No, it’s not just you.

I keep wanting to bring this up on the podcast, but the Japanese-based animation company Studio Pierrot is handling the majority of this season where as A:TLA and Book One were done by Korean-based animation company Studio Mir. 

Studio Mir is going to be taking over The Beginnings episode, which means the flashback sprit world could be a return to form.

Studio Pierrot simply uses fewer character keyframes, so there isn’t a lot of motion while people are talking. They are a big fan of panning across scenes and switching the blur effect to give the illusion of a focus-pull, but those are movements that don’t involve actually drawing the character again.

So, the dialogue scenes have been missing some dynamic movement, but when it comes to the battles, Studio Pierrot hasn’t shied away from some cool looking bending (Korra using the rope in Civil Wars comes to mind), so it’s hard for me to tell if what we’re looking at is Studio Pierrot having a less-dynamic style or Studio Pierrot working under budget constraints and having to reduce the number of drawings in non-action scenes. 

Anyway. I’m not happy about it, and I’m noticing. Especially last week when everyone was on the docks and NOT MOVING except for their mouths. UUUUUUUGH.

-Da7e-