honest to dear god it was as if nothing existed outside of disney. you'd be lucky if you had a prof who even mentions spiderverse.

@@Akihiko-senpai I mean spider verse is relatively new, I doubt it was out when he was first learning animation

@@deddrz2549 yea true. not that spiderverse shouldnt be mentioned in schools, it’s amazing and can be really useful to 2d and 3d animators alike, but disney is over a century old now and much more well-known!

@@Akihiko-senpai spiderverse is American too. You’d be rather lucky if they mentioned anime.

@@timefliesaway999 spiderverse being american is the point here. old fogeys are still out there thinking that western animation is exclusively disney. maybe i should've used spongebob as the example instead if that makes my point more clear?

How its going for you after 1 year?

@@gbyamg3dartist552 so kind of you to ask! I can say I pulled off a small project of mine, but study and other things took over, still i go back to animation from time to time!

@@ilsognoastratto oh thank you for answering! Oh that sounds good, don't give up, 3 or 5 five hours per week is good if you doesn't have enough time at the day

@@gbyamg3dartist552 thank you! How about you? Are you learning animation as well?

very true

Wow they used different kinematics for each character? I assumed that while every character has their own animation the fundamental techniques would have been the same. That's so interesting!

Japanese is more natural, really. You do rise slightly as you shift weight from one leg to another. It's very difficult to walk without that tiny bolt, because that propels us to move. Give me natural animation any day.

@@marikothecheetah9342 Too bad the majority of anime walk cycles do allow the characters to use their ankles or toes. I know that it's a time saving measure but in many ways, it looks incomplete.

@@misterprickly too bad the western animation does not even try that, unless it's a movie feature. Also, Pixar/Disney nowadays just uses the same set of animation cycles, not to mention character features. I love animation and I used to watch a lot of western animation but now? Ugly, simplistic, dull - TV series especially. Plastic, same face syndrome, no substantial story - movie features. There is nothing what I can take out of current western animation, apart from a few, very rare gems. And yet, Japan has a freaking Attack on Titans and its awesome battle scenes. :/

@@marikothecheetah9342 Jeez ya!

"US one"? Hate to be that guy but he clearly said this was how it's done in *Canada* and Japan. I know many Canadians and none of them love being mistaken for Americans lol

@@oivinfand he labeled it as a “western” walk style, which doesn’t strictly put the focus on canada.

​@@oivinfthank you for getting upset on behalf of those canadians then, God knows what they would've done without you

Owhf. Sorry about that Canada. @@oivinf You are correct, I assumed western meant all of north america and the 'western standard walk' would come from early disney training or similar because it looks so familiar, like early micky. but obviously I missed the key word, and flubbed it further trying to be succinct when typing. Let me know if there are some canadian animations you'd recommend (as a form of re-education, or just for fun) ...Presumably there are a million different ways to animate a walk. beyond these two 'standards', every culture, and every artist could have their own ideas about it... now I want to see some really silly/cool ones anyway, blessings to all animators and commenters from a kiwi on an island in the great big realm of australasia. (I get the issue of national insult, but hopefully this is also kind of funny)

​@@oivinfLet's be honest, it *is* the US walk cycle. Because it's basically Disney. Of course any country can use this, but it's not wrong to point it out as the country of origin. If anything, it's more accurate than "western" because I think e.g. French animation has a third, distinct style.

"Problem is you're not animating the "western walk" with the follow through delay between the hip/arms and head that the extra drawing(s) allow you to do, that you can't do with just one up/down." - of course, he doesn't. it's not like he worked for western and Japanese animation studios... XD

@@marikothecheetah9342 Not sure what you're trying to imply here. I didn't say he lacked skill or credentials. I said his exemple is flawed. It just demonstrates he's more familiar with one style over the other.

