No pithy hook for this one. Just a thought about what separates quality from crap. I think it's best described as "dynamic range". I regularly see vfx artists making demo reels full of bright flashing stroboscopic particle effects, dwarfing the character they are attached to. Five different variations of the same effect. But how can you possibly care? There's no depth or subtlety to it when everything is turned up to 11. It's impossible to scroll through more than a dozen posts without seeing a character juggle some hapless punching bag of an enemy 20 times with exceedingly ridiculous airborne attacks, such that none of them stand out because they are all as over the top as they could be. Turned up to 11. The lack of dynamic is desensitizing. If you have no small, how can there ever be big? If you have no quiet, how can you have loud? The music industry figured out a long time ago that compressing the shit out of the music and pushing it as close to clipping as the storage medium allowed would make one song louder than the others... Until everyone did that and nobody is louder, just all max volume all the time. It's harder to be subtle. It takes more effort to be careful. It can be scary to trust the end user to notice the difference. Really great creatives get this, and embrace it, across all industries. Quality requires the quiet. It demands the small. It should be obvious that without dynamic range, nothing you're making will have impact. You're just making another forgettable pop song.
This is a great observation. Ive been noticing it in animation too. I see a ton of super high action shots constantly, which is impressive yes, but rarely do I see a nice sutle acting shot that really connects and delivers. Which imo it is harder to achieve while involving a lot less motion. I keep thinking that we are living through the “make it cooler” era. Everything needs to be flashy and catchy right away or you may loose the viewers attention. I get that people consume content differently today, but its sad that we are also loosing the sensitivity of what truly makes art great. And thats a balance of both things imo. You need that contrast of quiet vs high energy.
Great take! I just saw a vfx showreel which showed really minimalistic vfx (one line of thin lighting strike, simple but impactful hit reacts). It stood out so much more than these “league of legends” like dopamine maxing effects.
Correct! I actually teach this concept the same way you describe it here. I draw two waveforms, one with a constant pattern and one with a full range. What you're describing as crap, I call humming. I use the word Dynamics too and compare it to an orchestra waveform with a full range of highs and lows. In drawing/art, this can manifest in many ways: hard lines vs soft, dark vs light, cool vs warm colors, saturated vs desaturated colors, etc. Basically, any contrasting elements create dynamics. In character animation, it's as you describe, with varied timing, but there are other contrasts as well, including elements with counter motions (head looks up/arms go down, etc.). In comics, even though it's a static medium, there is still varied (dynamic) timing to tell a convincing story. You can control this in many ways: camera angles, panel sizes, even word balloons and lettering. In game design, level difficulty has a big impact on "storytelling." Levels shouldn't just get progressively harder. A calm before the storm has much more emotional impact. This works for both puzzle and narrative games. Yes, every medium and type of entertainment should have dynamics as a basic element of its design. Unless you like humming.