Netflix's The Dragon Prince

New trailer:

Framerate is still bad it seems.

Also I wonder if the conflict is people from both sides attempting to stop the main characters from ending the war.

I know they're trying to emulate the feel of old cartoons with more choppy animation but...

It's honestly just not working. Its honestly taking me out of what I'm watching rather than feeling like a stylistic choice.

I'd assume the problem is more that they're simply removing every couple of frames from the shot rather than being more deliberate about what frames they're removing. Also that old 80s cartoons were REALLY stiff in the animation anyway so the choppiness was noticible, but acceptable. Here, the animation is clearly more fluid, but the missing frames throws things off.

Compare this to the new Star Wars cartoon coming out which has a similar cell shaded style.

Old Cartoons DONT have choppy animation. This just screams apathy on the side of the animators. I REALLY hope either the writing makes up for it or the animation will improve as the series goes on.

I doubt they're "removing frames", they simply aren't rendering them.

What really sticks out though is that compared to say, Arc System Works 3D titles, they aren't say, using smear frames, and everything seems to be rendered at the same choppy framerate with no variation (unlike a lot of shows that'll show an Animation bump for the action scenes).

Yeah, I think I'm going to wait for the framerate patch

Yeah, the animation is bad, but it does look very adventurey. Adventurous.

I have to agree!

Its sad, I like everything in the trailer except the jank which makes it difficult to watch.

I..don't know what you guys are talking about. It looks fine to me though I guess I just didn't notice the jankiness.

I get what they're going for and it can work as Guilty Gear shows but they're just not putting in the proper effort to make it work.

Edited by LordVatek on Sep 2nd 2018 at 10:36:08 AM

The animation still isn't great but I found this trailer to look better than the last one.

Also is it me or did the elf girl have a really thick Scottish accent?

If you are rendering your cartoon entirely in CG, why would you make the frame rate stutter to emulate old cartoons? It's distracting and makes this hard to watch.

The compositing is also off in various places. I noticed in the trailer when some characters are crossing a bridge, it's very apparent that they're CG moving on a painted background.

Yeah, the bad framerate is really hard to ignore. Even CGI cartoons that don't look good at least try to make a good framerate.

Believe it or not, each individual frame still costs a lot of time and money to render. The difference I'm noticing is that most CG cartoons typically have a limited cast and have relatively few (and often barren) locations. Here, the trailer shows off a ton of different locations, has a fairly large cast to boot.

But...yeah, the framerate ends up looking janky and the compositing looks pretty awful in some shots. It looks less like a deliberate attempt to emulate hand drawn animation and more like a budget saver since, again, just _rendering_ frames takes time and money. The problem is it's still animated like it should be on the ones, so it's lacking al the visual tricks that make 2D animation look smooth.

An animator from the show on the animation style:

Replies with someone else in the thread:

Stop motion, huh? Hm...

Ouch. Im sorry but I still dont like it. And animation was meant to be look awesome in motion. Not just "Make an animation artstyle that looks AWFUL in motion but shuts up the plethora of Youtube whiners that whine about smear frames in quality work." Also, the Problem Solverz crew ALSO made comments about how awesome their animation was.

Yeah like I thought, they're trying to emulate anime in CG-style but they're just not good at it. There is a very clear difference in animation between that trailer and this:

Also they really need to play more Fire Emblem games than just Echoes. Awakening and Fates' cinematics completely blow Echoes' away.

Edited by LordVatek on Sep 3rd 2018 at 7:19:31 AM

I didn't want to say anything since they're so enthusiastic but, whatever amazing animation is in store, it's not in the trailers thus far. Some of the effects animation does look nice (like the fireball and water splash), but the character animation feels less like stop motion and more simply...robotic.

I'm also looking up Fire Emblem cutscenes to compare and, well, those seem to be moving at a normal framerate to me? The only similarity I see is the use of Cel Shading.

Character reveal: Lord Viren

Also an article with a few new stills.

