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Why is it so hard in many animes to draw people running?

I mean even if the whole anime drawing is good, somehow when someone is
running it feels so awkward. Their body movements don't look realistic.
Sometimes people seem to be leaping or scrolling. Sometimes their steps seem
to be longer than a normal human could walk.

There are exception of course, but they are so rare.


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2013-05-12T19:26:29.803
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2016-12-05T13:36:14.933
2013-05-13T03:41:34.187
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question
anime-production
Why is it hard to draw people running in animes?


The walk cycle is considered to be one of the most basic aspects of animation.

American animators and animation enthusiasts often times scorn the Japanese
styles and methods of animation as lazy, while Japanese anime enthusiasts
deride the American style as clunky or too comical.

Why is that you ask? The answer lies in how these countries distribute their
budget and time.

While American animation often times may seem lacking in it's attention to
detail, it makes up for it the quality of their animation. American animation
often times meticulous and original in how they animate motion, though
sometimes content is reused cyclically, the animation is painstakingly frame
by frame.

In contrast, Japanese anime uses a lot of shortcuts (to save budget and meet
deadlines). Typically long scenes feature only the mouth of a character (and
maybe other minor features like a waving hair or glittering eyes) moving
during delivery of key information/dialog, or the short burst of motion of
some character in some an action pose against an animated, cyclic, and
stylized background (I'm looking at you transformation scenes). Often times
these uses of dramatic still-shots are done against patterned (or static
illustrated) backgrounds, sometimes a few moving emotive icons (sweat drops,
question marks, small chibi animated heads) will accompany a some sort of
monologue. Admittedly both styles of animation reuse shots and sequences, but
it's more noticeable in Japanese anime for various reason (e.g., not enough
budget and/or manpower). This is why Japanese anime is typically labeled as
"lazy" by American animators and enthusiasts.

A typical walk cycle in animation consists of 8 keyframes typically:

![22-keyframe animation](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TRmJ3.gif)

The smoothness of an animation is typically determined by the framerate and
amount of key frames in the animation.

In American animation, the animation is captured by shooting two frames of
film per drawing at a rate of 24 frames per second (fps) to achieve the smooth
motion of American animation.

Japanese anime, while it also runs at an average 24 fps, typically captures
their animation at a rate of three or four frames per drawing in order to save
money and manpower. Though it varies depending on the studio and tools used
(e.g 3DCG) with main objects in the foreground (typically characters) are
animated at 8 to 12 fps, while background objects can be animated at as low as
6 to 8 fps.

Lets compare the difference between one walk cycle that is 8 frame to one that
is 16 frames, both at 60 fps:

![8 frames per second](https://i.stack.imgur.com/C9Ggm.gif) <\-- 8 frames ![16
frames per second](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ikz0y.gif) <\-- 16 frames

Notice the 16 frame one is smoother, but slower while the 8 frame is faster,
but choppier. This is because it takes the 16 frame animation twice as long,
covering more frames, to go through one cycle than the 8 frame one.

The varying of frame rates can also be be used to depict the expansion and
compression of time (think bullet time from _The Matrix_ ). However generally
choppy animation is the result of not enough keyframes in your animation. More
frames mean more and manpower and/or time, which ultimately means more money
is required. Japanese anime production [don't typically have as big of a
budget](http://wildgrounds.com/ask/15/anime-series-whats-the-average-budget)
compared to American productions (but there are exceptions), so they must make
do with what they have and cut corners where they can (like Shaft did with the
certain _Bakemonogatari_ TV episodes).


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2013-05-13T05:43:27.527
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2013-11-26T16:19:50.243
2013-11-26T16:19:50.243
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answer


In the creation of Japanese animation, the director creates the storyboards
(think of them as scenes) to assign to key animators. I'm mostly unsure where
the blame lies, but I theorized that it's mostly on budget and time
constraints. The key animators are good are making people run in a 2D plane
(x, y dimensions). However, some might find it difficult to do it in a complex
perspective assigned by the director. Additionally, the director hands a
specific amount of frames that they have to accomplish it in so it won't break
the overall timing/flow of next scene. In some instances, the key animator is
successful, but the inbetweener makes it appear "off".

It mostly depends on the key animator. Toshiyuki Inoue, Mitsuo Iso, Hideaki
Anno, Hiroyuki Okiyura and Shinji Hashimoto were known as "realist" animators.
Yoshinari Kandada pioneered the "Kanada" style. It's hard to describe what it
exactly is, but it was prevalent in 80's mecha anime and in most Gainax anime.
It's described as "spastic", or choppy looking. Despite Eastern animation
favoring composition over animation, the fight/action choreography is hailed
constantly.


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2013-11-22T18:08:12.627
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