"There is just so much more animated and drawn content that comes from Japan compared to the West" really had me thinking. Not only Japanese shows, but Western shows were/are ALSO animated overseas, like Thundercats. So those same animators used their training and toolsets for both. "Western" animation then seems to (usually) be made by and for a domestic audience. And with less demand domestically, animation can afford to be more labor-intensive, or experiment with different styles, and have different habits than animators in different countries. But, it comes with less opportunities for animators, and maybe less consistent training? This is mostly conjecture, based off of my experiences 10+ years ago (T_T) trying to find a path towards getting an animation gig. I think it's a lot more global now? But I also distinctly remember a forum post where South Asian animators were lamenting they couldn't work on something more unique or challenging, while Western animators were lamenting they couldn't find much regular "day job" work. And that changed my whole perspective.

I'm pretty sure burnout and overwork is also incredibly common in western animation too. Animation is wonderful but it's kind of a thankless industry

@@karenfuchs4252 To be fair, working for a living, in any industry, anywhere on this planet, usually has a huge overwork and burnout problem... especially if your job is one they can make salaried. Heaven help you if you work in an industry where they have managed to get away with pretending you're a contractor.

Yeah the other video I looked at the American 2D was done on 16. I don't recall what I did in 3D. I think it was just however fast the reference was.

No, that's incorrect, first you have to understand how the introduction of sound gave us 24 frames per second. Before sound, there wasn't a standard to film speed, it varied a lot. The slowest speed you can run a film at is 10 frames per second (old computer game animations often played at this speed to save memory). Any lower than that, and the human eye perceives film images as individual photographs. With the introduction of sound, you couldn't play with the speed of film, it had to be standardized or else it would distort the sound. 24 fps became the standard. It's also a good standard because it because you can hit various music notes very easily since 24 can be easily divided into whole numbers. That's also why old cartoons are planned and synced to music. It's a very effective way to plan out a cartoon, using music. Now live action is always set to 24 fps. But for animation, you can get away with shooting on 2s, shooting every drawing twice. Because that gives you 12 fps, above the 10 fps minimum. For most actions, there's not much benefit to shooting on 1s, ie. doing 24 drawings a second, it's a waste of resources for little pay off. But for fast actions and for most camera moves, you need to animate on ones so the image doesn't strobe. As far as shooting on 3s, there's nothing wrong with it, and it can be a stylistic choice, but if you shoot on 3s, that's 8 fps, below the 10 fps threshold for the human eye to perceive movement. I've only seen a few instances in old cartoons were an action was on 3s, usually on a very very slow action where the limitations of the ink line width and the closeness of the drawings meant inbetweening it properly would cause the line to jitter around even among the best ink draftsmen, or draftswomen since most women did the inking and coloring of the final animation that would be seen on screen. Also with Western walks. It's often that a character will walk on 16s or in some cases 8s, it's easier to inbetween and do on 2s. For 12s, if the budget allows, it should be on 1s or some of the keys have to be cheated or lost on 2s, but even on 1s, it has the added issue that the inbetweens will have to be thirds. This is more difficult for an inbetweener following up an animator to do. It's always best to give inbetweeners drawings that need to be placed half way than in thirds. If you must use thirds, do one of the thirds yourself so the final third is half way between for the inbetweener to do. 2/3 is halfway between 1/3 and 3/3. Walks are fun to do. I always love the chance to define a walk cause you are defining a character's personality. Anyways, I love Japanese animation, and many other interesting styles from around the world. Soviets had good films, I love the Russian Winnie the Pooh, much more than Disney's. But as an American animator, I practice the American method. There's no right method and I love seeing how many cultures interpret animation :)

@@jmhorangehuh. Welp, I always animate on 10 fps. I didn’t know that was the minimum, but an animation program I used to use would have you type in how long to hold each frame for (in seconds, including decimals) and 0.1 seconds for each frame was smooth enough to not look awful. Then again, it was pixel art, which has a definite limit to how many inbetweens you can do.

