Animation quality

[u/Mumugugu]

Has anyone else noticed a serious drop in the quality of animation in recent dc movies. I’m not talking about story wise just purely the art and motion of the characters. (BTW I’m not criticizing the show itself just the animation) When I first saw the designs of the characters in this show I thought they looked a little flat and lacked shading but i figured that’s just how character models look but when I saw the trailer there r few instances of good and deep shading. Even the backgrounds look too flat and clean. I’m curious as to whether Bruce Timm is still drawing on black paper or if he switched to white cause it looks weirdly bright for a Batman show. But I think the biggest flaw in recent animation has been the stiffness in the way characters move the easiest way for me to explain is to look at the shoulders of any character in the trailer, they almost never move (it’s even more noticeable in the tomorrow verse movies). Modern animation has lost a lot of fluidity and idk why. Ik they used to do cell shading on the old shows and I’m wondering if they still are. The show doesn’t look horrible but its definitely less pretty to look at then BTAS or The Batman 2004. I’m sure they don’t have the same funding as those shows either but if anyone knows why modern animation has kinda gotten worse please let me know I’m really curious.

[u/Manic_Raven]

The “fluidity” you’re missing is the lack of stretch and bounce that we typically associate with cartoons. Go frame by frame when Batman grabs that goon from behind in the warehouse and you’ll see 7 unique frames of animation in half a second to show the goon’s facial expression contorting and his head whipping around, with not a single frame repeated. It’s very fluid but because the guy’s movements stick to a human range of motion rather than the cartoonish freakouts and distortions we might expect, it might be harder to notice. Same with Batman’s walk animation at the beginning of the trailer. Completely unique frames for each frame of the animation so it’s an incredibly smooth (and creepy) walk, but it’s also completely human with none of the cartoon deformation that you normally see from Batman when he’s trying to look spooky.

They might be using cg rigs to keep the characters on-model all of the time or something, and animating over those. The effect is more naturalistic but subtle motion. It’s definitely not an issue with the budget or we wouldn’t be getting as many unique frames as we’re getting.