As a 5th-Semester Animation Student, I am surprised at how little I actually yell about the animation of this Show.
You guys have no idea the actual genius of 9 Story Entertainment and BrownBag Films (The Production and Animation Studio for the Wild Kratts Episodes)
First of all.
This is not traditional 2D animation.
This is Cut-Out Animation, also known as 2D Rigged Animation or Puppet Animation. Other shows you might be familiar with that use this technique are Bluey, Hilda, Rick and Morty, or the Big Hero 6 TV Show. There are more but these came to my mind first.
Cut Out Animation can be very limiting, because you work with 2D sprites in a 3D environment almost. The Tech Artists, sometimes called Character Builders, are the ones that take the design of the characters and creatures and build a 2D skeleton of sorts, putting bones inside of the png drawing and allowing it to move. It might sound easy, but trust me when I say it is a tiring process and the node-view is horrifying, haha.
I don't know if people would care for an actual deep-dive into the animation of the show, because believe me, I can talk a lot about it, as someone who is familiar with the animation technique, the technical/character building aspects of it, as well as someone who has actually access to the Software the Animation Studio is using to make these episodes (I kid you not when I say that I am in possession off all the tools to make my own Wild Kratts episode, minus the backgrounds because I hate doing those)
For those that care, THIS is what the animator sees before the episode gets finished, lol
Say hi to "Chad", he was part of the Shortfilm I made with some others in my third Semester at uni.
The purple plots are controllers with which you move the character around.
The green lines and dots are deformers which make the character able to bend and stretch.
Also, the thing in the right window is the beloved node view, or at least a small aspect of it. All these small squares have meaning and I won't even try to explain
While Cut Out Animation isn't my strong suit (Traditional 2D and 3D animation is) I would still be down to talk more about it if anyone cares to listen, lol. Even beyond the software capabilities, the show is actually very interesting to look at from a production standpoint and I would love to just talk more about the animation in general because let me tell you, it is much better than people give it credit for!
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