Cheaper Animation?

[PokeDot517]

I wonder why the Pokemon anime nowadays (since BW) looks more cheaply made as well as reused battle animations.

Like Pikachu has only 1 Iron Tail animation.

Now I still do enjoy the anime
(somewhat) & I realize that the show is targeted to children so

O. L. M & The Pokemon Company
probably are trying to cut cost on production & mostly new young audiences probably wouldn't care.

But looking back at like the OG series when they used cel animation instead of digital things just more detailed old looking but in a good way.

Although I still prefer digital...

 

[Master Cyrus]

It makes things easy if all they have to do for battles is drag and drop attack animations.

 

[Supreme Leader Palpitoad]

I like the battle animation.

 

[SlimeStack]

People have less money these days, and HD animation costs more than SD. So I think it's inevitable that Pokémon would eventually have to go extra cheap.

 

[Gabo2oo]

I remember I was happy when they stopped using cel animation, so that meant no more that shot of Ash with his hat backwards throwing a Poké Ball, which was used every single time. But now, they're just lazier, specially with Team Rocket's motto. At least they're getting a little better than DP with their blastoffs. I don't really care a lot about the attacks except Amoonguss' Hidden Power and Pikachu's Iron Tail.

 

[Enzap]

I think the art style of the show looks great and the battles do look cool. However, I think the immense amount of stock animation ruins it for me. When they bumped up the animation quality, the price of production skyrocketed, which meant they had to use a lot more shortcuts. What we ended up with was stock footage that is used every single time an attack is used, no matter what the situation is. It's usually very drawn out and ignores the position the user was in before launching the attack. This combined with the repetitiveness takes a lot of the intensity out of the battles that was much more present in certain parts of Johto, Hoenn, and even some of Sinnoh.

One of the main appeals of the Sinnoh anime for me was the contests. The battles were starting to become repetitive and old to me since they started using stock animation much more frequently around then, but the contests used fresh animation for nearly every attack. They took no shortcuts and really showed off what all a move could do. It's that quality of animation that I wish was still available to the creators now. Unfortunately, it would be even more expensive with the current digital art style.

 

[Satoshi_Pikachu]

I find all the stock footage, especially TR's motto, to be quite annoying, but not more annoying than Pokémon that are clearly off-model. Really, I don't think there's a single shot of Charizard that doesn't look completely off-model since it first appeared on BW. Ah, well. I guess it could be worse, at least some of the animation does look quite pretty.

 

[kantoskies]

The anime has always had lackluster animation (with certain animators, that is), and has always used stock footage, but it does seem more common in Best Wishes. Like others have said, Team Rocket's motto is really annoying (you'd think that when they went back to the Kanto motto they would have made all-new animation since it's structured differently than the Unova motto--the speeding up and slowing down of certain clips is weird). I would much rather prefer then going back to just standing there in the same pose if it meant some sort of difference between episodes.

 

[Winterdaze]

Except the animation isn't cheaper, it's more expensive. There was a considerable bump in animation quality between DP and BW, and that has associated costs which is likely why the series has so much stock footage. Another thing that has changed is the increased use of CGI (especially for moves), which is much more expensive to animate and is likely to be why move animations are reused so frequently.

I'm actually surprised that BW went as far as it did without regularly veering down into QUALITY territory, though as of Episode N and DA quite a few episodes have, so I guess the strain on the budget is starting to show.

 

[Enzap]

One question I've been wondering about is why they chose to use the digital animation if it meant a decrease in quality. I didn't really hear people complain about the old art, and honestly I thought it looks fine enough. A lot of popular animes haven't converted to digital, so why did Pokemon feel like it had to if the budget could hardly support it?

 

[Kairyu]

Except the animation isn't cheaper, it's more expensive. There was a considerable bump in animation quality between DP and BW, and that has associated costs which is likely why the series has so much stock footage. Another thing that has changed is the increased use of CGI (especially for moves), which is much more expensive to animate and is likely to be why move animations are reused so frequently.

I'm actually surprised that BW went as far as it did without regularly veering down into QUALITY territory, though as of Episode N and DA quite a few episodes have, so I guess the strain on the budget is starting to show.

"Bump in animation quality"...what? The only change between D/P and B/W is that some moves are more flashy, and perhaps the audience at stadiums. But I'd rather have Sinnoh's animation instead of this stock-footage garbage we have now. It effectively ruins battles - just look at how the Unova league panned out. And with this much stock-footage, I'd be surprised if not the show is cheaper than ever to animate.

Would it really be too much to ask of OLM to just animate around 3-4 different versions of each attack and then alter between them? How expensive could that be? I think this is what was done with some attacks in Sinnoh and earlier regions. Pikachu's Iron Tail there had a number of different stock footage versions and usually they same version wasn't used in succession, so it never really got annoying. But here we have had to put up with the exact same Iron Tail animation for years, and THAT is really stale.

 

[Enzap]

"Bump in animation quality"...what? The only change between D/P and B/W is that some moves are more flashy, and perhaps the audience at stadiums. But I'd rather have Sinnoh's animation instead of this stock-footage garbage we have now. It effectively ruins battles - just look at how the Unova league panned out. And with this much stock-footage, I'd be surprised if not the show is cheaper than ever to animate.

