While "rough" is kind of dismissive, I would argue that a lot of Yuasa's distortions are complex stylisations. That said, I see what you're saying about it's rarity.
Somehow Yuasa's character's are easy for me to connect with, and I rarely connect with characters in more traditional Japanese anime, and hardly ever the bloopy forms of 3d characters (with the exception in recent years being
Inside Out, and even that was more of a conceptual fascination than a character connection... I don't have much interest in pure 3d animation as it stands, although I'd really like to see the American studios combine it with 2d in the interesting ways that the Asians do... And speaking of 3d, I haven't seen the discussion on Rango and it's character design). While I can't remember seeing
The Illusionist, I really liked
The Triplets of Belleville, perhaps because of it's great narrative without a hint of dialogue, and it's unlikely heroine -- whom I did actually connect with.
Regardless, I, for one, would love to see more of these free-form, distorted animations. As an MFA graduate with hardly any formal animation training -- but a lot of prior drawing experience, and some knowledge of film history -- I need to ask: would TVPaint be a good program for me to produce shorts in this style? I've finished Elodie's tutorials that I bought along with the software (although I'll be going back to many of them), and I'm currently working my way through
The Animator's Survival Kit, however I realise Richard Williams -- although a great figure from the golden age of animation -- has his own biases and tastes, some of which I already take issue with (as a relative beginner to using such media... but I have watched
Persistence of Vision, which was an excellent documentary). My tastes seem to lay somewhere between Asian, European, and late 20th century American 2d animation... hence my huge admiration of Yuasa, who lists Tex Avery, a Disney movie, and numerous European and Japanese titles among his influences.
And lastly, thanks a bunch for the recommendation of
Kanashimi no Belladonna, which I'll watch ASAP (and hopefully tick
The Illusionist off my list too... I vaguely remember hearing about it years ago, and if I did watch it, it certainly wasn't memorable).
)
Now just to start experimenting and looking for the right process...
