| HN Mirror

So, yes, some of this I'd've missed if I hadn't been combing over it quite as finely. But not all of it.

But in particular, the cut of the bowl stack being spilled … that scene in particular makes no sense. The entire physics of it should feel wrong because they are wrong. In the same way that CGI animations and/or games get more realistic looking the closer they simulate physics, so too does animation: if a character drops a bowl (in a setting with gravity), then it must act so, and animators know this and render it as such. Yes, and AI will try to predict it, but it strikes me akin to trying to perform a computation in screen space that must be performed in 3D space.

The soup also feels wrong, and it only takes a second rewatch to determine why; the shot feels non-committal, because it is: are we ladling, are we pouring, is the soup phasing out the bottom?

The best animators out there, to me, reward you for watching harder. Small things that make sense in the context of what you're seeing, but aren't necessary. The more you look, the more detail there is to the scene. I'd offer Frieren as an example here. For example, in E21 (the episode where Frieren breaks the barrier during the test): the episode starts when Flamme brings Frieren before Serie; this occurs hundreds, if not more than a millennia, prior to the main events. We see Serie in a temple. Later, when Frieren breaks the barrier, we see Serie remark: "This is why I will never retire."; the same temple, but now the walls are worn with time. This is made somewhat apparent, as there's a fade to denote the passage of the time. (Less apparent is there is allegedly a one or two frame shot of Serie, whose barrier it is, overlaid in the spell Frieren casts to break it. It's visible if you watch it, but not really intelligible.) As another example, the timeskip in E1 has her visiting the same shop twice, and the aging of the shop keeper & shop is visible. It's not just the same shop, it's from the same angle, specifically so that we the viewer can understand it to be the same shop. It's not required for the plot, but it builds out a richer story. As a final example, E17, Fern comes in from the cold & touches Stark on the face ("You're a monster!", Stark screams.) Later, when Fern falls ill, Stark tries to wake Frieren, who is by this point notorious for sleeping too long. Stark wakes her by touching her face, to which Frieren responds, "You're a monster." (Honestly Frieren is one of those animes that's probably so littered with these things that I'm missing like 80% of them.) But good animations make detailed choices all the way down to that level: as far as the plot cares, Stark only needs to wake Frieren, but he wakes her in the particular way that makes sense for the character we've built.

But in AI pieces, the detail is just never there, because when it's "wall in background", there's so many walls, in so many backgrounds, all muddled up in the training data.

Frieren's earrings are actually somewhat similar to the smock comment: her earrings are visually consistent throughout the entire anime, not merely a few shots. (Again, this is an example that's rich in detail, too: chronologically earlier shots of Frieren notably lack the earrings, which is made possible to notice by their consistency & distinctiveness when they're present in the first place. We're probably to presume she acquires them at some yet unrevealed point, and the visual similarity to her teacher Flamme's jewelery also leaves the viewer to wonder if they're related. But it's that choice, that these two sets of accessories appear similar, that allows us to build that connection. It's also the sort of thing that leaves me wondering "how long were the writers planning?!")

(I'd also offer the soundtrack as something that I don't know that AI can ever reach. The song "Knife to the Throat" gives me chills if I play it in my mind. But it's harder to demonstrate detail and thematic elements in a musical piece, I think. An a musical example, I'd offer "Pink Pony Club": the opening notes to which are a musical allusion to "I Will Survive". The notes are chosen intentionally, as a specific reference (one thematically relevant to the song), to set a specific tone and setting for the song that is to come, and you need to know the reference and the history and context it exists in, to be able to appreciate it.)