Gravity Falls and Outsourcing

Gravity Falls is a Disney-produced tv show that just ended its run last month. It's a pretty ambitiously cinematic tv show in terms of its writing and its visual style.

I study animation, so I watch a lot of cartoons in my free time. I stumbled across Gravity Falls and was pretty blown away by the some pieces of animation in the show - especially in its opening credits. Other pieces of the animation were more typical of a tv show though. Apparently, the ever-watchful Tumblr-verse picked up on that too.

One user wrote:  "If it were animated entirely in house, it would take significantly longer due to animation in the US having a higher quality (compare the opening of the show to the show's actual animation to see what i mean), as well as the animators would all e spending their time animating the inbetweens and being unable to work on other things. With it being outsourced, they have more time to multitask. Outsourcing the animation saves both money and time."

Before we unpack that, here are the opening titles.

That's some damn impressive, feature-quality animation. Compare that to some typical animation from the show:

Everything is drawn on-model, and it's comedically-timed, but it's a little bit more bare-bones. The characters move from pose to pose. You don't get the sense that they're alive in the same way. There's no squash and stretch in the character's movement, and there isn't the same detailed overlapping and secondary action in the characters clothes and hair.

To be fair, the opening titles weren't just done in the US; some of the animation production (most likely the in-betweens and ink and paint) was done at Rough Draft Studios in South Korea. Also, the animation of the opening titles gif I attached was done by James Baxter, an ex-Disney animator who's easily one of the best animators alive. It would be hard for anybody to compete with him.

I stumbled across a quote on James Baxter's tumblr though, which is pretty interesting. In a post on Gravity Falls, he wrote: "Gravity Falls follows the default workflow of having the story and layout handled in the US and outsourcing the actual animation to Asia. The reasons for doing it that way are economic, but I’m not sure that’s an idea that has been re-examined lately. I feel that it doesn’t have to be done that way. Like I said, things are changing really fast so there’s every reason to be hopeful."

The claim that "it would take significantly longer due to animation in the US having a higher quality" is wrong. Animation in the US is not inherently bette than animation produced overseas. Neither is the claim that outsourcing animation saves the "time" of the animators. Animation is generally specialized. There are exceptions, but animators generally animate. Outsourcing animation doesn't free up animators to do other things, like layouts or storyboards - it just means that few or no animators are hired in the US.

It's one thing to move a character graphically and its another to make a character feel alive. I think the reason that James Baxter feels that animation doesn't have to be outsourced is that there is a huge pool of traditionally-trained animators in the US who really act and breathe life into their drawings. There is no lack of talent. Creative control is also a benefit. However, there is a lack of money. Even when it's outsourced, it's an expensive endeavor to produce animation for television.

Still, things are changing. We're in the midst of a television renaissance where companies like HBO and Netflix will sometimes spend multiple million dollars on a tv series. If there was a time to make an ambitious animated series and utilize American animation talent, it would be now.