@@hyzmarie Yeah there's nothing wrong with 10 FPS, it's just 10 isn't that great for drawings, half of 10 is 5 drawings, but there is no half for 5, you can't draw 2.5 drawings. Contrast that with 12. 6 drawings is half of that and 3 drawings is half of that. Mathematically, 12 and 24 are known as highly composite numbers, they have more whole number divisors than any numbers before them. This is why before the metric system, you see measuring systems across cultures based around 12, why there's 24 hours in a day, 360 degrees in a circle and some ancient numbering systems use base 60 instead of 10. Highly composite numbers are easier in some cases than our modern decimal system especially when dividing things. So while they did have to choose a number above 9, 24 FPS isn't just a random number they chose. Even when I have to work at 25 or 29.97 FPS for different TV requirements or international standards, I would animate at 24, and use an app to interpolate it to these frame rates so I can animate easier at 24. But whatever works for you :) what program were you animating in? One of my professors back in the early 2000s animated on like Disney games in the 80s and 90s but he just had to do the drawings on paper, others would turn that into pixel art.

@@jmhorange I was using Pixel Studio for iPhone at the time, although since, I’ve migrated to FlipaClip (which I despise) and finally RoughAnimator

i feel like i've learned so much just reading these two comments, haha- thanks for taking the time to type them out! @@jmhorange

Yeah definitely give it a look! I got it and it changed a lot!

You lucky son of a bitch you read that fucking book IMMEDIATELY

Came here to say this... I'm trained in Europe and the "Japanese" style is the only style we've ever been taught and its the one in all the books. Video seems sus tbh unless this is specific to US cartoons maybe idk

​@@capo3645 Same in Germany we have been taught the japanese version.

Same here, I only learned the strong key pose version. I've never heard of this video's "Western" style walk until just now.

@@wolfiekun Because the "Western" walk cycle method shown in this video is not generally in use . Maybe some animators use that method (?) , because I've seen some rather eccentric work methods used, but what he shows in this video is certainly not a standard "Western" approach to animating a walk.

What do you mean by "more fluid"? I would have thought fluid and smooth were synonymous in this context.

Im not sure what they intended, but for me in this case ‘fluid’ would be how choppy it is, while ‘smooth’ would be the strength of the arcs. So you can have something that’s ‘fluid’ but moves in a way that’s feels disjointed

the dude was just trying to rile people up banking on "huur japanese thing" lol this is clearly just a stylistic choice in what to exaggerate, and it is also about the personal gait that the animator is trying to do. Not "French" or "Canada" or "USA" but it has to be "Western". That's the major redflag in these kind of videos.

@@rikimaru6811 Walk cycle: :| Walk cycle, but Japanese: :D

The key boils down to proper posing over timing.

I know this is two years old at this point, but as Nightblind said it's all about posing. When running you generally want to have the knees raised higher, bent arms punching forward/up, and body leaned forward rather than straight up. I am not a animator though, so I cannot say any more than this. Something to keep in mind is that generally art and animation is exaggerated at least a little. Doing so makes it is easier to convey messages, can be more appealing to the eye, and audiences normally won't even notice if it's a slight exaggeration.

The keyword is “tried”, but then went towards 3D and simplified TV Shows, which is really sad. But as i see, in some schools or just independent enthusiasts return the tendency back, trying to revive the traditional paper-like animation

something i noticed about western cartoons, such as steven universe or amphibia, is some of the movements are animated on ones but have a lot less "flow" to them, making them look jankier and more robotic; while anime uses less keyframes but has a better overall feel to it this could also be seen in family guy, where it's always animated on ones, but the stiff recycled poses and fast movements cause it to feel very low-effort

@@qmulus_yt Maybe Family guy isn't the perfect example since I think it's more a style choice, but I 100% agree anyway.

