Group 8 Animation Project: some background research

As you can see from these background examples, limited animation often uses very stylized or abstract representations of background features.

Background cycling is another technique to reduce the amount of background painting that needs to be prepared. In traditional full animation, a character running through a forest would run down a path that twists and turns, discovering a different part of the forest with each new frame. With limited animation and background cycling, however, the character would typically run straight left to right (or right to left), in profile, against a flat background of the same dozen trees cycling over and over.

In limited animation, backrounds are flat, and all background objects pan at the same rate. Scenes that show sun, moon or clouds in the sky or distant mountains, are almost never panned.