The Story of Animator vs. Animation - 10 Year Anniversary

He made stick-figure animation that made me feel something. Alan Becker is an artist for this reason and also because he proves that stick-figure animation can be of a high standard.

There's a huge amount of stick-figure animations that are ignored because it's just stick-figures. Okay a lot of it is stick-figure fights or skits of low quality, but there's also some amazing work that no one ever sees. As an art form, animation still has a long way to go for everyone to recognise all forms of it. Lots of adults still see animated films as "cartoons for kids".

Animation deals primarily with motion. You can have amazing animation with stickfigures and terrible animation with super incredible drawings. A mistake lots of artists make (I've seen it in animation school) is that they think since they draw good that they can animate well. Animation is entirely separate from drawing, although it helps to be a good drawer.

3D animation is a great example. 3D animators only move limbs on Pivot points - basically "figures" without the stick aspect - so why are they given a free pass while anything with stickfigures in it is seen as amateur?

I'm not saying everyone does this, but I see it a lot. If I ever told people I animate stick-figures in my spare time I'd be laughed at. There's actually a hugely niche and passionate community in this area of animation. There's also extremely well animated figures in animation shorts, videos and collaborations since with stick-figures the only thing you can focus on is the animated movement itself.

I commend Alan Becker for doing what he did with his newest animations, Animator vs Animation IV and Animation vs Minecraft. In these animations he made me feel something that resonated deeply. The character and emotion conveyed through stickfigures proves that it can have a professional quality. The fact that there's no dialogue and yet a story has still been told through the simplest design of character (a stickfigure) makes it an artwork to me that pushes the medium of animation forward.

I'm very glad that he has received the recognition he deserves. Alan Becker is one of my favourite animators and I've been following him for quite some time. I know I've wrote a lot so far, but his animations mean so much to me.

/r/animation Thread Link - youtube.com