"each frame is meticulously chosen and posed"

CRINGE

"Every single frame could stand on its own and look good, yknow? squash and stretch frames and all"

DOUBLE CRINGE

That's not animation. That's posing. Animation is going from one key pose to the next and, yes, breaking your models to express characterization and personality.

EVERY SINGLE FRAME should NOT look good on its own. Because not every single frame is meant to be seen. You're supposed to be going through so many frames that we can't see imperfections and instead read the movement of the characters. Even Overwatch, a game with some of the best animation I've seen in a video game, does a lot of model breaking to pull of the characters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk4coGVVfVU&t=15s

Like, there's a hug between the King and the lead around the 1:00 mark of this trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWEtCsi3Eo8. There is nothing in the way this is animated that tells me something about the characters.

Compare that to say, this scene from How To Train Your Dragon where the characters are event explictly referring to how each other move. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa9kqrxFtzc or Hotel Transylvania's trailers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8BWQNTIEw4 where Dracula has a very expressive (and 'broken model') walk animation or when you see the Mummy jumping and sliding down the sand pile. I know there's a part during the 'Contact Lens' scene in the full movie where Dracula's arms make a perfect U shape.

Yes, I don't expect Dragon Prince to go to Hotel Transylvania levels of breaking their models, particuarly since that works better in comedies compared to the more serious epic tone of Dragon Prince, but...

I was watching the characters in above Dragon Prince trailer and there's a scene around :40 mark where some characters are standing around. All three have the exact same pose. or nearly the same pose. That's already telling me nothing about them really and it doesn't help that the girl talking and the guy in the back left are LITRALLY standing exactly the same way. But, the girl's voice is expressing a lot more than her animation is. But then the guy's last line of "That's not really right" his mouth is the only thing moving... We couldn't have a... Idk, quick eye contact with the other guys, cringe, and move his hands to a gesture as he correct her? Instead, BOTH of them are just eye tracking her.

Like, that's a moment PRIME for taking use of animation and throwing in a background gag and even telling us what these two guys think of the girl while her back is turned. Eye contact and an eye-roll would tell us both of them are aware of how dumb she sounds and this is a consistent character trait. But we don't... get that. We don't get anything.

I will also agree with the above comment that the animation just feels robotic. The quick shot of a horse rearing up and turning (around 1:04) is... way too few animations that it feels more like the horse is just posed and pivoted rather than actually moving. And since that is a rather intense movement with a lot of parts to it, giving it like 4 frames doesn't work. What makes it worse to me is that the girl in the background isn't moving either. I guess maybe I don't know the full context, but leaning forward and just still while smiling seems dull compared to leaning back, pulling up the reins, and then leaning forward to gallop towards the camera would be a good background animation than just... stillness?

Edited by InkDagger on Sep 4th 2018 at 3:20:11 AM

When people point out how Arc System Works used the Unreal Engine to simulate 2D animations and why can’t other people do the same, I would assume it’s because the former is an in-house secret. That being said, I cannot think of a company that uses similar tech, or at least makes it as smooth as they do.

It's actually not a secret. They did a whole GDC talk about how they pulled it off. The reason it looks so fluid is that they're willing to do alot of squash and stretch, enlargement of limbs and even smears in 3D to achieve fluidity, and know where to cut frames so the animation looks just right. For example, in Dragon Ball Fighter Z, to animate Gohan's Father/Son Kamehameha they enlarged his hand during the camera rotation so his arm is in focus◊, to give the anticipation of him gathering Ki in his palm. It's not used by everyone, since it's very difficult and time consuming to pull off. It's effectively like animating sprites.

If the Dragon Prince animators are trying to make every frame look good... Well, we're seeing why you shouldn't just by watching the trailers. Even saying it's stop motion is a poor comparison. So basically:

And it's a damn shame, because the character dynamics we saw in the trailer involving the main cast seemed charming. I also trust Aaron Ehasz and Giancarlo Volpe as writers, so it sucks that potentially good characters and writing are gonna be trapped in a show that looks like ass.

Edited by Emperordaein on Sep 4th 2018 at 11:28:50 PM

The show had a preview at FanExpo.