What advantages does animation have over books?

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I felt worried the other day because I realized animated films could be "inferior" to books in a way, because they're shorter and restrict your imagination in the sense that you're not imagining the worlds and characters yourself and books can already describe everything through words, right? What's the point of animation if books can already describe everything an animated movie can show, from action sequences to dialogue to how a character or setting looks? Are animated films books but shorter, with restricted imagination and visuals "imposed" by other people? (I know the term imposed sounds ridiculous but I couldn't find any other word to describe this).


I don't want to paint books as something inferior. I just want to know what does animation have that books don't. I know I'm getting annoying. I'll try to make this my last animation related question and then leave you guys in peace.
 
The point is accessibility. Books enjoy a lot of freedoms in terms of pacing and volume, but they also ask a lot of self-investment from their audience, and not everyone will always be willing to commit to such a thing. Sometimes people just want to sit down and observe a short story unfolding without having to lay all the mental groundwork themselves first, and without having to hold out for days or weeks to reach the climax. As such, animation offers a much lower barrier to entry, and some people prefer that approach.

Everything has their place. Which medium speaks to you at any given time depends on your current mood, (time) resources at hand, and your personal disposition and preferences. In that sense, neither books nor movies are inferior to each other.
 
Animation is better than books since you see all the action. If I done an animation series on the roleplays I participated in. It would look good. I like the classic books of tales made into animation back in the day by Disney.
 
As someone who has aphantasia, I literally cannot imagine what's being described in books. Like you can describe what a character looks like to me on the paper, but all I'll know is your description, I can't visualize what they look like or what the setting looks like, etc.

Now, don't get me wrong, that doesn't stop me from enjoying reading (or even writing, I do love writing some fanfic at times), but that's also a big reason why I enjoy animation so much. Because I can actually see what the characters and world are meant to look like, rather than just text descriptions that I can't visualize in my mind.
 
Seteth said:
The point is accessibility. Books enjoy a lot of freedoms in terms of pacing and volume, but they also ask a lot of self-investment from their audience, and not everyone will always be willing to commit to such a thing. Sometimes people just want to sit down and observe a short story unfolding without having to lay all the mental groundwork themselves first, and without having to hold out for days or weeks to reach the climax. As such, animation offers a much lower barrier to entry, and some people prefer that approach.

Everything has their place. Which medium speaks to you at any given time depends on your current mood, (time) resources at hand, and your personal disposition and preferences. In that sense, neither books nor movies are inferior to each other.
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Pretty much this. Books can describe things in ways movies can't, yet they also require a lot of mental investment. Different moods call for different media.
 
Varian said:
Pretty much this. Books can describe things in ways movies can't, yet they also require a lot of mental investment. Different moods call for different media.
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You'll probably hate me for this but if you could give me an example or two it would be great.
 
HombreSal said:
You'll probably hate me for this but if you could give me an example or two it would be great.
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You ever read The Phantom Tollbooth? It's one of my favorite books of all time, and it has all kinds of wacky stuff that really challenges your imagination. Unfortunately, however, they made a movie too...and it's really bad and stripped the book of all that glorious wacky stuff, and the end result was a hot empty mess.

However, it takes a lot of mental capacity to get through some books. I've had to read a lot of painfully boring books, painfully slow books, painfully wordy books. Even if they have a good plot, when your mind isn't in the mood to endure any of that, it can be hard to understand what's going on. That's not really a problem with movies, as even though they can also be hard to follow, seeing the action on screen often allows you to get the gist of what's going on. And if it's boring, well, at least you got an understanding of the plot.

Both have their pros and cons. Books challenge your imagination in often intriguing ways, but movies are more accessible and make it easy to understand what's going on.
 
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I see.

You know what I thought about it a bit more, and now I think I saw it the other way around. I shouldn't see characters being drawn/animated as a "restriction", but rather a way to show others how I want my character to look like in a way everybody can like, let other people see how I imagine everything. If drawing characters was not a thing, we'd never be able to show each other how we see a character. We'd all be restricted to imagine them without being able to show them to anybody, despite being able to imagine them however we please. I can see that as a restriction in a way if what I want is to see others how my characters look like. Books also don't have a unique artstyle for them unlike animated movies.


Also books restrict me from imagining the story myself by giving me one to read lmao. If I wanted to imagine everything I'd just look at a white canvas lol, so at the end this whole restriction argument I thought about is dumb I guess.

I guess it's all about picking whether you like reading or films more then.
 
In terms of career, I think overall, it's easier to get a book out than it is animation, because animation is mighty expensive and time-consuming (even more so with 2D animation), AND you need to write a script for movies, which you inherently need a good writer for. Books have a lower bar of entry than movies. I'm not saying that books don't have their own set of hurdles to overcome of course but it generally doesn't have to worry about animating frames, casting, sound, particle effects, script writers, etc making it easier for authors to get a story they want out than animation.

Oh, also, learning animation (which of course animated films need) helps you see the world around you, like any art form, and also increases your aptitude to observe things like drawing does. When you observe how people move in order to translate into a realistic one, you start observing and seeing things you didn't see before. Pretty much any answer relating to the "point of art" also applies to animation, as that's an art form as well.

Reading also helps language learners too.
 
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