So me and Watsit have run into a bit of a conundrum and I felt it'd be a good idea to open a thread here to get wider opinion.

I really like animations that utilize both of these techniques together, and so I updated the wikis earlier to both clarify/expand on some parts (especially on the former's wiki) and remove the odd implication that they should be mutually exclusive.

Watsit said that people blacklist motion_tweening to avoid that style, so posts should be tagged based on their "primary animation style". However, I think that there are way too many cases where primary animation style isn't clearcut, as well as cases where one is primarily used but the other is used as well in a noticeable way.

We did agree that extremely minor uses of one in the other shouldn't be tagged with both tags, though.

I think this is where an issue of searching vs blacklisting comes in, though I feel like this could be dealt with by blacklisting motion_tweening -frame_by_frame?

I also feel like some of this is a product of its time, motion tweening has come a long way, just look at post #4616456 or post #4814977 for example - that's all tweening, no frame-by-frame at all, and yet they're smooth as butter. And the two are being used together far more often as technology advances.

But I wouldn't think it's fair to remove one of the tags from posts like: post #4654695, post #4248608, post #4156739, post #4127672, etc - posts I want to see when searching for both! Both styles are obviously present and they don't cancel each other out.

You can find our original discussions about this in Blips if you'd like. Hopefully we can figure out a solution/compromise here!

post #4262606

My opinion on it is that motion tweening is often mis-associated with that soggy cardboard look, which IMO, is incorrect.
Here are my definitions, and I think fit the industry standard ideas:

• Motion tweening - The concept of moving a point to another point over a period of time using linear motion or bézier curves.
• Frame by Frame - The concept of drawing a image for each frame by hand.
• In betweens - Related to Frame by Frame, but works by having a base frames, and drawing additional frames between two different frames to smooth out the animation.
• Puppet tool - The concept of taking a still image and applying animations to it via warping.

The puppet tool is what people often incorrectly call "motion tweening". While it is true, motion tweening is used here, the concept of motion tweening is used in a lot of places.
This is a video of the puppet tool used in after effects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWaxoI212Ko

Motion tweening is used in a lot 3D and 2D animations that have proper skeletal rigs and parts of characters set up, it is just moving a point to another over time using a function to calculate it's position between two key frames. Most 3D animations that use skeletal rigs are using motion tweening, while flash animations are a great example of motion tweening.
The puppet tool can use motion tweening, but it doesn't mean it will be using motion tweening. It is entirely possible for someone to pose each bone frame by frame.
What you are seeing in the puppet tool style animations is actually called image transformation which warps specific parts of a image. Similar to the cage transform tool in photoshop, except with a lot more precise control.

I think there should be a specific tag for something that is specifically made for a animation, and a tag for something that was a still image but has been manipulated/warped to be a animation.

This post (Flash) is a example of using motion tweening on a rig set up specifically designed to be used for animation: https://e621.net/posts/1069187
This post is a example of using a image not meant to be animated as part of a animation: https://e621.net/posts/4830553

Personally, I don't like the whole soggy cardboard animation style that people call motion tweening, as more often than not, it is sloppily made causing parts of the image to incorrectly warp, where as proper motion tweened animations like flash, have lines that remain consistent thickness because the objects are properly split into separate things (See this image of a split up character from "The Right Mix" flash game): https://i.imgur.com/zqcU8Am.png

nimphia said:
But I wouldn't think it's fair to remove one of the tags from posts like: post #4654695, post #4248608, post #4156739, post #4127672, etc - posts I want to see when searching for both! Both styles are obviously present and they don't cancel each other out.

These all appear to be done using the proper methods of animations, in specific, they have separated parts and are designed to be animated. Are they using motion tweening? Absolutely, the first one especially looks like it may have been made in flash. I'd be missing out on these because I blacklist motion tweening (At least, I think it is on my blacklist?), because I don't like the puppet tool style animation because it feels lazy and wrong. But none of these exhibit the puppet motion effect, because they aren't made using the puppet tool.

It might be kind of a case where there's two different motives for using the tag- one that's "this is a technique present" and one that's "this is for when it's done in ways I do not like." Most digital animation uses tweening/puppets to some degree. I actually would suspect that most people who use it to mean "shitty tweening" can't recognize it done competently.

I wonder if maybe we need a tag for puppet rig animation that implies motion tweening, as some kind of middle ground, since people have the ingrained idea that it refers specifically to "shitty/lazy wet cardboard animation" and not just... the actual definition of motion tweening.

(I'd argue to those people that there's a lot of real shitty frame by frame animation on here too but it's hard to explain to someone that one technique isn't just Inherently Worse)

What if we established puppet_rig and puppet_warp? 🤔 Or maybe rigged_puppet and warped_puppet? That would allow people to blacklist the soggy cardboard while also allowing competent tweening to be tagged as what it is.

nimphia said:
I think this is where an issue of searching vs blacklisting comes in, though I feel like this could be dealt with by blacklisting motion_tweening -frame_by_frame?

