J's Chimes: Animating Anime

In my last post, we discussed about the salaries animators earn annually. But seriously do you really know how tough it is to animate anime? In fact I had actually believed that animators are paid a lot for their work because often such skills and talents in drawing are needed to draw he characters (which is often not an easy thing to do unless you are so seasoned that you are able to finish one frame in 10mins). Whatever the case, it is safe to assumed that an anime of about 20mins requires maybe hundreds or thousands of frames to complete depending on the flow of the animation (As in frames per second to allow smooth motion of the animation).


Let's take a look at a simple example like this without any shadings and stuff... Probably needs about 6 - 8 frames to make this 1 second clip which is seemingly tough for a novice like me in drawing animes. However, 1 thing I do admired about animators is that they have the patience to draw tons and tons of animations to complete 1 episode which is truly amazing.


The other amazing thing about animators is that they are able to draw well coordinated movements like this animation of a girl doing a roundhouse kick. You got to have really good observation of a person's movement in order to draw such. And trust me, it ain't easy to draw a character in different angles of view... Perhaps you could draw anime, but could you make it move smoothly?


The next would definitely be the details, the facial expressions and such that attracts your attention... An example is as show with character Taiga from the anime Toradora. It's amazing that even sketches like this could look so nice even without the colour. And how many would you need to draw to complete this? 10 - 12 frames of serious drawing pleasure... In any case, if drawing is a passion, it's no wonder animators are willing to do it not for the money but for their interest. We should really look up to these guys who make anime possible...