Artist Uses Cool Bionicle Animation to Show That Camera Sometimes Does 90% of Work

Animation is no easy task, and if you have been reading 80 Level for a while, you know that artists often use some tricks to fool the eye.

For example, TuxedoPato's recent gun animation was apparently not as seamless as it might have seemed. Responding to his post, animator Zach Mulligan, also known as No The Robot, shared that sometimes, most success comes from camera work.

Explaining the workflow, Mulligan said that "the focal length on the camera was set to 6mm when he's running and then it zooms in slightly to 12mm when he stops. So any 'stretching' you might feel is just from that fish eye lens distortion."

But we also know some other stretching "incidents" from popular movies, like Mirabel's monster arms in Encanto:

Aleksey Besedin confirmed that this is not a rare occurrence with his character and his stretchy limbs:

Pixar has also been "guilty" of cutting corners (and faces) to get the best shot:

We have a whole article full of animation tricks you should check out if you're interested in how it works (or if you just want to laugh).

Moreover, Kevin Temmer, the lead animator at Glitch Productions, has told us about The Amazing Digital Circus' animation workflows, explained what "cheating" in 3D animation is, and discussed how they twist TADC's characters behind the scenes.

Do you agree that camera work is god's work? Follow No The Robot for more and join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.