In animation, what is good or bad can sometimes be obvious whilst not actually knowing the reason why it is good or bad, it just is. For example, in “Shark Tale”, most people would think it’s sort of an ok film, but it is clearly worse than some other animated films of the time. The character design is a bit unsettling, as the attempts to make fish have human-like features did not turn out well, and the textures and models also are sub-par, though this can be partially attributed to it being an older film. The animation also at times seems weirdly stiff, and as the film is set underwater starring sea creatures this is even worse and more jarring. Comparing this to “Shrek” (by the same company of Dreamworks and released three years earlier) is night and day. Whilst Shrek is also outdated in terms of textures and models, the rest of the film more than makes up for it. It is inventive in how it uses animation in certain periods such as when Shrek blows up a frog as a balloon. The film leans on the fact that it is not exactly realistic having the setting of a fairytale, with exaggerated movements that work fluidly in spite of not being realistic. Shrek (at least when I last watched it) had less noticeable points in it where the animation clearly looks off. When comparing “Shrek” to “Shark Tale”, you can see that “Shrek” feels a lot more like the people who made it really put a piece of themselves into it, and “Shark Tale” feels like the people who made it maybe had less time or something. I am somewhat biased as I have watched “Shrek” many times growing up, whereas “Shark Tale” I have only watched maybe twice, and also the rest of the film not involving animation (sound design, soundtrack, storyline, etc) is a lot stronger in “Shrek” too, but general popularity does often speak to quality.

Another film that I think is good animation is “Into The Spiderverse”. This film is in 3D (for the characters and backgrounds) but also utilises 2D animation and overall doesn’t look much like other 3D films. For example, the character modellers added line-work to the characters’ faces to allow more expressive, cartoonish poses. They were also innovative with the frame rates, occasionally animating characters on 12 frames per second instead of 24 to intentionally give a certain less-fluid effect. As 2D animation is often animating at 12 frames per second, this further pushes the film’s 2D and 3D hybrid effect. The film also does not use motion blur like many other 3D films, instead opting to add quick drawings between frames to give the effect. As the film was also made with a comic book style, the filmmakers also utilised a depth of field effect that makes the out of focus objects begin splitting up into RGB colours, an effect that sometimes occurred in printing errors for comic books. The innovative techniques combined with incredibly smooth animation make for a very interesting animation. Another bad animated film example would be “Hoodwinked”. The animation in the film has very little weight and nothing feels like it has much impact when characters make exaggerated movements. The character expressions are very creepy, and it does not feel like an intentional effect with many of the characters not seeming to have eyelids and never blinking because of this. Overall there seem to be very few secondary movements in the characters possibly due to budget constraints, and this makes most of the movements seem very unnatural and inhuman.

In terms of 2D animation, a good example I enjoy is “The Wolf” music video for the band “Siames” by “RUDO Co”. The animation is entirely in black and white and cleverly uses negative space to tell the story. Though the drawn animation in itself isn’t particularly complex, the usage of animation as a metaphor is used to great effect, with the monster in the music video morphing several times into different looking creatures whilst still being recognisable as the original, as a metaphor for how people have different fears. The camera angles are great and really show the skill of the animator, for example in the chase scene a character leaps down a hill and slides down whilst the camera zooms in and around, making it extra impressive that they were able to continue to make the character movements realistic. An example of bad 2D animation would be the 2016 Berserk anime, which combines some 2D with CG. The characters’ expressions look like they are feeling nothing even when in intense situations like a sword battle. The colour palette seems dull and boring and the animation is clunky and lacking in fluidity. As it is a series that focuses heavily on sword fighting, fluidity of animation is a must in making it look good, as realistically professional fighters who use swords will not be moving in a clunky way, and will have smooth movements. As this series was unable to do this it was a complete failure, basically not being able to achieve the one important goal to make it at least watchable.