I think it's more about priority. Whether you're trying to find content that is primarily one or the other, or trying to find content that simply includes one and/or the other. Like was mentioned in the blip, the primary purpose (to my understanding) between frame_by_frame and motion_tweening was to distinguish animations like post #4588151 and post #2639176, where character movement is primarily portrayed via redrawing the individual frames (even if some backgrounds or other aspects are tweened for just a little bit more movement or to simulate camera/viewer movement), vs post #3894663 and post #4492756, where character movement is primarily portrayed via moving and rotating individual parts (even if some parts have a few redrawn frames). I also think it's important to distinguish between tweening as a result of simulated camera movement and certain effects, which is extremely common, vs simulating general character movement.

It's true that motion tweening has improved over the years, and as regsmutt says, a lot of (if not most) digital animation uses tweening/puppets to some degree, but there's a significant difference between something like post #4807387 that may use some tweening but is clearly focused on fluid hand-drawn animation frames, and something like post #4608288 that is largely just tweening/puppeting various body parts, with only the tongue being redrawn frame-by-frame.

People who don't like motion tweening will search for frame_by_frame, and wouldn't like getting stuff like post #4780462 that may technically has some frame-by-frame animation but most everything else is tweened/puppeted, while searching frame_by_frame -motion_tweening would miss stuff like post #4198271 and post #3749464 that have a lot of frame-by-frame work because there's technically some tweening here and there.

I would also agree that frame-by-frame vs motion tweening can be difficult in certain situations, particularly with pixel_animation where it can be impossible to tell what the primary techniques used are, because of the low detail, resolution, and/or frame rate like in post #4247573 or post #4362084. Pixel animations can even be derived from 3D animations, or use different techniques that are altogether unique for the medium due to the low resolution/detail.

nimphia said:
I wonder if maybe we need a tag for puppet rig animation that implies motion tweening, as some kind of middle ground, since people have the ingrained idea that it refers specifically to "shitty/lazy wet cardboard animation" and not just... the actual definition of motion tweening.

(I'd argue to those people that there's a lot of real shitty frame by frame animation on here too but it's hard to explain to someone that one technique isn't just Inherently Worse)

What if we established puppet_rig and puppet_warp? 🤔 Or maybe rigged_puppet and warped_puppet? That would allow people to blacklist the soggy cardboard while also allowing competent tweening to be tagged as what it is.

Honestly puppet rigging is also common and also can be done competently and in ways that generally don't look like a pull-tab puppet in a popup book, and can be combined with other techniques. I don't really know how the problem of "people want to blacklist crap" can be solved with a tag that is accurate, specific, and not inherently insulting. The last two are particularly important since people's threshold of what looks good is going to vary wildly. People who are bothered by certain types on animation might be better off making a set.

watsit said:
It's true that motion tweening has improved over the years, and as regsmutt says, a lot of (if not most) digital animation uses tweening/puppets to some degree, but there's a significant difference between something like post #4807387 that may use some tweening but is clearly focused on fluid hand-drawn animation frames, and something like post #4608288 that is largely just tweening/puppeting various body parts, with only the tongue being redrawn frame-by-frame.

People who don't like motion tweening will search for frame_by_frame, and wouldn't like getting stuff like post #4780462 that may technically has some frame-by-frame animation but most everything else is tweened/puppeted, while searching frame_by_frame -motion_tweening would miss stuff like post #4198271 and post #3749464 that have a lot of frame-by-frame work because there's technically some tweening here and there.

Some of these examples are interesting choices. Like post #4807387 is mostly tweened. The tail, eyes, and arm are visibly tweened. And post #4780462 might not be tweened at all- it looks like ms paint animation. Specifically copy-paste lineart ms paint animation, but it's still frame-by-frame animation.

To clarify on my suggestion, things like these would be puppet_rig: post #4814977, post #4608288, post #4084624

While these would be puppet_warp: post #4707182, post #3439459, post #2914981, post #2509859

They're confusingly both referred to as puppeting, but one involves a skeletal rig as mentioned above, while the other just distorts parts of images.

Though it doesn't entirely solve the problem since not all puppet warp animations look like dogshit, but at least it's somewhat closer without getting into tags just being insulting. Blacklisting puppet_warp would be a hell of a lot more effective than blacklisting motion_tweening is.

...Actually, post #4728171 is a pretty weird edge case where the head is clearly rigged, but there's also some warping going on... (That'd also be one of my "puppet warp tool not looking like dogshit" examples, I think.)

Maybe my idea isn't so great of an idea in hindsight. Damn these blurry lines.

nimphia said:
I wonder if maybe we need a tag for puppet rig animation that implies motion tweening, as some kind of middle ground, since people have the ingrained idea that it refers specifically to "shitty/lazy wet cardboard animation" and not just... the actual definition of motion tweening.

I wouldn't even say it's about "shitty/lazy wet cardboard animation", but rather the visual style often associated with it. post #2899651 undeniably has that as it's primary style, but it's far from shitty/lazy.

watsit said:
I wouldn't even say it's about "shitty/lazy wet cardboard animation", but rather the visual style often associated with it. post #2899651 undeniably has that as it's primary style, but it's far from shitty/lazy.

I'm not saying it's all shitty/lazy, I actually really like a lot of stuff in that style, I was just trying to go off the common reason for blacklisting.