Is this really a trope?: Off Model

First off,a minor mistake in animation is trivial at best,it has no affect on the story,so this really not a device of story telling eg. a 'trope'

I was serious considering cutlisting this but I looked at the inbounds and wicks.

edited 20th Jan '12 1:12:50 PM by Ultimatum

Could be Trivia, I suppose.

Impressive:

Since January 1, 2011 this article has brought 11,179 people to the wiki

This should probably be Trivia. It's not bad TV Tropes-worthy trivia, either. If it's something that distracts from the work at large (like Hey Its That Voice), it can be worth noting.

Trivia does fit better than a trope especially since a lot of it is blink and you'll miss it stuff.

This isn't about "minor mistakes". It is about "thinly veiled camera tricks". In other words, it is about the deliberate choice to use shortcuts in animation. This is no different from any other visual art trope that pops up a lot in animation, such as Sprouting Ears.

I vote to keep it as is.

I think it's trivia- some shows have entire middles where you can barely recognize the characters due to this untrope though.

Creative choices are tropes, not trivia.

Well, the description is slightly off, then. Off model is when someone is animating on the cheap (this usually means the lead animators are not working on the project, but interns or animation was exported), and someone is trying to emulate another's style without their skill, or they make mistakes. See here for what it means. You see that there are errors between the two, but they are slight. It is not purposeful (usually—you could argue they are just making a shortcut by not painstakingly drawing everything correctly). The trope description is wrong. This isn't really about camera tricks. I have no idea why that's in there.

Yeah, the description slips from what the usual use is (moments when the characters/objects aren't correctly drawn, for whatever value of "correct" exists in that art style), to more general discussion of cheap animation techniques, to deliberate Art Shift / Super-Deformed / etc. The description needs a trim and the examples need a cleanup.

Looking at the page, there do seem to be two tropes in there that I don't think we have: "techniques used in animation to save money" and "characters look different in The Merch than they do in the show"; perhaps we could split them off?

edited 20th Jan '12 5:41:39 PM by lebrel

This feels too broad of a thing to properly list all examples of. Some shows tend to have really bad animation. I think this is especially true with The Dark Age Of Animation. For example, WesternAnimation.The Transformers. Lots of errors. The articles for individual episodes on TF Wiki sometimes have rather long sections describing technical errors.

edited 20th Jan '12 7:01:23 PM by ThatHuman

I am dead set against cutting it outright, so I'm OK with moving it to Trivia.

Also, the examples in Western Animation section read like Thread Mode. They're not disagreeing with each other, but you can definitely tell they weren't trying to make it sound like an actual article. Stuff like "don't forget", "however", "look at this" and whatnot. Example:

All in all, too much of a "speaking" tone.

Should I take this to Natter Alert?

edited 20th Jan '12 7:33:56 PM by ThatHuman

Off-Model is a trope in the same way Visible Boom Mic or Styrofoam Rocks is a trope.

Truthfully wasn't there a thread some time ago about trying to split the trope into:

• Off-Model: Animation quality not really in question, but character models seem off
• Animation Error: Actual animation quality is skewed, such as miscolorings, extra fingers or mislayed cels.

edited 20th Jan '12 8:14:56 PM by KJMackley

Yeah, but those are specific kinds of errors. This is "any time something is drawn/colored incorrectly". even if you split it like that, they are still way, waaaaaay to general.

edited 21st Jan '12 7:13:59 AM by ThatHuman

Too general isn't a complaint. It's a good thing. We need more supertropes and more higher level tropes that encompass multiple subtropes. Lack of general tropes is hurting the wiki. Support your broad supertropes.

You do understand that, "a list of every time animation is done wrongly" is probably enough content to write a databse of it's own, don't you? For example, look at the "Animation or technical glitches" section of Transformers Wiki articles. [1] And rampant errors is not at all limited to The Transformers. The Dark Age Of Animation just tends to be all too horrible in this regard. Even modern cartoons aren't completely free of this. Examples would have to include pretty much every animated series ever, with very, very long bits from cartoons of The Dark Age Of Animation. The Transformers itself already has hundreds.

edited 21st Jan '12 7:40:29 AM by ThatHuman

Indeed. I think it's gotten to the point where we're so split-happy, and everyone is insisting on heavily structured tropes so much that we are starting to believe general tropes aren't tropes.

It should probably only list notable examples (like a glaring flaw that lasts more than a second, or when it draws attention from the views like Derpy Hooves of My Little Pony), or examples where it happens a lot.

edited 21st Jan '12 7:47:19 AM by helterskelter

Then you could just list examples saying that a certain work is particularly prone to it rather than listing every example in that work.

^ But "X does this a lot" is usually a Zero Context Example.

Well, that's what I did with the actual series page for The Transformers.

Is that much better than the alternative? Listing all instances from The Transformers alone would contain more text than the entirety of many articles. There's like, at least several hundred lines worth of animation errors to describe, and that's just one show from The Dark Age Of Animation.

edited 21st Jan '12 10:43:04 AM by ThatHuman

A quick overview with one or two of the really bad or noticable ones maybe with screenshots would work if it's THAT bad.

edited 21st Jan '12 10:51:15 AM by Raso

The threat of having too many examples is not a discouragement for a trope. All this means is a method of organization, trim out natter as it comes about (Especially the reactionary "Yee gaw! I need Brain Bleach after seeing that!").

There should be a note saying that most any animation is subject to having mistakes and thus trying to single out every one is an impossible task. In many cases there should be examples like Transformers "Carnage in C-Minor" where it doesn't list every one but just explains how finicky the episode is. Using explanatory You Tube videos or websites that catalogue them can also cut down on the excessive examples.

I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to use copyright-infringing You Tube clips as those can get taken down at any time.

I'm talking about videos like this one and not the "look at 6:37 of this video to see a goof" type.

Those are still "vulnerable" to getting removed, as they're just clips taken from a show. More, importantly, doesn't TV Tropes itself have rules against linking to infringing You Tube vids?

edit: Yep. How To Write An Example has "Don't rely on YouTube or other URL links". Note that it says "don't rely", regardless of how much explaining you put in your example. And, even if those videos don't get taken down, see reason number four on Weblinks Are Not Examples:

Anyway, I don't really mind Shima's suggestion, which is to describe more generally. Perhaps something like "(show) had terrible animation from episode 19-23, yadda yadda, they used a different animation studio, blah bla".

edited 21st Jan '12 3:09:11 PM by ThatHuman