AA: Desserts in Animation 2

Finding separate images of  desserts in animation was actually harder than finding backgrounds made of desserts, which surprised me. I found a lot more examples in anime than western cartoons, but that is probably partially because there are a lot more specific anime out there about food. I have seen a lot of examples of burgers and savory in western animation, but that isn't what I am looking at here.

Cooking Mama has a very cute style on the cover art, and is definitely a style that would be fun to look into for our animation - especially if it is aimed at children. The colours are bright and appealing, and the line work is very coherent - you can tell exactly what is going on and what things are which I think is very important when it comes to complicated items like food. Even the 3D graphics of the game shows things quite clearly; despite still using a lot more pastelly colours, the contrast between everything makes it easy to figure out.

I really like the animation of the cream in this gif from One Piece; it almost looks alive, and I feel like it shows the texture very well despite only being simple. The cake itself is simple but clear, and again you can tell exactly what is going on. The shading is simple enough not to distract from the object itself, and the choice of colours keeps all of the details separate and readable.

Anime specifically about food, like the two image sets above tend to put a lot more rendering and detail into their food. This would be extremely tricky and time consuming to animate, especially for students, but I feel like the clear shapes and colour schemes of every item item is worth noting. They are all still simple enough despite fancy rendering, although the lighting and colours almost give them a dreamlike quality.

Adventure Time and Steven Universe both use much more plan and bold designs and colours which is one of the main differences between food in western and eastern animation. This is partially to do with how these cartoons - and most cartoons in western animation - have always aimed at children, so the character designs and colouring is always much simple. Slowly animation for adults has been becoming more popular in shows - like The Simpsons, or Family Guy, but these have continued to use the simpler styles of typical cartoons. In Japan, there is animation for all age ranges, especially as a lot of it is based off of manga, which are always categorised by the audience - there is plenty for both adult and children, so these categories carry over to animation. As the anime moves away from a younger audience, they tend to have a lot more detail and rendering put into them. Anime about food aren't usually aimed at kids, so they are much more detailed.

Gachaman Crowds

Ouran High school Host Club

Beauty and the Beast

Disney can afford to render their animations much more than a lot of companies; they tend to spend a lot more money on animation, and can afford to have backgrounds and background items much more complicated.

Adventure Time

The Simpsons

Another reason why some shows do simpler items is just because they are animated much more though; things in a background don't tend to need new frames, so rendering them once doesn't take too long. For maybe 3 seconds of someone eating a doughnut, 72 frames would be needed - that would be 72 iterations of this doughnut from The Simpsons, or the royal tart from Adventure Time, and considering how fast these shows are expected to be made, I think most animators would be ready to quit at have to paint all of those frames so detailed.