There’s a style of ‘animation’ that has become widely used on YouTube where they take a still image of a character then make them sway back and forth repetitively. I guess it’s cheap to make but I find it distracting and weird, even a bit patronising, as if they think we need moving pictures to keep us interested. I think it started with Veritassium and spread to other edutainment YouTube channels and now I just flat out avoid channels which use it.
Anyone else find it annoying?
You would hate wallpaper engine. It’s basically a lot of live pc wallpapers that do that. There’s a few cool ones there but you start to notice some stupid tropes after a while. Like the kinds of beings or people being depicted are wide and varied but they all seem to move like a video game protagonist’s standing idle.
I’m afraid I probably would 😅. I don’t mind the repeating animations on scenery like waterfalls or clouds moving, it’s just the swaying repetitive animations on characters. Come to think of it, I was never annoyed by the repeating static character animations in fighting games but somehow that feels an endearing part of the genre.
Ooh yeah, agreed. Breathing cycle animations on a 2d sprite kind of rule
I think there’s a craftsmanship and intentionality to those animations that’s lacking in a lot of cheap pseudo animation.
The static animation in fighting games I think has some grounding in real martial arts. Back when I joined the taekwando club in school, a lot of the more experienced martial artists don’t sit still and at the very least do that bobbing up and down like fighting games characters do. Personally it keeps me on my toes to act and react when sparring, IIRC back.