Stylized animation

Limited animation is a process in the overall technique of traditional animation of creating animated cartoons that does not redraw entire frames but variably reuses common parts between frames.

One of the major characteristics of limited animation is stylized design in all forms and shapes, which in the early days was referred to as modern design. The short-subject and feature-length cartoons of Walt Disney from the 1930s and 1940s were, and still are widely acclaimed for depicting animated simulations of reality, with exquisite detail in every frame. However, this style of traditional animation is more time-consuming and both labor and budgetary-expensive. "Limited" animation creates an image with abstract art, symbolism, and fewer drawings to create the same effect, at a much lower cost (in terms of time, money and labor). This style of animation depends upon animators' skill in emulating change without additional drawings; improper use of limited animation is easily recognized as 'unnatural'. It also encourages the animators to indulge in artistic styles that are not bound to real-world limits. The result is an artistic motion picture style that could not have developed if animation was solely devoted to producing simulations of reality. Without limited animation, many groundbreaking films such as Gerald McBoing-Boing, Yellow Submarine, Chuck Jones' The Dot and the Line, Watership Down and many others could have never been realized.

The process of limited animation aims to reduce the overall number of drawings. Film is projected at 24 frames per second. For movements in normal speed, most animation in general is done "on twos," meaning each drawing is displayed twice, for a total of 12 drawings per 24 frames per second. Faster movements may demand animation "on ones" with a new drawing in each frame, while characters that do not move may be done with a single drawing (a "hold") for a certain amount of time. Limited animation mainly reduces the number of inbetweens (the routine drawings between the keyframes which define a movement) and can cause stuttering if inbetweens are poorly set up.

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