XY and animation quality

[Shoutmon]

What do you think about the animation,art,layout,etc this season? Better or worse than past seasons?

 

[SammyW27]

Better. MUCH better.

To be fair, the animation has gotten better as time went on in general (as with most animated shows). But this time it's just GORGEOUS! :crush:

 

[Pokemaster97]

I really love the animation this season, especially all of those little extra touches they add sometimes that overall enhance things. I enjoy the practice of leaving the actual environment backgrounds during the battles, it really makes things so much more realistic and aesthetically pleasing to watch.

 

[PokeDot517]

It's very pretty to look at...unfortunately they use too much stock footage. I think Pikachu only has one Quick Attack and Iron Tail animation, TRio only has one animation for their motto, etc.

Its been a problem since the BW series. I think they're trying to cut corners. I remember there being less stock footage in earlier sagas.

 

[ManUtd22]

BW was unique and good for watching if three not inside it, however XY is great

 

[Almonds]

Way better than before. Even if they do use stock footage, at least they're dedicating some time to the background to show where the pokemons are battling instead of using the 'other dimension'.

 

[Perpetual_Phoenix]

XY animation has been fantastic overall. The real icing on the cake are the battles.

That's when you can tell the amount of care and $ they invested in for this series.

 

[JacobYBM]

I'm not very happy with the CG layouts used during action cuts during XY. It lacks the organic and human touch of hand drawn animation. The layouts during the dialogue scenes are improving, though. There's palpable tension in the air when Satoshi enters the gym in Episode #77 .

The backgrounds have been improving, too, but that's been pretty common around the industry. I really liked the drawings of the leaves on the trees. They're detailed and interestingly drawn. The choice of colors really make them pop, too.

Episodes not key animated by Iwane Masa'aki have improved a little, though. The episode directors definitely seem to be trying to do more with their fight scenes, even if the key animators aren't particularly skilled. Iwane seemed to spread himself too thin last year, though. In all Iwane was the sole key animator for ten episodes in 2014 while also helping out Natsume Kunihiko or doing little one-off pieces of animation. His output has been lower this year, so I'm hoping when he does return his episodes will have that punch they had before. Still, his last two solo episodes were definitely incredible. The expressive drawings he did for Musashi's last focus episode were definitely engrossing.

Personally, I really like Best Wishes, too. The colors were solid and lush, even if they were very simplistic. The character designs from Yamada Toshiya weren't detailed but their basic look was easier on the eyes. The character designs from Toshihito Hiro'oka for XY tend to have some ugly chins. Perhaps it is merely the work of bad key animators that makes this harder on the eyes. Serena's first haircut definitely looked ugly, though. The end of her bangs had these weird curves that lacked definition. Now that her hair is shorter there is some focus on the details of her hair, which looks nicer.

 

[Boots2@sses]

It's pretty obvious that the animation is way better than the past seasons, as the time pass better animation will be produced. Personally xy is way better in both animation and at overall plot.

 

[R!ck]

Way much better than messy BW.

 

[froakiefroak]

It looks the best out of any season so far to me.

 

[Nicolas721]

It's definetely good, there is a willingness to take risks in the backgrounds and the scenarios overall, and the battles are pretty good. There is also a lot of cleanliness and pulishment in the character actions and the camera angles. However it has some problems, like the constant reusing of the TR motto animation, Pikachu's iron tail being white again and some battles, especially those with Megaevolutions, being too overdone.

 

[SammyW27]

Way much better than messy BW.

That's a little harsh. BW may've done a lot of things wrong, but its animation wasn't one of them. If anything, the animation was the BEST thing about it.
Many of its battles may've sucked, but they WERE often very well animated. I gotta give 'em that.

 

[R!ck]

No, Sammy, everything about BW sucks and I want it to erase from my memory. XD

 

[Pokemaster97]

No, Sammy, everything about BW sucks and I want it to erase from my memory. XD

We know many people, you included, did not like BW. We don't need to discuss it in this thread, so let's get back to the main topic please.

 

[kantoskies]

One thing I really appreciate about XY (and, to a lesser extent, Best Wishes) was that it has more of a consistent art style episode-to-episode. In the first three series you could almost always pick out who animated the episode by looking at the character models, but now (with the exception of Tamagawa episodes and some Iwane ones) they all look very similar.

The backgrounds/color palettes are also the best they've been (I remember that the SD Diamond and Pearl episodes has terrible backgrounds), although I do still miss the look of the hand-colored episodes.

 

[KrspaceT]

One thing I really appreciate about XY (and, to a lesser extent, Best Wishes) was that it has more of a consistent art style episode-to-episode. In the first three series you could almost always pick out who animated the episode by looking at the character models, but now (with the exception of Tamagawa episodes and some Iwane ones) they all look very similar.

The backgrounds/color palettes are also the best they've been (I remember that the SD Diamond and Pearl episodes has terrible backgrounds), although I do still miss the look of the hand-colored episodes.

So...who does the episodes, and what is their 'signature'? What do Tamagawa episodes and some Iwane episodes do that you dislike?

I admit to not being familiar with animator differences.

 

[CrashBash]

Best Wishes animation quality was really good I feel, and yet XY seems to have improved on even that. I think that's the simplest answer.

 

[JacobYBM]

One thing I really appreciate about XY (and, to a lesser extent, Best Wishes) was that it has more of a consistent art style episode-to-episode. In the first three series you could almost always pick out who animated the episode by looking at the character models, but now (with the exception of Tamagawa episodes and some Iwane ones) they all look very similar.

The backgrounds/color palettes are also the best they've been (I remember that the SD Diamond and Pearl episodes has terrible backgrounds), although I do still miss the look of the hand-colored episodes.

The consistency is generated by a mix of two things: the use of a chief animation supervisor and assistant chief animation supervisor and a higher number of key animators. The chief animation supervisor role is there typically to smooth out the quirks of the regular animation supervisors. This leads to giving the series a homogenized look. I would say it's one of the worst things about a lot of modern series, to be honest. The role should be restrained only to correcting bad drawings, not interesting ones that just so happen to be off-model. Luckily this doesn't always happen with Iwane's episodes, like his recent Musashi-focus episode.

 

[Madame Pika]

There are some parts that I feel are vastly improved, but some times it does feel like they're showing off for the sake of showing off, like when they do flashy 'camera' movements (though not always) and this is a little distracting from the immersion. There are also times when I wonder if scene could have been better focused to give fair coverage to all the characters in the scene (The Eureka/Serena against TR battle comes to mind.) I am though really enjoying the variety of colours, the emotional levels the faces go to (though I do still prefer DP in that regard), the detail the backgrounds give to the pokemon world and really, considering how often my problems happen, it almost feels like nitpicking.