I definitly agree with you. I mean I love 3D CGI animations. They look fantastic and they are fun to watch. But I think when something is 2D and its hand-drawn, for me it feels more personal and human. I think 2D Animation works especially more if it is an intimate and personal story, like ‘Persepolis’. The movie chronicles the a young girls coming-of-age in Iran after the Islamic Revolution, and the directors uses 2D black-and-white animation to present this powerful story, and the results is; an incredibly powerful, haunting and unforgettable film. The 2d Black and white animation makes it feels like you are watching the tainted and blurry memories of someone who survived war and much worse… I think the movie wouldnt have been that powerful if it was made by CGI…
Being romantic, I love the charm of the hand-drawn animation (2D can also be done using vector graphics software by the way..). But I am also a technologist, and I can’t be not impressed by the technical complexity of 3D animation. The various techniques used for 3D animation, such as mathematical functions (ex. gravity, particle simulations), simulated fur or hair, effects such as fire and water and the use of Motion capture to name but a few, are unbelievably complex and cool. A toast to PIXAR!
Agreed Efe. One of the best things about CGI animation–and the recent splurge of CGI in general, BEOWOLF, for example–is that the way different technological elements are parlayed out to different groups in a company, or different massive effects scenes are distributed to separate teams in ILM, means that even if the films stumble artistically (or just as films!) they are always full of small wonders accomplished by various smaller parts of a huge team.
It all begins and ends for me with AKIRA (Katsuhiro Otomo). It used over 2000 shots, with more than 370 colors, all hand-drawn and inked/painted. Nothing like it has been even touched by CGI: it screams of human hands at work. The first time I saw it, it was at a cinema in the UK. big screen. When I left, my eyes were so dazed by the last scenes that I had difficulty focusing, and began to see everything around me as if manga-drawn. I’ve used CGI and I completely respect and admire the detail and artistry involved, but I think we’re still looking at the infant stages: in years to come, a masterpiece will happen.
I prefer classic Walt Disney animation made in around 40s, all hand drawn celluloid pictures.
They have a natural and gentle texture which you never get with CG animation.
Somehow, I feel these classic animations are more earth-friendly too.
In this sense, I like Miyazaki films
and clay animation (“Chicken Run,” “Wallace and Gromit” etc), by Aardman Pictures.
The former represents Japanese culture and the latter is full of dark British humor.
The series of Creature comforts by Aardman is worth checking. Funny and clever.
In the film below, the various animals being interviewed as politicians over Iraq War:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N_tnsvmeAo&feature=related
I checked out the Aardman Iraq War interviews: brilliant, brilliant. Thanks for that link, Rica
I can’t believe anyone is defending CGI!
The best cartoons ever are 40s Looney Tunes, and that’s a fact. Disney had some amazing animation but as a whole they come in second or third because of their generic characters and stories.
Why is there so much emphasis now on realism in animation? There are plenty of people making realistic films with real cameras and real people. Animation should be used to do what animation does best, and which no other medium can do: impossible crazy antics and such. There’s a kind of truth to the old WB cartoons that hasn’t been matched in animation since. It’s sad that this skill is pretty much dead.
As a fellow animation afficionado I would like to motion that The Auteurs include one animated movie each month in their Festival line-up. They already have some on their list, but none are free to watch. 2D or 3D, anything goes.
It could help draw attention to this artistic, fantastic genre (which is not a genre as such… but let’s save that for another thread.)
I am an animator, vector, traditional and 3d. An animator working on a computer will always be fighting with the program. Its often a much less rewarding process. When I get done with a 3d scene, I don’t even feel like anyone will be able to tell I animated it. Now traditoinal or (I actually prefer framebyframe handrawn vectors) I can tell who animated it. When I am done with a scene it represents my skillset 100%. A bad animator can bumble around in the dark on a cg scene and make something realistic by luck as long as the rendergods are merciful that day (they rarely are). But the same is true for a good animator in 3dcg environment… it really does represent a sort of weird equalizer. I was talking to(Im not a big-shot I just got lucky) Chen-yi Chan at some point, (he is a brilliant production designer at disney) and he said something to me that changed the way I looked at it completely. “In two dimensional animation, you have total control over the picture plane in every single frame.” The concept totally blew my mind, I haven’t touched a 3d app since, and have trouble making it through 3d movies now.
I guess I show my age, but the term 3D animation makes me think of Willis O’Brien, Ray Harryhausen, Jim Danforth, George Pal Puppetoons …
@Harry. I know what you mean. I’ll take stop-motion animation over CGI any ol’ day. There’s something magical about the technique — strangely enough, the very artificiality of it lends a sense of awe to the dinosaurs. CGI beasties just don’t do it for me.
That said, I love 2D animation and will offer up Disney’s Pinnochio as the greatest example of the form.
Cheers,
Steve
CinemaUprising.Blogspot.com
I’m not in the least convinced that it’s the digital tools that are at fault—not at all. I’d suggest that every major 3d digitally-animated feature – certainly every feature produced by Pixar, Sony, and Dreamworks – has been cinematically and dramatically retrograde. These movies are like old shoes re-cobbled in Mylar: flashy and tricked-out but comfy diversions. And these studios have grown to offer what is only a new proxy for the old Hollywood industrial model of cinema which has turned out infinitely more dross than gold; and at very high expense. The industrial model is itself at fault, for its preference for antique plot/dialogue/characterization formulas (the secret of Pixar’s commercial success is that it’s Plagiarism Central: you’ve seen it all before), and the imperative to produce a form of pap acceptable to the greatest number of people. The corporate CG feature animation paradigm matches that of e.g. Coca-Cola or McDonald’s—so if you’re leveling fine aesthetic judgments on their product, it’s like an oenophile sniffing at the “bouquet” of a Coke.
There is also the contemporary problem of the hegemony of marketing product driving the “creative” product, the tail wagging the dog. A comparison between the good ole’ days of Looney Toons or Harryhausen or Puppetoons (I’d add Ralph Bakshi) and the dreck CG features produced today is insupportable, if you totally gloss over the factors of budget and marketing tie-ins. Take Monsters vs Aliens, for example: marketing partners on this one show include McDonald’s, HP, Intel, Wrigley, Kid Cuisine, LandOFrost and VISA. And while we know for certain that Chuck Jones exercised primary artistic control over his Looney Toons work – there wasn’t a corporate marketing chain and boardroom concerns to strangle him – we can well assume that the “creatives” at Pixar and Dreamworks aren’t “auteurs” in any such sense. The technological paradigm shift has not been accompanied by a great advance in narrative cinema through these means; but I don’t believe that the 3d animation paradigm, or the digital tools, are to blame.
Has anyone here ever seen Chris Landreth’s Oscar-winning short Ryan? Or Alex Rutterford’s work – his great animation for Autechre’s “Gantz Graf”? Or Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence? And beyond Oshii’s work, a great number of other Japanese animators have integrated or else have used 3D CG exclusively, to great artistic effect…
The difference between 2d and 3d is the timing. thus it has a different feel. that’s why you don’t like 3d not for any content reason really. 3d has more fluid motion but maybe that is not what we are used to.
I just want the West to start fucking realising you can do both. The results can be amazing like in Ghost in the Shell 2 Innocence. Well said Witkacy, but I wanted to say it but with more rage.
I always think of Lynch’s quote when this comes up “I don’t think about technique. The ideas dictate everything. You have to be true to that or you’re dead.”
Daniel Kasman
…will always be preferable to 3D. One day, once there is a deluge of interchangeable CGI animated films, a day that already seems upon us, I think audience will want to go back to the craft, charm, and artistry of hand-drawn animation.