Would it really be too much to ask of OLM to just animate around 3-4 different versions of each attack and then alter between them? How expensive could that be? I think this is what was done with some attacks in Sinnoh and earlier regions. Pikachu's Iron Tail there had a number of different stock footage versions and usually they same version wasn't used in succession, so it never really got annoying. But here we have had to put up with the exact same Iron Tail animation for years, and THAT is really stale.

Actually there was a huge difference in the animation between Sinnoh and Unova. Not just the battles, but the animation of everything was improved. Even though they're working with less material per episode, what the animation is much more expensive and nicer in a lot of cases, such as backgrounds and even just the sky. The way they animated the clouds was the first thing I noticed about BW when I started watching.

 

[Nymphia]

Except the animation isn't cheaper, it's more expensive. There was a considerable bump in animation quality between DP and BW, and that has associated costs which is likely why the series has so much stock footage. Another thing that has changed is the increased use of CGI (especially for moves), which is much more expensive to animate and is likely to be why move animations are reused so frequently.

I'm actually surprised that BW went as far as it did without regularly veering down into QUALITY territory, though as of Episode N and DA quite a few episodes have, so I guess the strain on the budget is starting to show.

"Bump in animation quality"...what? The only change between D/P and B/W is that some moves are more flashy, and perhaps the audience at stadiums. But I'd rather have Sinnoh's animation instead of this stock-footage garbage we have now. It effectively ruins battles - just look at how the Unova league panned out. And with this much stock-footage, I'd be surprised if not the show is cheaper than ever to animate.

Would it really be too much to ask of OLM to just animate around 3-4 different versions of each attack and then alter between them? How expensive could that be? I think this is what was done with some attacks in Sinnoh and earlier regions. Pikachu's Iron Tail there had a number of different stock footage versions and usually they same version wasn't used in succession, so it never really got annoying. But here we have had to put up with the exact same Iron Tail animation for years, and THAT is really stale.

Before the league even started, I was worried about the high % of stock animation. Then, I was worried that the league would be hindered because this.

By then, I have known that stock aniamtion is a problem of Best Wishes. By then, I have in my mind that:
-It will be one evolution (Seismitoad) only to not return to appear in battles.
-The rivals will use his nown pokemon because they can use stock animation for them as much as possible:

I expected 6 battles in the league in 6 episodes (like Hoenn):
-A 1vs1 preliminary with a CotD.
-A double battle, 2vs2 or 3vs3 Ash vs Cameron and another with Bianca vs Stephan.
A 3vs3 between Ash vs Bianca
A 6vs6 between Ash vs Trip.
A 6vs6 between Ash vs Virgil.

And I knew that Ash could be placed below Sinnoh in this league, eunlike 99% of the fandom.

In the rest, I aren't that convinced. But in the latter two, I was really convinced. There's a time, that I opened a thread on Serebii and I said "Don't expect that Trip vs Ash is in Round 1 even though appears a image of Pikachu vs Serperior.

But the league sucked terribly to the point that Virgil is ignored who I don't understand. It's clear that it was because 1) budget and 2) time?. Because the Eevee has not get enough attention even though merchandise, the anime with the help of Game Freak decided to do a short of the Eevee family to redeems the failure of Virgil's character. And decided to include, Sylveon, who promotes the new fairy type (I think that the fairy type was a idea born very early in development of XY; way before than Sylveon/Nymphia).

The problem is that Best Wishes wants to do so many things that the anime have no budget for that. And so many character who requires VA and money.
-In AG, foe exanple, we have Ash, Max, May, Brock, Jessie, James, Meowth, Joy and Jenny as the character and nothing more (aprt of minor roles and ocacasionally Oak, Misty, Birch).
-In BW, we have Ash, Iris, Cilan, Jessie, James, Meowth, Trip, Bianca, Stephan, Burgundy, Georgia, Jenny, Joy, George, and more minor roles. )n BW there are episodes with a lot of recurring characrers, something that in AG was rare.

And for example, the battles. In AG, the first two main battles are AG16 and AG20. And there's a battle in I think AG005, a contest in AG013 and no more. In BW we have battles in BW1, BW5 and 6, BW10, BW13, BW15, BW16 and BW19. In BW we have to9 wait until BW025, in AG until BW31.

And Ash's Poemon: yay, 10 pokemon. If in AG, the writers can't handled 5 pokemon, do you expect handling 10 pokemon, specially when Ash has the 3 starters.

I think that the writers were spending too many on battles (even with re-use animations) even when the animators have just the oney they had to do all the gym battles because GameFreak mandted to speed the gym without necessity. When the league, there are no money... the league ends in a disaster that we know.

Stock animation are not bad and are necessary to not spend money in defeating Team Rocket or the CotD of the episode with different animations every time.

I think that the series shopuld have 2 (3 or things like Pikachu's Thunderbolt) animation for each commonly used attack and chenge it every year or so. and dpoing not so much stock animation during Gym Batles (specially the climax).