Beautiful Animation

[Pixel]

Ive always been a huge fan of really well made, hand drawn animation. Any other fans out there?

Yesterday I rewatched '5 Centimetres per Second' and 'Arrietty' and found 'Garden of Words'. The quality of animation in those is unbelievable. Its a shame alot of animation takes shortcuts to keep production time down. I know how labour intensive it is. I love that they're quite simple stories, but really pack a punch.

Can you recommend anything similar, whether it's a short, a feature or a series?

 

[Theozilla]

Well any of the Studio Ghibli films are always a great go to for great animation.
I would also recommend any of Mamoru Hosada's or Satoshi Kon's films like Paprika or Summer Wars.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Paprika gets a big +1 from me. That opening sequence still blows my mind.

I'll see if I can think of some and post them as they come to mind.


X

 

[Cthulhu]

Paprika was fucking weird,


[/turns into a fridge and stomps out of thread leading a pack of madness]

I really want to know where production-scale western animation went that wasn't or didn't look like CGI. I'd say it's high-cost art, and in the current day and age, nobody wants to fund that, not for movies anyway.

I do have a random bit of animation I quite liked. From France, iirc. I'm sure there's billions of other good short Western animations like this out there, though.

 

[HylianMogget]

Great thread. I'm always looking for animation recommendations, as well.

Edit: Whoops, dunno how similar all of what I wrote about is to the videos you posted, as I've not seen either of them, but they're both directed by Makoto Shinkai so maybe check out his other stuff like Voices of A Distant Star and Children who Chase Lost Voices?

In terms of anime movies there's Redline (which is sort of infamous for its long development, being hand-drawn). It's certainly style over substance but definitely worth checking out for its animation. As others have mentioned, anything by Satoshi Kon is worth watching, Hosoda as well. Tekkonkinkreet is quite good, too. Then there's also stuff like Macross: Do You Remember Love, Angel's Egg, and Metropolis. Anything by Studio 4C is generally great in terms of visuals (I haven't had the chance to see the Genius Party shorts yet, but I really like Koji Morimoto's work in general). Masaaki Yuasa's work always has interesting visuals in terms of art style and animation (Mind Game, and for series Kaiba and The Tatami Galaxy). Also, I've not seen them yet but some movies I've been meaning to check out are A Letter to Momo and Wanpaku Ouji no Orochi Taiji (the latter seems to have inspired Wind Waker's art style). As for anime series, I'd highly recommend checking out Denno Coil. The first few episodes in particular are really impressive. Also, it's an older series, but if you're into Miyazaki there's Future Boy Conan.

I don't know that many animated shorts off-hand, but there are lots of really impressive ones around. I really like this one:

Flooby Nooby posts a lot of neat shorts and other animation related stuff like pencil tests. Also, pretty much all of the Gobelins student shorts are amazing - France in general seems to put out a lot of great 2D animated stuff. I don't know that much about Western 2D animated movies (other than, like, The Triplets of Belleville) to be able to recommend much. I did see Le Jour des Corneilles, though, which was gorgeous.

Paprika gets a big +1 from me. That opening sequence still blows my mind.

I love the opening of Paprika so much. The visuals and music go so perfectly together.

 

[Hisako]

I'm a massive Production I.G fan since I'm a sucker for technical brilliance (for which I.G have been pioneers), so I tend to latch onto a lot of things that they produce. Blood: The Last Vampire was a brilliant, self-contained short that was at the forefront for fully digitally-animated anime (for better or worse).

I have a soft spot for Makoto Shinkai, though imo he is a bit of a one-trick pony, at least visually. It's a very good pony trick, though! Hoshi no Koe (Voices of a Distant Star) I watched when I was a kid, and made me cry an unreasonable amount, lolo

Summer Wars is a pretty good film with some wacky, zany out-there visual design, though given the subject material a lot of it is CGI.

Also, can't go wrong with some of the well-touted classics like Cowboy Bebop (Sunrise are masters at industrial/mechanical design)

re: Western animation, Don Bluth had a pretty good run. His last major feature work, Titan A.E, was also an indicator of the transition between hand-drawn to digital - huge, immense watercolor-like backdrops with a beautiful, warm pastel palette: along with really crystal-sharp, computer-generated mechanical designs.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

The National Film Board of Canada is famous for its support of the art of animation.

http://www.nfb.ca/channels/Animation/

 

[Pixel]

I prefer Summer Wars as Digimon

Not really a huge fan of extensive rotoscoping, especially if they leave it pretty raw. It does have a certain style to it, but I prefer something that looks crafted, especially in films or one-shots.

Garden of Words is my favourite style out of everything Ive seen so far. Id love to try to do a short film in that style

 

[Philco]

I like all the slime in Studio Ghibli films. They animate slime very well

Makoto Shinkai's films are ridiculously beautiful. They're so detailed and the lighting looks gorgeous - everything just seems to shimmer! After watching 5cm per Second, I thought some of the visuals in Ghibli films suddenly seemed kind of flat in comparison.

Speaking of flat... Anyone else seen Flatworld? It might not be so beautiful to look at but tis certainly a slightly different style of 2D animation

 

[Theozilla]

Sylvain Chomet's films The Triplets of Belleville and The Illusionist are both great animated films as well (he also did The Old Lady and the Pigeons I haven't seen it though).

 

[Drax]

Sword of the Stranger has really nice fight animation, I wish I could link it but

Spoiler

it's the final fight.

But if ya wanna be spoiled (srsly, go watch it first):

Spoiler

While I'm talking about samurai stuff, Moribito has some good eps as well.

 

[HylianMogget]

I've never seen the Little Nemo movie, but the pilots done for it are really neat (ignore the awkward voices/dialogue, especially in the Dezaki one):