care about details like color palette or backgrounds if they don’t stand out in some way. Of course, it’s better to see great visuals than not so great ones, but they’re pretty low on my priority list. That’s my personal bias. I guess I shouldn’t have said “they don’t matter…” like it’s an objective fact, since it’s not. My bad.
I absolutely love that you put in the recipe for it 
I’ll be sure to try it myself, when I can get my hands on some beef tongue. Thanks!
Is there a food topic?
Besides that, the dish looks great! And now I’m hungry.
A FOOD TOPIC
YES
It would be fun to try out Ayumi’s pizza sauce. What could happen?
