Today, we're gonna be talking about MAPs, otherwise known as multi-animator projects. As advertised, they're basically videos wherein various artists and/or animators will create short, animated segments that make up one long animation. Sometimes these projects are nice and simple, like a collaborative animated music video, or a reanimated episode from a beloved cartoon, or maybe they'll go for a much more ambitious route and try to reanimate a whole goddamn show! Now MAPs are pretty neat because they can benefit the participants in many ways.
Sometimes whoever's hosting the MAP just wants to expose some would-be artists who wanna get their foot in the door, sometimes these collaborating animators wanna get together and form friendships, and sometimes participants will wanna just go nuts with whatever assigned segment of the video they were given! It's all a-okay, baby. So in short, MAPs are a great way for artists and animators to come together and create something awesome, whether it's to expose each other's talents to the world, or to just make something cool together... And here's why I kinda hate 'em.
Now I wanna make something abundantly clear: I don't hate the idea of MAPs. In fact, I encourage them, but here's just a few things I don't like about 'em. I've been meaning to get this off my chest for a while, and if I don't, it's just gonna burn a fucking hole through my being, so here goes: I really fucking hate how most MAPs I've encountered are comprised of really shitty and God-awful animations ninety percent of the time, but the other ten percent are made of extremely talented people who only take up four or five seconds of the video.
Now I know the super experienced animators are probably busy or just can't be bothered to be part of an MAP, so of course not every submission is gonna blow me away, and I know animation is extremely hard to learn and sucks the life outta you no matter how experienced you are, but sometimes these lamer entries just piss me off! It just makes me think, "Dude! You're clearly not fucking ready for this! So just go home and don't come back until you're better at this! I'm sorry, but you fucking suck and so does your style!" Sometimes you have to give people that bitch slap of truth!
Just stop fucking accepting these terribly animated segments! Some might argue that they like the crappy entries because they have a "charm" to 'em, but I beg to differ. I like quality animation, alright? I don't wanna see the same grungy-ass, terrible fucking animatics over and over again! This is kinda the main reason I don't watch MAPs as much as I used to. A lot of them are just so fucking bloated with awful entries that make me wanna tear my hair out. "Well I'd like to see you do better, FDM." Okay, fair, I'm not an animator, so what the Hell do I know?
I'm sure these inexperienced people work just as hard on their animations as any other schmuck. I'm terribly sorry for my rude and insensitive ramblings and I apologize for the negative vibe. I guess this was more of a vent than an essay. I just really wanted to get that off my chest, man. Again, I'm sincerely sorry for sounding and acting like a total dickweed earlier, I just really needed to let that out. "Well, what MAPs DO you like, FDM?" I guess it wouldn't hurt to share a few of my favourites. Here's a little list of MAPs I personally like.