There’s a style of ‘animation’ that has become widely used on YouTube where they take a still image of a character then make them sway back and forth repetitively. I guess it’s cheap to make but I find it distracting and weird, even a bit patronising, as if they think we need moving pictures to keep us interested. I think it started with Veritassium and spread to other edutainment YouTube channels and now I just flat out avoid channels which use it.
Anyone else find it annoying?
No, it is a technique used since puppets exist, it is much worse when your characters don’t move at all. There has to be some kind of movement, either swaying, jumping up and down, pan and zoom or something else. Here is where animators can shine if they are good puppeteers, if not, it is like bad acting.
I feel like when puppeteers and rubber hose animators have cyclic animation they add to the characters personality. A character like miss piggy flops around dramatically, Kermit crumples awkwardly, Betty Boop bobs around perkily. The animation you see on YouTube are basically - define arms legs and head then sway back and forth every 2 seconds - copy for all characters.
It is the difference between putting some interest and not giving a fuck.