Being a low-budget animation tool that almost exclusively uses flash puppets, canned animations, and text-to-speech voices, GoAnimate videos (at least the ones made before the website's extensive rebrand as Vyond) are pretty notorious for their Limited Animation efforts, which leaves users to resort to none other than using basic material to attempt to skirt around this. Most of the time, the results are subpar at best, and laughable at worst.
Across most videos:
- A very infamous example of this is the pointing animation. Comedy World characters don't have animations for hitting or picking up something,note so users usually resort to merely using the pointing animation to get the job done. Although this may work in some scenes, it doesn't apply well when a character is shooting a gun or breaking something.
- Continuing from the above, Comedy World characters holding items also looks rather odd as the item is attached, but just sort of "floats" above the character's right hand. This can be quite annoying, as Comedy World characters point using their left hand, which means that if they have to aim a gun, for example, it has to be merely overlaid over their left hand.
- Sometimes, users will write text-to-speech voice lines in capital letters in an effort to make the characters "shout". Unfortunately, this usually ends up with them just spelling the word out, especially if said word happens to be a real acronym when written in All Caps.Boris: "That's I-T!"
- Typically, any instance of beer or some other alcoholic beverage in the videos will be represented with a bottle of soda, but will still be referred to as whatever alcoholic beverage it is. Justified as most users used GoAnimate for Schools, which removed adult props like beer.
- The former car models in GoAnimate before its rebrand as Vyond were only in a profile view, which resulted in many bizarre shots. They also only had sound effects for starting, without any running engine sounds; the resulting constant use of the starting sounds made it appear that cars in the world of the grounded videos have terrible gas mileage and seize up at random.
- In order to make Comedy World characters "kiss" each other, most users set them to blow raspberries at each other by selecting "Taunt" in the expression menu and having the characters touch each other's tongues. This produces some... very interesting results.
- Comedy World characters going on a rampage at a store or a restaurant are shown with giant versions of the character(s) moving back and forth on the screen in their dancing or cheering animations, as people and things just fly off when they start dancing/cheering beside them.
- Similarly, in all themes, whenever a character throws a tantrum or needs to go to the bathroom, users will usually use the dancing animation, which ends up looking ridiculous.
- Some users try to make their characters look as accurate as possible to their canon counterparts, but they'll usually place parts that are clearly meant for the head onto the body. This means that, whenever a character does an action that involves moving their head (most noticeably, the "head down" action), a part of their body will detach and float in the air or not sync up with where they're supposed to be, ruining the effect. This is very noticeable with accurate depictions of Dora the Explorer, where the props used for Dora's backpack have their animations synced with her head rather than the rest of her body.
- Similarly, users will also flip the eyes (usually the default eyes for PC Guy) on certain characters (once again, usually with Dora the Explorer characters) upside down to make them look as close to the eyes of their canon counterparts. While this usually works fine, using the "crying" emotion with these eyes results in the tears flowing up, as if they're breaking the laws of gravity.
- Thanks to a lack of baby models in many of the themes, you can expect any baby/toddler characters to be, for example, a middle-aged woman in a business suit, or characters who have been turned into babies to just look like they've been turned into two-inch tall versions of themselves.
- Very frequently will you see characters walk behind an object in the background due to improper layering.
- Any representation of passed out or dead characters is often represented by the sleeping animation. This usually works for most themes. However, in the Comedy World theme, the character smiles and keeps breathing as if they were still alive, ruining the effect.
- In many videos with the Comedy World theme (this more specifically occurs with characters such as Miss Martin and Elena), there is a very odd (and also hilarious) glitch that occurs with the "shocked" and "surprised" expressions, which causes a character to blink one eye at a time.
- Similarly, due to its absence in GoAnimate for Schools, some users will try to make the pair of round eyes from Comedy World look more like how it did in the original website (almost always half-closed eyes, even when a character is shocked or surprised). However, this results in characters having their eyes be entirely transparent when closed, looking like a very messed-up Skintone Sclerae. Here's one example
with loads of Narm to boot.
- Similarly, due to its absence in GoAnimate for Schools, some users will try to make the pair of round eyes from Comedy World look more like how it did in the original website (almost always half-closed eyes, even when a character is shocked or surprised). However, this results in characters having their eyes be entirely transparent when closed, looking like a very messed-up Skintone Sclerae. Here's one example
- The Cartoon Classics theme (as well as its various spin-off themes) lacks the lip-syncing feature that most other themes have. This means that the characters from those themes will always use the same recycled mouth movement animation, thus their lips will not match up with what they're saying at all.
- Additionally, the majority of animations for the Cartoon Classics themes do not allow for lip flap animations altogether, leading to moments where the characters speak without even moving their mouths (most noticeable with the angry expressions, the majority of which consist of either a frown or showing their teeth).
- While the Comedy World theme lacks many animations compared to other themes, one animation it has that other themes don't have is a chewing expression. In order to make other characters like those of Lil' Peepz and Business Friendly chew food, most users will use their talking expression instead.
