The Disadvantages of Traditional Animation

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The introduction of 3-D animation at the end of the 20th Century led to the decline of traditional, or hand-drawn, animation. The disadvantages of traditional animation encouraged artists to embrace computer animation. As an artist, you should understand both advantages and disadvantages of traditional animation.

1 Time Consuming

Animators draw individual frames for each scene. The large numbers of drawings and the photography time required in completing a production consumes schedules and can result in delays. Reliance of a large crew of animators makes it difficult to speed up production as each animator works at a different speed. Traditional animation takes more time compared to computer animation, which uses animation software to speed up the process.

2 Correcting mistakes

A mistake in traditional animation requires you to repeat the whole drawing instead of deleting and correcting a mistake. The repetition of work can become tiresome and time consuming. Artistic corrections for quality animations are costly, as they demand repetition of an entire task. Repetition of tasks to correct mistakes involves a large crew incurring the production more costs.

3 Costs

Traditional animation requires a numbers of tools and equipment per production. They include drawing tools, tracing tools, and photographic equipment. It also requires a large crew to draw the characters, draw backgrounds and shoot photos of the final images.

4 Lack of a market

Traditional animation requires the use of a wide range of special artistic tools. Large rooms are required for the entire process, from drawing, tracing to photography, and finally filming. The size of traditional equipment like the rostrum camera demands a lot of space. Production requires large spaces for working and storage. Computer animation relies on software and a number of computer processors to speed up the process.

Jayden Mathews started writing professionally in 2006. His work has appeared in TECHNO, an e-mail magazine, among other publications. Mathews holds a master's degree in international journalism from the University of Westminster in London.

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