Why Over-Animation Hurts Your Storytelling

"What's even going on here?"

If you find yourself wondering that while watching a scene, chances are you are a victim of over-animation.

Over-animation is when a scene is saturated with excessive movement or detail indicating animators are gripping too hard onto the need for realism at the expense of the story.

Recently, an episode of One Piece provoked controversy over the animation style being considered over-animated by some critics:

Without dwelling on this debate, it's interesting to reflect on why over-animation can be a bad thing for studios, and how to design your workflow to prevent that.

Why Is Over-Animating Counter-Productive?

Understanding how the brain processes motion is a crucial piece of the puzzle. Our eyes are drawn to contrast and change—not just movement but also brightness or color. The human eye thrives on balance and focal points.

If everything is moving, nothing stands out. Studies in visual perception show that the human brain automatically prioritizes motion in peripheral vision, which means that irrelevant animated background clutter can actually distract from the main character. When every element on the screen is animated with equal intensity, viewers struggle to know where to focus. Key moments or emotions easily go unnoticed amid the chaos if you leave the audience exhausted. 

Storytelling should always take center stage. While adding intricate details seems like a good idea at first to capture realism or creativity, it can divert attention from the main narrative. You need to give the audience room to breathe and take things in.

Anyone who has worked in animation knows that over-animation is both time-consuming and costly. It stretches the resources needed to complete a project, which can lead to inconsistencies in the animation quality if not managed carefully. Instead of aiming for maximum movement in every scene, animators need to prioritize keyframes and scenes that drive the story forward first and foremost.

1. Use Live Footage

One of the best ways to avoid over-animating is to use live footage for reference.

Have you ever noticed how a small sigh speaks volumes of emotion? We often communicate with subtle body language. Capturing that essence in animation helps create relatable characters without overdoing it.

In DCC software you can usually overlay your reference video with your background:

You can then use this reference to design your keyposes, but more generally to plan your animation.

2. You Need Good Planning

Planning gives you a clear vision of where you're headed.

Before you even think about sketching your first frame, start by outlining your scenes with great care.

Identify the key moments that warrant extra emphasis. Whether it's a character’s moment of revelation or a dramatic action sequence, knowing these pivotal points ahead allows you to allocate your time and resources wisely.

Storyboards and animatics are key in this pre-production phase. Use them to map out the rhythm and flow of your story.

Storyboards make it easy to plan your shots and estimate budgets.

Animatics showcase how your scenes play out over time. They help you improve the pacing and eliminate superfluous movements that could cloud the story.

Build estimates of how long each part of the animation will take and compare these to your actual budget. If you start overanimating the first few episodes of your series but end up with subpar quality in the latter parts because you ran out of budget, you'll piss your audience off.

3. Simplify

Focus on the purpose behind each scene. Over-animation often originates from animators jumping directly into motion without fully considering the why behind each scene.

Is it a moment of tension between characters? A comedic relief?

As you animate, continually evaluate what each element contributes to that purpose. Ask yourself: Does this movement advance the storyline, enhance the mood, or develop a character?

If the answer is no, then perhaps it doesn't belong.

Simplifying doesn’t mean stripping your work down to bare bones. It means focusing on what serves the story best.

Think of it as decluttering your canvas. By cleaning up unnecessary animations, you allow key moments to shine brighter.

Sometimes, a single rotated frame speaks louder than a full-blown 3D-rendered hyper-realistic animation:

4. Leverage Exaggeration Properly

Imagine a character about to burst with excitement. By selectively exaggerating their movements with a leap that defies gravity or a smile that stretches from ear to ear, you convey their overwhelming joy in a way that's both clear and memorable.

This is the magic of exaggeration: it draws in the audience and hooks you into following along with the story.

This approach doesn't just tell the audience how the character feels: it makes them feel it too!

Exaggeration makes sure your audience knows exactly where to look and what to feel.

It's about showing more with less.

But the line between effective exaggeration and over-animating is thin. Overloading a scene with unwarranted exaggeration leads to characters overacting. And nobody likes inauthentic characters.

5. Focus On Keyframes

Keyframes dictate both the starting and ending points of motion.

It's a common pitfall, especially among new animators, to overcrowd their sequences with unnecessary frames. When an animation feels off, the instinct is to add more frames: more in-betweens, more movement, more secondary actions.

But this overflow creates noise, muddling the story rather than enhancing it.

By focusing on perfecting your keyframes, you can convey more in fewer frames.

This is what made smear frames so effective back in the day: you didn't need 60 frames per second to make your audience feel something.

Begin with a clear roadmap―your storyboard―and place your key poses methodically using a pose-to-pose approach. Only then should you strategically use in-betweens to connect those keyframes.

6. Stay Consistent

Consistency in animation isn’t just a nice-to-have: you need it to create a believable world.

As we previously mentioned, over-animation gets in the way. It's not sustainable, so the quality varies from one scene to the next.

Imagine you're watching a scene where the protagonist is moving with exquisitely detailed expressions, their hair and clothes reacting to every subtle shift in movement.

But then, in the same scene, the background is starkly simple, with crowd members who barely move or express emotion. It's like watching a character in high definition set against an out-of-focus landscape: it just looks out of place and breaks the suspension of disbelief. Some background crowds in Jojo's Stone Ocean anime look particularly funny:

These inconsistencies often originate from the realities of production: teams change, budgets evolve, and timelines shift.

As animators pour their efforts into perfecting main characters, background elements can become afterthoughts, not getting the attention or time they deserve.

You need to find a balance early on. The level of detail across all elements of an animation has to match the story's tone.

We're not saying the background needs as much detail as the main character, but it shouldn't detract from the narrative:

• Establish clear visual standards. Define the level of detail appropriate for different elements in a scene.
• Regularly review scenes as a whole rather than in isolation.
• Focus on detailed animation efforts where they serve the story best while making sure supporting elements maintain a consistent yet less detailed style.

Conclusion

In summary, while it’s tempting to add as much detail and motion as possible, over-animating dilutes your story and exhausts your audience.

By using live footage, planning effectively, simplifying movements, using exaggeration, and focusing on keyframes, you can avoid the common pitfalls of over-animating.

Don’t animate every grain of sand in a desert. Animate the desert.

Over-animation is subjective, though if you have the budget of Toei to animate One Piece, it can be okay to have every frame become a money shot. If you're a smaller studio, less so. 

There are exceptions where high-impact, stylized scenes benefit from visual overload, like a chaotic battle sequence.

In one sentence, over-animation is when you can't sustain the same level of detail throughout production.