Ernest Rister

"I want to clarify that when I said that 3-D animation was more realistic that I meant it could give a greater sense of reality to a movie than 2-D animation. 3-D animation allows the same freedom of expression as 2-D animation along with the sense of reality that live-action movies possess."

And I'll just repeat myself -- animation is not reality. The ethereal, abstract pastels of Bambi cannot be captured or achieved by a live-action lens. The backgrounds are a suggestion of a forest, with some foreground detail, and your mind does the rest. It is visual poetry, not reality.

Animation is a caricature of life, not a reproduction of it. That has always been its greatest strength...its freedom from the real world. Personally, I don't want to see a CGI remake of Bambi in which every single leaf and twig in a 1,000-mile radius is faithfully replicated via computer and operating in perfect perspective. The suggestive background artwork of Ty Wong in that film is far more bold, far more impressive, far more personal to my eyes.

That's the danger of CGI -- it has the potential of robbing films of the romance of film craft. People watch the asteroid chase in Empire Strikes Back and gasp at the work and ingenuity involved in creating those scenes. People watch the asteroid chase in Episode II and shrug and say, "Eh...computers."

One of the Disney animators who was laid off in Florida challenged the President of Disney animation to specifically name how Disney's CGI work was going to distinguish itself from all the other CGI outfits. The response was that Pixar was copying the Disney films, and that Disney CGI was going to have more songs than Pixar. I kid you not, that's the substance of the response.

Has anyone seen the trailer for Chicken Little? If you were to turn the sound off and watch that trailer and then watch 45 seconds of the short cartoon, For the Birds by Pixar, would you be able to tell which company did which work of animation, just by looking at it?

Show most cinema fans any 10 seconds of a piece of animation by Warner Bros. or Disney, and they can tell you which studio produced it

Bugs Bunny is drawn different in a Chuck Jones short than he is in a Bob McKimson short, and he is drawn different still in a Freleng short, even though these guys were all directing Bugs shorts at the same time. That's the human distinction, right there on the screen. You can immediately spot a Jones "Bugs" over a Freleng "Bugs". If three different Pixar animators took turns animating Woody, would we be able to tell who animated what? Let's say Disney and Pixar co-produced Toy Story 3 and split production duties, with some scenes animated by Disney, and some by Pixar. Would you be able to immediately spot which company animated which Woody scenes, the way you can with hand-drawn animation? Unlikely, because everyone would probably be using the exact same wire-frame digital puppets.

That's what we're losing by giving up hand-drawn animation to chase a "trend".

Richard Paul

Ernest, many see what you talk about in 2-D animation but there are also many adults who see "just cartoons" and nothing more. Disney hopes to not only lure the kids to their movies but to also lure the parents. Parents who actually want to see the movie that their kids want to see are far more likely to go to it. Disney believes that this, and many other wonderful things, will happen if they make their movies in CGI.


Are you saying that movies like Jurassic Park, X-Men and Spiderman would have been better without CGI? Do you think Finding Nemo or Shrek looked badly done? The problem from what your saying is that CGI is indistinctive, which is certainly incorrect. The CGI of Shrek, Ice Age, and Finding Nemo each has its own style. Just because its made in a computer doesn't mean that human hands didn't make it.

Kevin Grey

I know what Ernest is talking about here. I love me some good CGI but there is a certain level of respect in the craftsmanship and ingenuity of the spectaculars from the pre-CGI era. Its not that the effects are worse or are missing an artistic touch- its the fact that you almost never think "wow, how in the hell did they do THAT?" because these days the answer is almost certainly "computers."

Ernest Rister

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Exactly.

"Do you think Finding Nemo or Shrek looked badly done?"

I thought Finding Nemo was gorgeous...but I look at the waves in 1940's Pinocchio, each one hand-drawn, hand-painted, and my mouth hangs open at the work involved to achieve those results. I see the waves in Finding Nemo and I think, "Wow - great software."

As for Shrek, I thought the townspeople and humans were stiff as a board. They looked like "PlayStation People". I was more impressed with the character animation of Donkey and the screenwriting in Shrek than I was with the visuals.

"Ernest, many see what you talk about in 2-D animation but there are also many adults who see "just cartoons" and nothing more."

As is their right. But I fail to see how Ice Age is any more or less a "cartoon" than Emperor's New Groove.

"Disney hopes to not only lure the kids to their movies but to also lure the parents."

This has always been the Disney strategy, except for instances where the aimed for a more adult audience, like Fantasia, Victory Through Air Power, "Education For Death", and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea along with some other non-child-skewing live-action dramas.