Most of the times, "Less is more", especially for a good timing. I used to do animation semi-professionally, and one of my main critiques for novice animators was that they were using too many frames and messing up the timing. For instance, a quick blink takes three frames at most (open eye, closed eye, half-closed eye, back to open), well, some guys were doing 5 or 6 frames, and it looked very anti-natural. I told them to drop the extra frames, and the animation immediately improved. Once you develop a sense of timing, you can drop all the unnecesary frames and get the exact feel you have in mind: Slow, quick, bouncy, robotic, fluid, choppy, realistic... But developing that sense requires doing a lot of animation work, and studying how the greats do it. Not impossible by any means, I was doing that animation work when I got out of art school, and I wasn't (and still am not) a good artist anyways. Either way, when a stick figure moves naturally, it looks way better and more appealing than a messed-up but "realistic" animation.

​@@qmulus_ytalot of western series just use character rigs and tweens for their animation as it saves time and is more cost effective, so that's probably what you're referring to when you're talking about family guy looking cheap and recycled because it literally is. Regardless, for an animated sitcom I think stylistically it fits the show just fine.

@@qmulus_yt I think you're wrong, those shows are almost 100% animated on twos, with exceptions sprinkled here and there. It might be because the animation is handed over to a Korean animation studio, but they're definitely not any more or less smooth than Japanese cartoons.

Generally 2s for basic action, 1s for any action that's fast enough to cause strobing if 2s are used. Camera moves require animation on 1s unless it's really slow or going in the opposite direction of the action so the character doesn't stutter by not tracking with the camera every frame and appearing to move backwards for every frame the camera moves when a new drawing isn't used. Generally on a walk or run, the camera will move the direction of the character, not opposite direction, so it will stutter. Also smears usually look better on 1s than 2s so you "feel" it. All this usually on 24 fps. Beyond that, using 1s all the time can result in floaty animation, it requires a different timing mindset than using 2s, you can't just inbetween animation on 2s and get a good result on 1s. It's usually not worth the trouble to plan your animation and timing on 1s unless you need to like in the examples above. From a budget standpoint, you might be required to work on only 2s on a project though, so all the issues above might be accepted to save money.

It seems like some weird confusion about workflows and terms. Generally walk cycles are animated on ones, animating on twos means _holding_ every second frame, not _inbetweening_ every second frame. On ones/twos/threes doesn't tell us anything about they keyframes. So it's a technique used to reduce the amount of drawing that needs to be done for slower moving, less intricate animations. Walking is a intricate movement so it's usually done on ones. Whether you put a keyframe on every third frame or every second frame or something more flexible is solely a matter of communicating with the person who draws the inbetweens.

@@API-Beast Walk cycles are generally done on 2s. Runs are done on 1s due to the speed. Only time you need ones, is during a camera move in the direction of the motion of the character. Left on 2s, since the camera is always on 1s, the character will appear to lag behind every other frame and create a jittering strobing motion. If the camera move is very slow, the lag backwards every other frame might not be that noticeable so 2s could work.

but it true though. animating on 3s means you draw less and save time hehehehehehe!

Actually the video is not correct. Western animation uses the "japanese" version for the longest time as well. In Europe we use that exclusively. I have never actually seen people use the second version. I studied animation and that is the way animators are taught. It might be that the studio he worked for in Canada prefered the second version. But that is the preference for that studio or that specific region, not a "western" way of animating. Vast majority uses the "japanese" model, because it's not a "japanese" model. It's a most of the world model.

And here's the thing : Richard Williams's approach to animation is totally classical "Western" (read: Disney , with a touch of Warner Bros.), so how is it that what Richard Williams teaches in his book and video series is somehow the same as the so-called "Japanese" method ? (except that Richard would advocate that you should take those poses 1 , 4, 7, 10, 13 and put two drawings inbetween each of those drawings so your walk is ON ONES !)

Also, go search for a book called TEZUKA SCHOOL OF ANIMATION VOL 1. I think most people will grant that Tezuka knew what was the "Japanese" style of animating. On page 29 and 30 look at Tezuka's examples of a basic walk cycle. It's exactly the same as walk cycles you find in "Western" books on animation like The Animator's Survival Kit. At the top of page 29 Tezuka says the drawings can be exposed for 2 frames or 3 frames.

Animating on 1s vs 3s 😛