Search form

2D or not 2D

18 posts / 0 new
Last post
2D or not 2D

clever....i know....im genius.

From being here it seems there are a lot of traditional animators. Lots of you do 2d.

Anybody here have any training in 3D or experience in 3D?

I personally am more into 3d, but i dont dislike 2d or anything...which seems to kinda be the opposite for most 2d people...they dislike 3d.

Why do you like 2d over 3d? do you actually care? any animation is good enough? Lets hear from the Pros and the students!

I like 3d for games. And the realisticness they give to films even though they can be very unreal. I love modeling 3d stuff and i love animation. I never was that great at drawing. I am good enough to get by and can do great things if i focus on it...but when it comes to animating in 2d i dislike how i have to spend so much time re-drawing. I love being able to just loosley layout masses with circles and some lines and do quick loose pencil tests. But refining it isnt my cup of tea.

I love flash too though. It is a lot more fun for me than refining drawings. I could go for working on a flash tv series. In fact i plan on doing an animated short in flash soonish. Hopefully with Fosters quality animation. haha.

anyway...what about you? 2d or not 2d?

blinkmetoys's picture
"who wouldn't want to make stuff for me? I'm awesome." -Bloo

"who wouldn't want to make stuff for me? I'm awesome." -Bloo

.

.

.

.

nah,2ders don't hate 3d,they just hate the 3ders who keep saying *3d is waay better than 2d,2d is dead,2d or not 2d* etc.

:rolleyes: :cool:

I hope to be studying all forms of animation at college next year *2d,3d,stopmotion* i just prefer 2d cos its what i grew up with,and i love to draw,so many technicalites involved in 3d,but i'll give it a go anyway.Modelling is fun,haven't actually attempted 3d animation.

Big 2D fan here... I like how it forces you to constantly think about composition/direction of line/other 2dimensional techniques that lead the viewer's eye. It's easy to forget the 2dimensional aspect of the picture when you're working in 3D.

Well I give this 4 more posts befor it turns into another heated 2D vs 3D debate.

I don't care! That's right I don't. I don't care if it's traditional or 3D or stopmotion, or Flash, or oil paint, or cut out animation. To me animation is animation. I can appreciate them all and I love watching them all. There are good and bad versions of all of them. And historicaly, the more access the greater poppulation has to a medium, the more you'll see bad work being done in that medium. Hence a lot of bad animation with Flash, and you'll see more and more bad 3D animation.

To me 2D or 3D is just a choice in medium. I have a story for a Feature that I'd love to have animated one of these days, and I want it to be animated traditionally. This isn't because I prefer traditional animation over 3D. I just think the look and style for my film will look better in traditional animation. It's like doing a painting and chosing between using water color and oil paints. You can do the painting with either medium, it all depends on the feel and look you want to acheive.

What hooks me and pulls me in are the stories and characters in a film. Not what they are animated with. If I simpathize, relate, or form a bond with the characters on the screen, it doesn't matter if its 3D or traditional or even live action. I could care less if Tom Cruze got zapped in War of the Worlds, and I was actually rooting for Dakota Fanning to buy the farm, but I felt so sorry for both Chicken Little and his dad Buck when they were talking in the car about Chicken Little wanting to join the baseball team. Go see the movie just for that scene. It's fantastic.

I'm a traditional animator, working in Flash and learning Maya. Each medium has there own strengths and their own demons. You just have learn how to play up, and tame the right ones.

Aloha,
the Ape

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

I was more into 3d back when it had rarity value. I still find Tron pretty amazing. These days it is more commonplace. I still like it when it is done well, like Gollum or The Incredibles, or when it is used in an interesting way, like in some music videos.

What I like about the more traditional forms of animation though, is that you can see the artists' hands all over it, like brush strokes in a painting. 3d can have that too, but you have to know where to look. When it gets to the point where everything is recycled models along with procedural animation and motion capture, I can lose interest.

2D and 3D

Hello.

I 've been doing animation professionally for 30 years- made my first animated film 7 years before that...

I DO NOT DISLIKE 3D (whew, that ones out of the way). But I don't understand how ANYONE can really do 3D without doing 2D first...and I don't mean just the learning of the principles.

ALL of the the good 3D animators I know, do their work in 2D first (even if it is just thumbnails of the key poses or frames)

3D is VERY procedural- you do this and that happens and then press this and that happens...which is fine- the real animation is already done (in 2D).

During my professional career, I have animated in 2D and in stop motion, and early on in collage,etc. I have directed all of the above and 3D animation...and I ALWAYS find it helpful to draw out the key poses for 3D.

As far as animating goes, I still love 2D the most. I love the feel of the pencil as it swipes the texture of the paper. I find that part of it non exsistent in 3D - that connection that is so intimate in 2D that doesn't exist in 3D.

I love the freedom to exaggerate a pose with energy and spontaneity (sorry no English dictionary here in France) with the stroke of a pencil. I do love drawing and would really miss it.

If someone has a hard time drawing - than what you need is more practice with drawing- it will make you a better animator for 2D or 3D.

Thanks- UHHhhhhh- think I will go draw...

I love them both.
Both animation mediums have dished out excellent films.
James :cool:

Why do I like 2D over 3D??

I get a much more satisfying tactile experience with 2D than with 3D.

