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?
I can’t imagine that it’s cheaper than not doing it. I think the visuals are useful storytelling aids; they help me keep track of characters in a story, especially if a story has a lot of characters. I’ve never really thought about the passive animations, but if I had to hazard a guess I’d say it’s either a way to keep the eye trained on a visual element (e.g., moving a character or object while that object is being discussed by the narration), a ploy to increase retention, or maybe the animator just likes having things animated even if they aren’t performing a specific action at the moment.
I’ve never really been bothered by it, I think it’s just a stylistic choice.