- The text-to-speech voices tend to make characters speak in a monotone voice, even if they're angry, excited or surprised. This becomes especially noticeable when they're crying, as it sounds like a monotonous "Wah-err-err-err-err-ah" instead of actual sobbing.
- In some "(Character) Gets Fat at (Restaurant)" videos, the character will often look simply large or stretched-out instead of fat, even if the character's theme (e.g. Business Friendly or Comedy World) has an option for a fat character model.
- One type of video are "Template videos", which basically consist of two characters chatting while only being able to have preset placements based on the location used. These videos have the glaring issue of only allowing one character at a time to speak dialogue and express an emotion, meaning the other character not speaking can only just stand there and make a neutral face, regardless of context. One example is Eric Gets In Trouble At School, which has scenes where Eric is supposed to be crying, but his expression inexplicably changes to a neutral, smiling expression whenever the camera angle changes.
- If you put too many props or characters on stage at once, and have them perform animations, the frame rate absolutely tanks and becomes very choppy.
Specific examples:
- Zoey Finishes Last In A Swimming Race And Gets Grounded. From the characters falling like dominoes into the pool, to their swimming being them just cheering sideways underwater.
- You have to wonder if the creator of Caillou destroys the playground / grounded even checked how it sounded before it was uploaded. Almost every sentence from Ms. Martin and Doris is interrupted by the aural equivalent of Bandicam nag messages reminding them that these are demo voices and shouldn't be used in a production without payment. The plot (an average "Ms. Martin fruitlessly tries to keep Caillou from destroying the playground and then his eventual grounding" script) screeches to a halt several times due to Ms. Martin and Doris's text-to-speech voices constantly giving out these warnings.
- The now lost "dudley puppy sucks his cheasts/grounded" features the titular character sucking on a note with "Double-click to input text" on it. We can only assume what that has to do with sucking his... cheasts.
- The wall Donald Trump builds in Donald Trump Builds A Wall/Grounded is merely a 2-D picture of a grey brick wall in the middle of a city, yet it's enough to border the USA from Mexico.
- The "Shinji Gets Grounded" series plays this for laughs. An example would be Shinji Gets Red Octobers/Breaks Misato's Legs - The Red Octobers are really just recolored combat shoes with black soles (justified - They're fake), and Misato's wheelchair is really just a spinning office chair.
- In Dora Gets Detention in Her House, upon being called a "psychotic bitch" by Dora, Mrs. Christina gets so mad she literally destroys half the classroom. It is then that one can notice that the students aren't even sitting on their chairs, almost appearing as if they're sitting on the floor or even levitating.
- Zola Causes a Car Crash has a unique case in that the character models are accidentally swapped in the very first scene. Specifically, what are supposed to be Zola's background placement, text-to-speech voice, and dialogue are instead given to her mother and vice-versa, making it seem like Zola and her mother have experienced a "Freaky Friday" Flip.
- During the first minute and a half of Brian Severely Injures His Teacher, the characters do not have any mouth animations whenever they speak. While the opening scene with Brian could initially be written off as him thinking to himself, the error becomes more apparent during the classroom scene, in which Mrs. Christina and the students are clearly supposed to be speaking out loud yet do not open their mouths even once, making it seem like they are communicating via telepathy.
- In early videos by Manaetherslime14, such as Dora Argues With Her Dad/Belted And Grounded, whenever Cole belts Dora as punishment for something, his belt is just shown to be a really long, static rope.
- Emily's operation involves the titular character getting plastic surgery to receive a new face. When her parents arrive in the operating room after her surgery and find out she chose a gorilla-esque face, they are suitably horrified...all except in expression, where they still retain their neutral expressions.
- One scene in Brian: A Christmas Special that sticks out like a sore thumb is the montage when Brian and his parents are driving to church, where all of the characters are layered on top of the car rather than inside of it, making it seem like they are glued to the vehicle.
- Due to what is likely an oversight, nearly the entirety of Dora Breaks Her Teacher's Face (EXPLICIT) has the camera constantly shaking for no explicable reason, even in situations where it is not appropriate in the slightest (such as when the characters are casually chatting).
- In Caillou Throws Rosie Off a Plane | Grounded, when the flight Caillou's family is taking is announced to be boarding, rather than just walking offscreen, the family simply shrinks into the background until they become very tiny, almost appearing to be casually walking in the sky.
- In justin bieber gets a cold and gets grounded, Justin Bieber is supposed to be sneezing, but due to the lack of sneezing sound effects, it sounds like he's saying, "A-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo".
- In Warren PEES and POOPS all over his home/Grounded, when Warren pees, the stream looks unrealistically wide, and when he pees on the ceiling, the puddle stays up there instead of dripping down. Something similar happens in Nick Gets Grounded for Life.
- In Dora Drives A Car, Dora's house is meant to be destroyed in the car crash, but it instead appears to have simply turned upside-down.