I LIKE working with paper and pencil.
I LIKE the texture of a good page, and the scratch of a pencil on same.
I LIKE the softer glare of light on a sheet of paper, I LIKE flipping the pages.
I LIKE the hand-feel of drawing--the intuitive pressure-sense of placing a line on the page and getting the kind of line I seek. I like the softness of a tapered line and how sublime it can become with just a single stroke.
I LIKE the ACTS of artistry.
I LIKE cutting with tools, taping, manuvering items with my hands.......getting my hands dirty.
I cannot do that with 3D.
IMO, there's less "craft" with 3D--I like 2D for not only the artform, but for the craft of the form itself.
So much of 3D feels like having to fuss and fiddle to achieve results that can be done more intitively in other mediums--but then, I've not done a great deal of 3D at all.

"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)

.

.

:p Oh! The soft, malleable lead of the pencil! :eek: Ah! The fiberous purity of a clean sheet of paper! :o Oooh... the titilating climax of viewing the finished product...

THIS IS STARTING TO CREEP ME OUT!

:D

I was being sincere.

"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)

.

.

Going to school for 3d i see(and learn) the differences between good 3d and bad 3d. Alot of bad 3d ends up being straight and looking like it was made on the computer. A lot of motion does too. People tend to forget about the third dimension when animating in 3D.

When i do draw i always have curvey lines and exageration. It is fun to translate that into my 3d objects. I always try to (unless im doing a realistic model)

i dont know....i just started talking....have no real point. haha.

"who wouldn't want to make stuff for me? I'm awesome." -Bloo

I've put all types of paper through my Epson Stylus(piece of crap) printer. I've printed on tracing paper and acetate, but with varying results. I wouldn't be surprised if it could print on some types of watercolour paper, but again the results might not be great. I'm sure there's a printer out there that could do it if you look around.

But anyway, that seems like an odd way of doing things. It's not that hard to just draw it out in perspective by hand. I've seen some layout artists who were very fast with perspective, and it seems to me that by doing it your way, you will never develop that sort of intuitive skill. Unless you are doing a vast and complicated cityscape, why bother? And in that case, it probably wouldn't look great in watercolour anyway.

This reminds me of a few years ago when I went back to my old college to see how things were. I came across a student working on a pencil test animation assignment. I couldn't believe what he was doing. He was literally tracing printouts of some cutout style animation he had done in flash. It was stiff as hell. I swear to god, this is not the way to learn.

how about projecting into the stratmore board?

you know, print on acetate then use a simple projector
onto the watercolor paper. if you can make it project
overhead then you can even work without faint pencil lines.

i got enamored with 3D for one reason:

free inbetweeners.

sure there are limitations now. but i'm a flexible guy.
i like working around them. i don't throw a pencil just because
it's hard and light-- i think of a situation where it will suit best.
and since you're an artist, it would still end up artistic.

free workers! how bad could that be?

Don't worry.  All shall be well.

Hey, I did technical drawing for when I was in secondary school, so I know all too well the pains of spending ages on a drawing only to find 2 points that don't meet up were they are supposed to. For the first 2 years I was top of that class, but as things got more complex, a friend of mine got the edge on me. He never had lines that didn't meet up. Then one day he showed me how the whole time he had been cheating it all over the place. When lines didn't meet up, he would do it freehand, or conveniently alter the measurements. I was furious, but he always got away with it. As long as it looked right, no one noticed.

Anyway there is a moral to this story: Animation is art, not rocket science. It only ever has to look right. Small technical errors will not have big ramifications. I have seen beginners obsess over complicated perspectives in background drawings, but it turns out that it may only be on screen for a few seconds, anyway. Even then, all the attention will be on the character and the action. This is not to say that sloppy work is acceptable, just that perspective drawing for animation or comics requires a different approach than perspective drawing for industrial design/ architecture etc.

I'd be interested in seeing some examples of the kind of backgrounds you've been working on, or examples of the type of work you want to do, because I don't see the need for having perfectly divided pseudo paraboloids. Most professional layout artists could just free-hand draw a near perfect elipse in less than a second with a flick of their wrist, and it will look better, and less laboured than if it had been painstakingly figured out. Most of the time they don't even bother with a ruler, because perfectly straight lines will 'stiffen up' the drawing.

For camera moves it makes perfect sense to use CG, but I assumed, if you were planning on doing watercolour backgrounds, that you were talking about still backgrounds. If you are moving the camera it makes a lot more sense to render it on the computer. To hand paint camera-moves with watercolour would probably be to tempt insanity. :o

Incidently, even architects sometimes cheat with their drawings. I have seen successful thesises with rooms that technically couldn't fit into the building, and elevations that don't make sense. The builders or computer modellers then wind up with the headaches, but even they may wind up fudging it a little due to their own problems. I have always thought this sort of thing was poor form, but people get away with it all the time. However in animation it is a slightly different story, and things that don't make sense are knowingly allowed to happen all the time. For instance the house in the Simpsons is altered all the time depending on the needs of the story. To surrender yourself to literal geometry can be unneccesarily restrictive.

By the way, I looked at your website. A better ability to handle freehand perspective drawing would help your art, but it's impressive that you're able to program your own 3d software, that's a skill I don't have. To be honest, most of what you describe on the page about your program is way over my head. Pretty cool though.