Moho Forum

Are there any downsides to animating at 15 fps?

On my display, when using Anime Studio Pro, when animating at 24 fps, I can view 7 seconds on the timeline at a time. However, at 15 fps I can see a staggering 12 seconds at a time. In terms of workflow, that seems like a big plus in favor of 15 fps.

Also, on those occasions when a person needs to tweak a bunch of inbetweens, there will be fewer inbetweens to tweak.

What do you think?

Hmm...can't think of any. If you look at Selgin's latest work in the SHARE YOUR WORK section, he did those animations @ 15fps. Maybe that's why you're asking he he.

The only downside to lower fps I can think of is pans and zooms can look a little stuttery sometimes. Looks better sometimes when you apply a blur or something with a pan. Or you can mix fps. I was watching a Simpsons episode the other day in slow motion and noticed that they mixed 12 and 24 fps on occassion. They'd have CGI bees flying around @ 24 fps and then the other hand-drawn animation @ 12fps. Looked fine. (Well, it looked great. Its The Simpsons.)

At 15 fps, looks kind of nice if I think of Selgin's work. But if you're doing pans or anything and it looks weird you can always switch to 24 or 25 fps.

You could probably worry about 2:3 dropdown or whatever its called when its converted to TV (24 or 25 fps) but I wouldn't sweat it. I know in iMovie if I bring in 12 fps animation it converts it to 25 fps (PAL) so it duplicates a lot of frames and doesn't duplicate the odd one to make up 25 fps.

But I did do a pan recently for something @ 12 fps and kind of would have liked to have made it 25 fps because it looked all jaggedy and irky. 25 fps would've been way smoother. If you don't need the full 25 or 24 fps for motion try 15 fps. It somehow has a nice feel to it. Charming.

I always animate at 15fps, because it's "on twos" for 30fps, my target format (for TV). Camera moves, on the other hand, I animate at 30fps, for the reason Mikdog explained.

Mikdog wrote:Hmm...can't think of any. If you look at Selgin's latest work in the SHARE YOUR WORK section, he did those animations @ 15fps. Maybe that's why you're asking he he.

Yes, you guessed it: Selgin's animation in SHARE YOUR WORK inspired me to consider 15 fps.

I hadn't thought of the effect 15 fps would have on panning and zooming. Thanks for mentioning it. I like panning and zooming--it makes it look like I'm animating when I'm not.

I think absolutely correctly - you have solved.