Why are most AS cartoons only a few seconds long?

windstormer · Post by **windstormer** » Wed Jun 10, 2009 6:00 pm

I may be far in left field on this, but when you look at the animations, professional television, movie, commercial quality cartoons, each hold of the camera is about 2 to 8 seconds long. That's it! Look at the animations out there, movies and television. Count the seconds before the camera is switched. It seems that it would be more crazy to try to do the entire various camera shots in one.

I don't see that you would do the entire animation on one file in any software, be it Anime Studio, Toon Boom, Flash, or whatever. You do a so many short second clip, save or produce it. Then, do the next short section. You add the clips in something like Adobe Premiere, AfterEffects, or even a simple low cost or free video editor such as Pinnacle Studio, or Windows Movie Maker.

After all that it's produced and you can make it as long as you like.

Am I worng on how this works?

Ttomak · Post by **Ttomak** » Wed Jun 10, 2009 9:49 pm

You're completely right on how this works, windstormer. A "scene" (a camera shot) is almost always only a few seconds long.

There are exceptions of course. Action movies will have camera shots that last maybe only half a second, whereas some movies like Before Sunrise can have a loooooooong stretch of uncut footage (yeah, my then girlfriend, now wife, forced me to watch that movie with her. Ack).

Anyway, professional cartoons typically have scenes of only a few seconds, almost always rendered as an image sequence, which will later be brought together using the magic that is a movie editor.

mkelley makes a really nice cartoon series, so he'll probably have the best info on this for us. Grey/Freakish Kid too, of course.

PARKER · Post by **PARKER** » Thu Jun 11, 2009 2:24 am

i have done a 10 minutes animation in anime studio.

windstormer · Post by **windstormer** » Fri Jun 12, 2009 12:34 am

I know we have various examples scattered around at various websites. It would be nice to have one spot where we can see all of them in a packaged spot. Could we have a place that would display all of them on and also display the best of the best?

ngh903 · Post by **ngh903** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 2:18 pm

Windstormer,
They already have a forum for that.

tonym · Post by **tonym** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 4:08 pm

Why are most AS cartoons only a few seconds long?

I've always assumed that scattered all over the planet are hundreds of Anime Studio users toiling away in secrecy on their extremely long cartoons--be they cartoons pilots, feature length films, or whatever.

And one day, by golly, ONE DAY all those long cartoons will be DONE, and then the world will see what has been going on! Yes, the world will SEE the product of all that sacrifice and labor!!! And the world better frikkin the hell LIKE my cartoon, or &$!# I'm g

Anyhow, yeh, that's my guess.

Why are most AS cartoons only a few seconds long?

Hey Windstormer