Design Course
Limited Animation
Budget Cutting & Time Saving Technique
by
Techniques
Limited Animation's basic purpose is to reduce the budget and it does: By using these techniques:
• Cels and sequences of cels were used repeatedly—animators only had to draw a character walking once.
• Characters are split up and drawn in separate layers: only portions of a character, such as the mouth or an arm, would be animated on top of a static cel.
• Characters are split up and drawn in separate layers: only portions of a character, such as the mouth or an arm, would be animated on top of a static cel.
• Clever choice of camera techniques, angles and editing.
• Using of mirror image of the cell to represent the opposite angle also known as Cel reversal. Most of the cartoon characters are drawn symmetrically to expedite this technique.
• Here more emphasis was given to voice talent than visuals.
• Use of Libraries i.e. before animating, all the parts of the character are drawn separately in different layers and are kept in library. Later those drawings are used from the library according to the requirement of the animation.
• Extensive recaps of previous episodes or segments, to cut down on the amount of new material necessary (used often in serial shows like Rocky and Bullwinkle or Underdog).
• Syncro Vox is a process in Limited Animation that involves pasting a film of the moving lips of a real-life person over a still frame of an "animated" character to give the appearance that the character is doing the talking. Cambria Studios held a patent on the technology, and as such, it was primarily used on their productions, such as Clutch Cargo; it still has limited use today, the most widely known example being the online series The Annoying Orange.
• Chuckimation, another notoriously low-budget process, simply moves various "animated" figures by hand or by throwing them across a space. Most commonly used with stop-motion animation, it usually does not allow for characters' mouths to move.
