Bricks in Motion
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I'm curious if anyone has successfully mastered multiple styles of animating, and how they went about it. What I have in mind is the cartoony style of 12 FPS (like Sonjira's style,) and the more realistic style 15 FPS brings (like sillypenta's.)
Last edited by Alaberria (October 30, 2018 (07:14pm))
'Master' seems pretty subjective. Some may have mastered it others' eyes, but not in their own.
Me personally, I like the latter better.
Wonder what style Brotherhood Workshop's stuff would be considered, since it has elements of both.
Frame rate doesn't determine animation style
Frame rate doesn't determine animation style
I'm thinking the styles generally used with that frame rate. From what I've seen done.
I have the realistic at 15. I can make it look cartoony at 12 too, so ya. I have the same as you Ozone Studios.
I don't think 12 fps is necessarily cartoony. Realistic movement can be done with 12 fps too, it's just a matter of technique.
At 15 or 24 FPS, you have a little wiggle room with the amount of frames. At 12, you have to actually take exactly 12 frames per second to get smooth animation, so it’s definitely harder.
It's definitely not a style thing, you can get realistic or cartoony animation at any framerate. In fact I'd bet that 95% of us couldn't tell if a video was in 12 or 15 just by watching. I'm kinda curious to see if I could even pass that test.
If you're going to do strictly 12 without ever going on ones for the fast bits (highly recommended) the places you might run into a little trouble is if you're animating to a set soundtrack (someone playing drums for example) and need that kind of frame accuracy for sound sync. This is why it's a good idea to edit on a 24 or 30 fps project and treat the stuff you shot at 12 or 15 as being "on twos" and then you have that extra subdivision if you need to do a fast bit on ones, or if you just want to add in an extra "half frame" to get things to sync better.
Last edited by thistof (October 31, 2018 (10:33am))
...multiple styles of animating
You mean like ease-in ease-out, squash and stretch, animating on 1's, animating on 2's, camera movement, crowd scenes, walk cycles, run cycles, etc...? I'd think that just about everyone is working towards improving those aspects.
Anyone who says they've "mastered" animation is an outright liar. There's always room for improvement - everybody can give 110%, and learn from their mistakes for the next film.
If you're talking about Anime vs Western Animation vs Noir vs other "styles," then I think it's not really ever been all tried by one animator. (Apart from, perhaps, Dylan Woodley) And even then, I'd argue no one's "mastered" it.
Some brickfilmers I think have beautiful animation and have mastered intriguing storytelling - that's another question entirely - but, for that, I'd choose Nathan Wells, Doug Vandegrift, Zach Macias, Philip Heinrich (Smeagol), Shelby Pritchard, William Osborne, Keshen, FancyPants, DarthMilo, Jay Silver... the list goes on. Although, I'm sure (to themselves) they're still looking to improve their craft, whether that's improving animation, workflow, or some other aspect.
Beast is still one of my favorite brickfilms, but I can see the improvements (technical and non) by Driven... And, of course, the evolution between Driven and 30 years... And then 30 years and Meek and the Bold... and so on.
It's definitely not a style thing, you can get realistic or cartoony animation at any framerate. In fact I'd bet that 95% of us couldn't tell if a video was in 12 or 15 just by watching. I'm kinda curious to see if I could even pass that test.
^This right here says it all!
I honestly never think about whether something is 12 or 15, as it's not usually one of the things I'm thinking about when watching a brickfilm.
I think pretty much anything can be accomplished in 12 fps just as well as it can be at 15 fps and vice versa. Frame rate ultimately has very little to do with the quality of one's animation. I'd say whatever frame rate you feel most comfortable with using (assuming it's no lower than 12), go for it - continue to hone your skills at that frame rate and soon people won't be able to tell, because they'll be thinking about the overall quality of the animation and not about how many frames make up a second.
To say that one is better for one thing than the other is overgeneralizing things. Animation style has more to do with the animator's own signature style than it does with frame rate. Looking at Sillypenta's work as an example, he has continued to animate at 16 fps since the very beginning, but in recent years has made more of an effort to make his animation more cartoony in style. His transition to more cartoony animation has nothing to do with the frame rate that he animates at. For the past 3 years, I've animated at 12 fps, but my animation is not nearly as cartoony in style as Sillypenta's.
Also, thanks for the shout-out, Dyland. I don't know if I'm quite to the level of those legends, but I'm flattered all the same 
Last edited by William Osborne (October 31, 2018 (05:42pm))
Very interesting points here!
It would somewhat contradict what has been said, but is it worth choosing 15 over 12 for the overall smoother look? I'm aware that smooth animation isn't based off of frame rate, but would that extra three frames be worth it?
