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Cinematic vs. Tangible - Thoughts and Poll
🕑 Added 2020-02-29 08:29:51 +0000 UTCWhenever I stop and look at animations of others, I often find myself becoming a critic. It's hard not to compare it to my own work. Sometimes, I feel critical of others' work, and sometimes of my own. In thinking about these things, I've always felt that my greatest strength was in making animations that could be in a video game. In other words, from any angle, zoomed in or out, there is a complete miniature and macro world being animated in unison. No clipping, no advanced editing tricks, and I try to show as much as possible in each shot... 95% of what you see is shown in multiple angles, and besides changing those angles to get different perspectives, not much is intentionally hidden or shied away from.
Why this matters to me:
I've noticed that a lot of (even great) animators focus on the cinematic. Head-shots. Expressions. Slow giantess stare-downs with tinies. Casual movements. High-tension soundscapes. Lots of anticipation before anything much happens. Sometimes to the effect of making a 15 minute or so clip that is mostly built on suspense. Of course I've played around with some of these things in the past in my own animations, but to be honest, whenever I come across a clip like this... I find myself skipping forward to the action. Unless the story is really excellent, it tends to grate on my nerves, and I get impatient. Until there is interaction, or at least close-calls, suspense falls flat very quickly for me when it comes to this kind of material. It quickly fades from tension to filler, in some cases.
Inflating these aspects has only ever slightly appealed to me. A good voice actor... (or a few,) or a good story - a movie-like approach can work better there. I tend to relegate those pieces to comics. Even most of the episodes of Shrinking Nightmare started with a short comic, just to avoid animating things that seemed long-winded and a bit less exciting than what was to come in the action sequences.
Interaction is another goal for me, and a highlight on my list of priorities every time I start an animation. It's not always just giantess interaction, but interaction with the micro-world that is created to be placed on top of it. My original inspiration for this was the "Honey, I Shrunk ..." series. It resonated so deeply with me because the environment was made of actual life-sized props... and the actors were visibly touching and moving around those props. It's an effect that I commonly strive for. When I first started, I thought "Animation can show impossible angles. I want to show things that you can't mimic in real life."
My question:
I didn't make this post to pat myself on the back, but more to find feedback on the topic. I see many people praising the more cinematic approach to animation, with longer, more drawn out sequences. And so I wonder if I'm not fully approaching things to the best of my ability, because of my own personal opinion. I have no plans to suddenly change the way I animate, but these questions will at least keep me honest, and help keep me open to exploring other ideas for all of you.
So, without further ado:
Would you prefer to see a more cinematic approach to my animations, or to see them stay focused on creating an environment around specific ideas?
