In the technical sense? This is the place where a lot of shows, and I mean a lot of shows tend to stumble. No matter how good your story is, if you lack the technical capability to make it visually engaging, then there is a problem.
So what makes good animation? From here there comes two trains of thought: high quality action sequences, and overall polish.
The first example, action sequences, are usually reserved for important scenes, where the animators are pretty much allowed to go wild. The small percentage of higher quality anime series, as well as the DC Animated Universe, are both particularly strong in this area. The main problem inherent in this is the budget. You make too many big exploding action shots, and suddenly you get the last episode of Evangelion, still frames.
The other theory is for overall polish, which is by far and away dominated by the western animations. Anime runs on very tight budgets, they are usually developed at breakneck speeds with little money available to pull off high quality animation consistently. Western shows, on the other hand, while maybe not for the most part comparable with high quality anime in the action department, pretty much own the market on polish. You will see background characters interacting, blinks and sniffles animated to prevent a scene from appearing as a still frame.
This comes from limited animation. Unless a show is running on a massive budget, this is almost mandatory. Recycled animations, still frame establishing shots, key-frames (the act of moving one image across another to imitate movement).
When a show gets a strong budget, and the time needed to crate quality material, the results can often be spectacular. Easily one of the best looking cartoons in terms of overall quality at the moment is Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Disregarding content, the technical aspects and the visual fidelity are astounding for animation standards on a television budget.
So that is my take on it, I hope you enjoyed, now here is a somewhat related video showing an example of an action sequence in relation to the first point.
So what makes good animation? From here there comes two trains of thought: high quality action sequences, and overall polish.
The first example, action sequences, are usually reserved for important scenes, where the animators are pretty much allowed to go wild. The small percentage of higher quality anime series, as well as the DC Animated Universe, are both particularly strong in this area. The main problem inherent in this is the budget. You make too many big exploding action shots, and suddenly you get the last episode of Evangelion, still frames.
The other theory is for overall polish, which is by far and away dominated by the western animations. Anime runs on very tight budgets, they are usually developed at breakneck speeds with little money available to pull off high quality animation consistently. Western shows, on the other hand, while maybe not for the most part comparable with high quality anime in the action department, pretty much own the market on polish. You will see background characters interacting, blinks and sniffles animated to prevent a scene from appearing as a still frame.
This comes from limited animation. Unless a show is running on a massive budget, this is almost mandatory. Recycled animations, still frame establishing shots, key-frames (the act of moving one image across another to imitate movement).
When a show gets a strong budget, and the time needed to crate quality material, the results can often be spectacular. Easily one of the best looking cartoons in terms of overall quality at the moment is Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Disregarding content, the technical aspects and the visual fidelity are astounding for animation standards on a television budget.
So that is my take on it, I hope you enjoyed, now here is a somewhat related video showing an example of an action sequence in relation to the first point.
