I never said anything about non-animated animation. I'm talking about animated work in which the use of movement is less important to narrative development that the juxtiposition of shots.

As for continuous shot film, it's nothing new. Hitchcock did it in Rope, and declared the film a failed experiment. Continuous shot is a perfectly valid means of narrative development. Images juxtiposed through editing is a perfectly valid means of narrative development. I see no point in arguing that one is better than the other, nor was I ever doing so. My point is that continuous shot is better for showcasing classic animation, but for animators who don't have the capital or time for full animation, all is not lost. Eisensteinian editing is so common that no one notices it unless they are deliberately analysing editing, and it places fewer demands on the animation qua animation. Eva, to name but one case, couldn't use full animation throughout, but used clever storyboarding and editing to tell a multitiered story.

Actually, there already is a form of anime -- though it's not exactly animated -- that uses nothing but static pictures. I think they're called "gekiga" (this term also means "dramatic pictures" as in serious, non-escapist manga). They're basically made by filming the actual manga panels and adding a soundtrack. I've never seen one, but I imagine they're pretty dull to slough through; however, several major manga (such as GOLGO 13 and the original '60s ninja story KAMUI) have been adapted this way. "Comics with soundtracks." It's an art form, or a curiosity, that seems to have been more widely used in the past and died out in the mid-'80s.

Anyway, I think one of the reasons which anime has its moments of stillness, admittedly, is because of very low budgets. Anime, particularly television anime like EVANGELION (or DRAGON BALL Z... television anime is a broad umbrella) is produced pretty cheaply. However, it's a conscious choice: concentrate on a few important action scenes or movements, and let the rest of the movement be implied. In American animation, the tendency is usually to have a fairly constant amount of not-particularly-dramatic emotion, such as walking scenes. (Particularly since a lot of American animation, until recent years, didn't break out of the 'ant farm' look of, say, SCOOBY DOO or SOUTH PARK -- people generally move and exist on a left-to-right plane, with no effort to use dramatic cuts like you'd see in real movies. Maybe these comedy shows are mimicking the 'studio set' look of sitcoms. God knows why. I would say that this is going away, but it's resurfaced with all that Shockwave Flash animation junk.)

Of course, some anime -- a _lot_ of TV anime -- looks pretty cheap and is clearly skimping on the cels. I wish some of the money that POKEMON has made would be poured back into making the movies look less embarrassing next to their glitzy American-feature-animation competition. But there's no need for everything to be constantly moving, and if you really wanted to see comparable animated features, you should compare shows with approximately the same budgetes.

And of course, EVANGELION totally rocks either way, even if they do run sort of low on animation towards the end...

Jason Thompson

Another stray thought:
I watched the Rugrats movie (on tape) with my in-laws. They are fans of the TV show. But they did not understand why the movie animation was more expensive and more dificult. They were not impressed with the roller coaster bit, for example.

Rik

I don't think they should care if the animation cost more and was more difficult. They should only be concerned if it was good Rugrats story.

Do people tune in to Rugrats for the drawing or animation anyway?

------------------
-Chris Bailey

"I want to die peacefully in my sleep, just like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car."

crash@major-damage.com
www.major-damage.com



[This message has been edited by heckboy (edited 05-07-2000).]