Frames Per Second

[cgrotke]

Just taking a bit of a poll here... what frame rate do you like to animate at?

I got my start in video so I've been working with 30 frames per second for most of my adult life. (I'm not going to count the 8mm kid film work.)

30fps, for me, makes for nice math. It's a bit hard to follow old timing suggestions from film animators working at 24 fps - a bit of conversion is required - but I'm also quite used to the feel of this rate of speed after using it for so long. I envy the 24 fps rate - less work when drawing!

The few times I drop to less than 30fps, I often go way down to 12 fps (or 15 fps if I'm feeling my 30fps vibes at half speed).

For hand-drawn or pixilation of objects, I'll use 30fps and shoot on 2's. For Moho and computer work, I typically stick with the 30fps.

So, what's your preferred frames per second? Do you change it up for different projects? Ever animate at something really high like 60fps? Just curious...

[MrMiracle77]

I started my hobby animation work at 15fps, then converted to 30 because my editing software at the time, Lightworks, only supported 24, 25, and 30 on the free version. I liked 15fps, and rarely found that I needed more in-between frames for most of what I wanted (and was able) to animate. My 15fps clips also took up a little less space on my already-crowded hard drive.

I stick to 30 these days for simplicity and compatibility.

Anime will go as low as 10fps for simpler sequences.

[hayasidist]

25 fps -- because that's the frame rate I shoot live action - which often gets merged with animation... and I shoot live action at 25fps because my electricity is 50Hz.

If I lived in a 60Hz supply area I'd shoot at 30fps... (well 29.97 to be pedantic)

[slowtiger]

Mostly 25 fps because it's either for television (european) or internet where it doesn't matter. 24 for films which I want to show at festivals. But nowadays this doesn't matter anymore, since everything is projected digitally. I animate on 2's mostly, 1's for fast movements, and have a habit to time stuff every 8 or 6 frames.

[Greenlaw]

I mostly animate at 24 fps because that's the standard for commercial film and animation here in the US. Nowadays, shooting at 24 fps is mostly out of tradition since we hardly ever shoot or record to film much anymore.

Coincidentally, I bought an 8mm film scanner last week to record some stop motion, FBF and VFX footage I created when when I was a kid, to convert it to a digital format. Back then, I shot at 18 fps, or 24 fps if I wanted sound. Man, that makes me sound really old but I was about 11 years old when I started shooting animation to film. (Okay, I guess that still makes me sound old.)

At work we render at 24 fps, and our Moho animation is usually animated on ones but I'll adjust if it needs to cut or composite with something animated at a different rate. The Harmony and Adobe Animate stuff is typically on twos I think. In then end, I think everything is converted to 29.93 for American TV, and probably re-converted for elsewhere.

In my personal animation, I like to animate on ones and occasionally on twos for Moho, and may drop to as low as fours for FBF animations because I like the look of that (plus, I'm too lazy to draw more than that.) Everything is rendered at 24 fps.

I experimented with animating CGI at 30 fps for a while but the extra work and render time was a pain in the butt, so I went back to 24 fps. (I even reanimated some of that 30 fps stuff at 24 fps so it would right with everything else.) Normally, I will only work at 30 fps when I'm creating VFX for live action footage that was shot at 30 fps, and the final format is output at 30 fps. But if I want that 'film' look, it's easier to convert the live action to 24 fps and then animate/render the VFX at 24 fps.

There's a trend to render CGI at higher frame rates, like 48 fps or even 60 fps. This makes the 3D animation look stunningly realistic. It's also a lot more work, significantly longer render times, and a whole lot more expensive...which is why higher frame rates for animation hasn't caught on as quickly as you might think.

For 3D animation I can understand the desire to want a higher frame rate, but for 2D animation I don't think going much higher than 24 fps is worth the trouble and cost. One of my favorite Netflix cartoons right now is Kid Cosmic, which is sometimes animated at stunningly low frame rates...and it looks fantastic! It's all about having strong visual layouts and hitting great key poses.

I guess what it comes down to is...

1. What are the requirements of the final output? If this work is for someone else, there might not be any flexibility here.

2. If it's for personal work, use what looks good to you. If you want to use a higher frame rate, are you willing to put in the extra work for it? Does effort actually make your animation better?

Hope this helps.