I can't really say which frame rate is "smoother". I mean, there are great, smooth brickfilms at 15fps, and there are great, smooth brickfilms at 12fps (look at Rioforce's stuff, for example). I am currently animating at 12, but I started with 15 and I sure think 15 was harder, but that didn't make the animation smoother. That's just my opinion, though.
I think it is a bit harder to get smooth animation with 12 fps (much less room for error) over 15 (which, even amateurs can make look fairly decent - hence it being a sort of "brickfilming standard")
In the past, I've considered exporting video at 60 fps - The least common multiple, fitting many frame-rate "standards" (10 fps on 6's, 12 fps on 5's, 15 fps on 4's, 20 fps on 3's, 30 on 2's, and if you're completely insane 60 fps on 1's).
...I'd bet that 95% of us couldn't tell if a video was in 12 or 15 just by watching. I'm kinda curious to see if I could even pass that test.
I'm sure it would be noticable, but my "export at 60" concept was mainly to experiment with evenly mixing multiple frame rates in a video. Perhaps even animate as such (move foreground on 4's, background on 2's...?) and see how it turns out. Never got around to actually completing this experiment, but I think it would be cool to test out.
I've started with 12, then went on to 15, because I thought it would be smoother (which it was, because I was still not that good at animating and 15 got me more room for error) and now for that last two years I had to get back to 12, because the inbuilt stop-motion mode of my camera only allows 12 or 24 (or even lower than 12). I needed some time to get used to 12 again, but it was fine. What I sometimes do, although it kinda messes up the framerate, is to adjust the speed in post (mostly increase the speed, because slowing down with already just 12fps is not really an option). This sounds worse than it, and is probably not even noticable. With 12, I guess you have to take more care of every single frame and with 15 (or even more) you have to take more care of the whole animation itself, because the more fps you use, the smaller your movement increments are going to be, so very slow or "small" movements become harder with more fps, because it is hard to move your minifigure just as little as possible. In the end, it comes down to the animator himself, like other already said. I think the difference between a good 12 and a good 15fps animation is not noticable.
Another question that is kind of related to this: Doesn't YouTube convert everything to 30fps? I am probably wrong here, but I heard that multiple times (except if you do 60fps intentionally, because there are those 60fps videos on YouTube).
I first made Brickfilms with about 8 fps cause I didn't know better, I don't know if you can call my early wort "mastering it", but over time it got quite better.
Than, about a year ago, I switsched to 15 fps while starting to use Dragonframe.
In terms of staayle I changed mine a lot to try myself in new areas, for example I changed lighting, pacing and overall story structure. I'm also constantly trying to find neew ways of Brickfilming, for example with brickbuild figures (a bit like the paganomation figures).
Also to the discussion about how fps change style: I think a lower framerate can help to show something cartoony, but it's also possible to get there without. Some time ago I tried to use different framerates like 24 fps or 12, the only experience I got was that the minifigures were moving to slow or to fast.
I usually work at 15 fps, (I used to do 10fps when I was a noob), but lately I've been experimenting with lower framerates like 12 and 13 fps, and I think it's helpful depending on the scene. As far as "style" goes, ease in and ease out, that's basically the only thing I know haha. It won't take you everywhere, (as some very helpful more experienced brickfilmers have pointed out to me when critiquing my work.), but it'll take you pretty far.
Rio did an Anime-styled brickfilm once. I think anyone with a bit of experience (Not myself), could switch between cartoony and realistic movement styles fairly easily.
Anyways, that's my 2 cents!
(I should browse the forums more often)
Very interesting points here!
It would somewhat contradict what has been said, but is it worth choosing 15 over 12 for the overall smoother look? I'm aware that smooth animation isn't based off of frame rate, but would that extra three frames be worth it?
I believe that the difference between 12 and 15 is pretty negligable. Theoretically 15 should be smoother, but any particular animator won't get any smoother by moving from 12 to 15. A great animator will be able to make 12 look smoother than an amateur animator at 15. The difference in frame rate doesn't make a vast difference until you actually double the frame rate.
The biggest thing I've found that you cannot do at 12 or 15 fps are vibrations and staggers. Unless you go into 1s at a double frame rate (24 or 30) they just look like a wiggle or a shimmy. Here's an example of something shot at 12fps and the final vibration of the skiier crashing is at 24fps (on ones) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTRI9E5YPlI
In this scene, everything is animated at 24fps except the samurai guy, in an effort to make him feel heavier. Notice the difference in smoothness between him and all the other characters. When the bench goes into it's stagger/vibration it's still at 24 but actually includes multiple exposures to imply movement faster than 24fps. The bus comes in at 24fps, but when the samurai weighs it down, the bus pulls away at 12fps. https://youtu.be/JGw_X5ZZ7ho
As far as cartoony vs realistic, I'd guess it has a lot more to do with timing to sell the mass and weight of the characters, and exaggeration of their poses.
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