"Parents who actually want to see the movie that their kids want to see are far more likely to go to it."

Like Lilo and Stitch and Tarzan.

Disney believes that this, and many other wonderful things, will happen if they make their movies in CGI.

If they don't solve the true problem -- the fact that their films the last three years have been fairly weak -- then all they are going to accomplish is making weak movies in CGI. It's NOT the technology. It's the writing, the story, the storytelling. If Brother Bear had been CGI, it would have still stunk up movie theaters last Fall, it would simply be a poorly-written, toxically pandering piece of CGI animation, as opposed to a hand-drawn film with the same qualities.

Brent Hutto

I agree with Ernest on the character animation in Shrek. It was very poor for a supposedly breakthrough work of animation.

I don't agree with his take on Finding Nemo. I saw a pretty remarkable telling of the story, waves and all. I didn't think "great software" I simply thought "great movie".

The question of innate market appeal of so-called "2D" versus "3D" animation is hard to answer because it's so confounded by the fact that Pixar uses computer animation AND has great stories, acting and direction. It's even harder to come to any useful conclusion if ones criteria involves assessing the difficulty of current animation techniques compared to that of antique hand-painted cels from half a century ago.

Ernest Rister

I loved Finding Nemo - it's #3 on my list of my favorite films of 2003. Fantastic script, and great vocal performances, and outstanding character animation. I'm just comparing a sixty-year-old hand-drawn film that has an extended ocean sequence to a modern CGI animated film with ocean sequences to illustrate my point...I look at the waves in Pinocchio with astonishment, I look at the waves in Nemo with a different measure of awe. That's all I'm saying.

Brent Hutto

I guess it all amazes me. I realize the computer stuff probably takes less man-hours per minute of film but as a basically impatient person it all seems like it would be impractical to actually do.

And we haven't even talked about the Miyazaki (sp?) movies. Some of the images in Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky or Princess Mononoke are just remarkable. And well executed, I suppose but the creativity and feeling that goes into those movies is really something special.

Rob Gardiner

Ernest,


I read an excellent thread on this very subject on another board, one that caters to professional animators. The consensus was that three animators who animate the same digital model will make the model move differently and someone who was familiar with the styles of the individual animators would most certainly be able to tell the difference.

Ernest Rister

Yes, you would have to be extremely knowledgable about each animator's habits...like how you can always spot Don Bluth's work at Disney in the 70's because his characters inevitably stick out their tongue at some point.

I'm talking about the *graphic* sensibility, not the animation, one that comes through an individual putting hand to paper. No two animators can draw the same character in the exact same way. They try their hardest in feature animation, because when they fail, this is called "going off model"...there's no worry about that in a CGI film. In fact, unless different wire-frame puppets were created for different specific movements, it would be damn near impossible for a character to go "off model"...like handing a physical puppet to another puppeteer. The puppet doesn't change shape just because another man is holding it. It might move differently, but you'd have to be very well-versed in the specific talents and quirks of the puppeteers in order to tell which puppeteer was working the puppet in what sequence.

Damin J Toell

Me. I suffered through the inane and intellectually insulting trailer multiple times and thought it looked increasingly horrendous after each viewing. I stayed far away from it during its release. Personally, I figured it was the beginning of a glut of terrible bandwagon-hopping CGI features, although I was not particularly surprised that it did well (nor was I surprised at the success of the Scooby Doo feature film, for example).

DJ

TheLongshot

Actually, there are some computer effects that I still marvel at. Course, the best type of effects are the ones you don't notice as effects.


More like who the director is, but I know what you are talking about. Course, the average person wouldn't know or care.


I blame Hanna-Barbera for that. Unfortunatly, Disney has done nothing to really change that perception.


I agree as well, that once you got past the main characters, the quality dropped. It is one of the downsides of 3D animation in that it requires more time and money to get quality, and it doesn't have that much to do with the quality of the artists themselves.

Tho I do think there are some pretty sublime animation moments in Shrek.


Well that certainly is one of the big benefits of CGI, that you don't have to worry about that. Wasn't that one of the big problems with "Beauty And The Beast"?

I think the problem here is, CGI is viewed as "better". The thing is, it isn't. It is just different. CGI films have succeeded because either they were marketed well (Ice Age) and/or they told great stories (Pixar). It isn't just because of the "cool factor". If so, Final Fantasy would have done much better.

I actually do hope that the rumor AICN is true and that Pixar is going to do some traditional animation with Brad Bird first up. That might actually put this argument to rest.

Jason

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