So you are implying that Ray Harryhausen and Hery Selick did a terrible service for stop motion by focusing on making animation as smooth as possible that they set the standard for smoothness. I bet you that if we go out there to ask every single animator what is what they want to achieve while they work on a puppet they will say that expression is their priority, followed immediately by smooth movement. Because it's more pleasant to watch; it requires more discipline to be achieved therefore it has more merit and value. The real problem here is not smoothness, but how it is achieved, using computers to model and print the puppets is absolutely CHEATING, and it destroys what stop motion animation is all about, which is defined as the art of "bringing an object to life" only by using human hands. Thats why I always prefer stop motion movies over CGI ones, because I see handcraft artistry. I used to love Laika because it impressed me with their ultra smooth animation, I thought they put a lot of extra effort to make it that smooth using their hands, but when I found they just printed the puppets parts, and not only that, that they modeled in a computer. All that merit collapsed, and I no longer admire them. I call them CHEATERS. They destroy the purpose of stop motion which I repeat, is to be 100% handmade and... to be as SMOOTH AS POSIBLE. When I watch an animation that is supposed to have 24fps and I only see 5fps it takes me out of the thing. Again, what's the purpose of animation? The illusion of movement? I bet it is, so don't you think that having less frames in it, less posing, objectively makes it less animated? Like wine, the more effective time you put into making something, the better will be the result. But you decide to use one specific kind of alcoholic drink to illustrate your point, probably just to justify laziness or artsy fartsy mediocrity of people that want to get the same recognition of professional animators but don't want to go through the same discipline that the others had to go through in order to achieve it. I am an amateur too, but I want to achieve professional quality; as any amateur does, thats why I always go for no less than those 24fps. Saying that I understand that some people may not have the time to make their animation smooth and that's why they only animate 5 frames or less, that doesn't disqualify them as animators, but don't tell me that that makes their animation "better" for having less frames in it. If you use only one picture to show one scene, then you show one picture for the next one, and so on, does that count as a stop motion animation or is just a slideshow presentation? Isn't smoothness, but handmade smoothness what we all want? Do we want our animation to have flaws? No, we want it to be perfect but we want that perfection to be achieved by hand. Right? Think about it.
Why did I need this today. This made me cry. But I cried tears of almost zero and it felt good to me. It's the upswing. It's the sign that my body fights back. Just for today
