Good Animations
Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Ghost in the Shell is a 1995 anime neo-noir cyberpunk thriller film. Apart from the story, Ghost in the Shell is still a good animation.
The stagging of Ghost in the Shell is great, animators used a film standard staging in this production. Animators used close-up to show charactors facial expressions and their mental statement. They also used great composition to show the distance between different charactors and depth of scenes.
By obeying the follow through & overlapping and timing principles, the actions in this film are quite realistic. For example, when protagonist through a bomb to the robot, her arm followed with her elbow and her hand followed with her arm. It also used less frames to draw that action to emphasis the energy of that action. What’s more, protagonist’s body move forward a bit when her hand quickly moved backwards, which “help” her to hold the balance. Also, to make a human-like action, animators used less squash and stretch and paid more attention on the physics in animation (force response).
Good example of follow through & overlapping, environment response and secondary actions:
Spongebob Squarepants
Spongebob Squarepants is also a good animation with impressive charactor design and interesting actions.
The best part of Spongebob Squarepants is its charactors. Animators used different colors and simple shapes to design these charactors, make them look quite appealing. The proportion of charactors are great, too. With big head and thin, long arms and legs, charactors can show their facial expressions clearly. These charactors, like Spongebob Squarepants and Patrick Star, are so unique that people can memorize them just at a glance.
Animators also exaggerate charactors’ facial expressions to make them more funny and emotional. Same as some Disney animations, the physics in this cartoon are also quite ridiculous, which gives charactors more choices to do actions.
Bad Animations
Detective Conan is one of my favourate Japanese animations. However, because of the changing of animators every year, the quality of this animation are quite uneven. Some of its episodes show bad proportion of charactors and wired facial expressions, for example:
Sometimes there is some strange distortion of charactors’ face, like:
The animation of Overlord is terrible, too. The bodies of soldiers look mechanical when they are running and fighting. Also, the physics in this animation looks hilarious, people almost fly to the sky after they were punched by enermy. To solve these problems, animators should follow arc, overlapping and follow through principles to make actions more realistic and interesting. The physics should be improved, too. Charactors should have more realistic reactions to the environment and forces.