Rough+Draft



A minimum of 2 total pages due: day of week, March 5, 2010

At least 2 additional pages (minimum of 4 pages total) due: day of week, March 11, 2010

At least 2 additional pages (minimum of 6 pages total) due: day of week, March _, 2010

At least 2 additional pages (minimum of 8 pages total) due: day of week, March 18 or 19, 2010

The movie industry is one of the largest industries in both the US and the World, and in terms of art, it is currently the largest distributed art form of our modern era. Just as paintings went through various phases and development in order to be accepted as art and not just to sell well, Animation is a type of media just as impressionism is a type of painting. Animation is an art from which has major possibilities, even some yet to be archived/explored, however an increasing number of major companies see it as a business and make decisions based on assumptions of how to generate more profit. Too many of these companies are giving up their artistic integrity for these reasons, yet viewer's reactions are not based solely on the type of animation style. Viewers react upon an artistic combination of all animation/production aspects, and effective animation will be able to use this to communicate better with the audience than would media created for commercial purposes of being a certain type of animation. Over the past few years, certain animated media has impressed, amazed or inspired me, just as others have disappointed or upset me. I have always wanted to talk about how I feel about these specific examples, so with these in mind, I can research them and present them in a fashion like I have wanted to do for a long time. I have a passion for animation, and the recent decline in artistic integrity within the animation industry over the past 5 year has upset me and motivated me to speak up about it. Besides purely having a passion for it, i want to join the animation industry to change this problem, and I feel motivated to speak on this issue now. Moviegoers of America have been told by studios that computer animation is somehow better. I hope to change their outlook on animation, showing them the possibilities of the various techniques, and convincing them that it is an art form which should be appreciated more. Also, I hope to convince them not to label animation as "kid" movies. Major Companies should continue to invest in traditionally animated movies, since the type of animation actually does not determine the success of the movie, therefore every type of animation should still be explored for the sake of artistic integrity. I feel as if many of the companies now have the ability to create works which could be cherished as art for a long time; however the heads of their companies are only focused on commercial success of their products. I think that most people would agree that giving up on a certain art form is ridiculous; however the problem is that people fail to see this with traditional animation vs. computer animation because they have not recognized the artistic qualities in animation recently. A majority of the most successful animated features are CG, but the most memorable on the list are much older and traditional animated films. Even still, this chart has little indication of the effectiveness of the films as art, or the dedication of the artists. Movie companies are following trends seen in this list, because there main intent is commercial success.

The Dreamworks animation department has had plenty enough commercial success that they no longer need to make movies for the sake of commercial success. They have made greatly artistic traditional animation before they switched to CG, and they have plenty of their funding now to continue traditional animation. They have been making CG movies for so long that they have grown repetitive, and they greatly need to explore more artistic alternatives.

The Princess and the Frog is the first traditionally animated Disney movie in nearly six years, and it was created because of the artistic intentions of Pixar Co creators, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull. The Walt Disney Company ceased the production of traditionally animated films in 2004, after the recent trend of CG movies being more successful. After Disney bought Pixar in 2006, the two men decided as head of the animation department to bring back the traditional animation which Disney ceased. Although their company was completely CG biased, they personally stated that they have never felt CG movies were in any way superior to traditional animation. They attributed their success to their dedication, rather than medium, and they brought back the traditional department for the sake of artistic exploration.

The recent trends of Disney animation have proven that they can produce a good animated movie every three to five years, however because of critics remarks, the best of Disney movies tend to tank at the box office. This makes worthless sequels to movies which were bad in the first place even more likely. Treasure planet was aimed at the same goals the original Disney movies attained, a sense of wonder and adventure. While Treasure Planet does archive this, there are also a number of traditional Disney trends, which reflect the company's strive to make everything "fun". This includes some inane gaggery, and silly sidekick high-jinx, which is the typical trend of Disney movies that make children interested. Treasure planet manages to do this in a successful way though, meaning that we end up not being distracted by the "fun" aspects, by the scale of the adventure. The 2001 movie, Atlantis: The Lost Empire did only average in the box office, however was a visual masterpiece, managing to mix computer and traditional animation in an extremely effective and innovative fashion.

Allot of animation is basic art skill such as painting and drawing. Drawing is a fundamental ability of all animators, including computer animation. Besides all the skills involved, the most fundamental principle an animator must embrace is communication ability. Animators are essentially actors with pencils, because they bring characters to life by communicating their feelings and actions through movement and expressions. Animators need to have patience, a range of flexible abilities and most importantly, the ability to work as a team. Animation is such a tedious medium that it requires tremendous cooperation to be able to produce the constant quality of animated movies today.

At the core, animation is essentially the same concept, there are just different ways of producing it, the cost and effort involved in the processes, and the quality of the final output. . Traditional animation is the process of drawing all actions, facial expressions and backgrounds, where computer animation is usually made mostly or completely with the help of computers. At the root however, animation is visual movement and storytelling. Computer animation has become more favorable because it is traditional less time consuming and cost effective. Traditional animation is a much more hands on process. Animation is essentially acting with a pencil. The key to believable character animation is acting in animation, which can be achieved dependent on the animator's abilities. Good animators have a feel for the characters and know what they think, so they can draw their movements accordingly. They also need the characters to appear consistent and react to what's around them. Also, characters have a personality which the animator must understand, and be able to depict their mood of the moment correctly to have effective believable animations.

Motion capture or "Motocap" is a recent technique in computer animation which captures the movements of actual actors wearing special censors, which can then be translated with a computer and applied to a computer generated character. This gives computer animation a more realistic effect because it gives the characters weight and realistic motion, which is distinctly different from regular computer generated motion. This process is often used for special effects and computer generated characters for live action movies, but more and more computer animation is starting to utilize the process, which questions weather this process is actually animation.

Disney Ceased the production of hand drawn animation in 2004, but in 2009 it returned to hand drawn with the Princess and the Frog. Ironically, when Pixar president John Lasseter was appointed head of Disney animation because of their intent to continue digital only animation, one of the first things he did was bring back the traditional animation department. He was raised on traditional Disney animation styles before he developed the new digital process, and he did not consider the animation style superior in any way.