The Animation Discussion Thread (Past, Present and Future Techniques)

[celticmoon]

Originally Posted by disneyfreak

You know I kind of wish they would get back into hand drawn, even the new Paperman technique is better, because recently I was thinking about it, and CGI really dates a film. Sure, Wreck-it-Ralph truly is stunning now, but what will it look like in 2025? Toy Story looked great for the time, myself I look at it now and I see all of its flaws. Hand drawn however is timeless. You can tell a difference from the decades only because its a new generation. For the most part you could compare Cinderella with Beauty and the Beast and you can't choose which one looks better.

Sorry for digging up a really old discussion, but somehow I wound up here, and wanted to add a bit to this discussion.

I generally agree with disneyfreak and Lnds500's position that hand-drawn holds up better than CGI over time, at least in regards to earlier work in each respective medium. Snow White, Pinnochio, and Bambi all look as beautiful as ever, and in fact, I'd say none of the 90s films, as beautiful as they generally were, could hold a candle to them in a lot of aspects. Toy Story on the other hand, does look quite dated, and comparing it with Toy Story 3 shows that the CGI medium has really come a long way since. Fortunately, I think Toy Story was well-made enough, even in terms of visuals, that it holds up quite well despite this--and remains a classic. (It certainly looks less dated than Dorothy's Return, which will be coming out this year... lol.)

However, I think that CGI has come far enough that the films now won't look particularly dated in 15 years time, so long as they're done right. (That is, Wreck-It Ralph will hold up fine, while Dorothy's Return obviously will not.) Sure, there are still advances being made, but not in the leaps and bounds that were happening before.

Also, animators and studios are finally starting to show us that many different styles are achievable in CGI and that they do not "all look the same," as many detractors claim. Personally, I think The Incredibles holds up a lot better than a lot of the animated CGI flicks from around that time because it was highly stylized. The designs had character to them... They were cartoony and didn't strive for any sense of hyper-realism. While there are still some generic and boring-looking CGI films coming out today, I think in many ways the genre is branching out and achieving unique looks.

I mean somebody, please watch the new Peanuts teaser, then watch the trailers (or full films) for The LEGO Movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Jack and the Cuckoo Clock Heart, Oblivion Island, and The Painting and tell me that they all look the same. Even if you just take two very mainstream films from last year, like Frozen and Monsters University, you can tell that these films have set out to create very different looks.

I won't argue that the styles in CGI films are as diverse as hand-drawn films. Perhaps we haven't reached that point yet. Perhaps it won't ever quite reach that sort of diversity. However, to say it's not there shows that people really aren't looking too far.