Research+paper



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

In the modern world, people have found a new outlet for entertainment which is now an irreplaceable aspect of society. Over the years, adults and children alike have come to enjoy or admire seeing cartoon characters in almost any context, however the most fundamental of which is almost always animated cartoons, those in which people see the artist created character move in front of them in a fluid, life like fashion. When the possibilities of this process were first displayed in Walt Disney’s classic 1930 animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, America was stunned with the first flawless instance of cartoon characters appearing to be alive on the screen in front of them. Of course, with this innovation came a complete revolution in the movie and media industry, as well as the birth of an American pop culture cornerstone, the cartoon character. As their influence grew in American society, cartoon characters started appearing everywhere, from TV shows and commercials, to award winning feature length movies. As they became more mass produced, however, people started to take for granted the effort or artistic talent put into making cartoons, by viewing them as entertainment rather than art. Despite how society has made cartoons commonplace, Animation is an art from which has major possibilities, even some yet to be archived/explored, however coinciding with the advance in animation technology, 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**. The success of an animated feature is not biased off of what type of animation is used, but rather the intent and dedication of the creators to make an outstanding product, and since it is a medium of art, animation should not be created on the sole intent of making money. 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. Over the years, certain animated media has impressed, amazed or inspired America because of its amazing visual and emotional qualities, while in recent years, animation has seen a decline in artistic integrity within the industry over the past five years. This trend certainly has a relationship to the advances in computer animation, which is cheaper and faster to make. Because of this sacrifice in quality, The animation industry needs to change this problem to regain the artistic acclaim it deserves. Moviegoers of America have been told by studios that computer animation is somehow better, and worse, is the trend of computer animated movies to be aimed at children causes viewers 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. 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. 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.

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


 * 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. **
 * 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. **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. ** 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. ** 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, including recent movies like “The Polar Express” and “Disney’s A Christmas Carol”. While the process is innovative, it is so far a stretch from true animation that the question of weather this process is actually animation arises.
 * The DreamWorks animation department has produced enough high grossing films that they no longer need to make movies for the sake of commercial success. DreamWorks Animation was the producer of the traditionally animated feature, the Prince of Egypt, which is still cherished by many people for its cutting edge visuals and artistic aspects , but more than anything, it is the story and message behind the movie which earned its acclaim among viewers. The feature film, which was a literal interpretation of the story of mosses from the bible, has been cherished by people for its **** religious teachings and appeal to multiple faiths, as well as it’s hopeful and inspiring content expressed through song and visual art. **

At least 2 additional pages (minimum of 6 pages total) due: day of March 16, 2010 Another leader in the animation industry which gave up on traditional animation for a period is ironically the single most famous and legendary traditional animation studio in history. This is of course, Walt Disney feature animation, which although singlehandedly started the modern era of animation and then brought it to new heights in past decades, ceased the production of hand drawn animation in 2004,** after the recent trend of CG movies being more successful and the company’s success with computer animation studio, Pixar. **Ironically, It was Pixar’s president John Lasseter who, after being appointed head of Disney animation (because of their intent to continue digital only animation) brought back the traditional animation department. In 2009, Disney returned to hand drawn animation with the Princess and the Frog, which was ** the first traditionally animated Disney movie in nearly six years ** ** and it was thanks to the artistic intentions of Pixar Co creators, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull. 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. **
 * After this debut feature from DreamWorks in 1998, they continued with three more traditionally animated movies, “The Road to El Dorado” in 2000, “ **Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron** ” in 2002 and “Sinbad: Ledged of the Seven Seas” in 2003, before they switched to CG. This decision made by DreamWorks had a clear relationship to the decline of these movies total gross, at the same time that computer animation was flourishing. **Because of this obvious decline, Sinbad was the last traditionally animated movie made by DreamWorks, while their multiple CG movies brought huge success, which is the case with Shrek{made 267,652,016 worldwide}, Over the hedge{155,019,340}, Monster House {73,661,010},Shrek the third{794.4 million} Bee movie{126,597,121} and Shark Tale{367 million worldwide}. ** These movies brought plenty of funding to the DreamWorks Company, which leaves them with plenty enough financial room to explore traditional animation once more. They have been making CG movies for so long that their products have grown repetitive to the point of being disposable, releasing sequels and forgettable movies aimed at children, while still being commercially successful. What the company, as with many other animation studios, have failed to understand, is that the most successful movies are the ones which have the greatest overall cinematic success, not a particular method of animation. This can be seen in the case of the Prince of Egypt, which was a cinematic masterpiece, as opposed to the three following films which although traditionally animated, were not nearly as successful motion pictures. Their most successful CG movies have also been the ones which feature the most appealing characters to children, specifically Shrek, Madagascar, and the countless sequels to such movies have been even more successful from generating more hype among children. What they fail to see with this trend is the fact that their most successful movies are the ones which have the greatest storytelling ability and memorable qualities, which is achieved through effective animation. The techniques of animation have no superiority over each other, since they each have their own different limits and abilities. It makes no sense to consider CG superior to any other type of animation, and it is a shame that a company with so much funding and artistic talent would not explore more artistic alternatives. **

At least 2 additional pages (minimum of 8 pages total) due: day of March 18 or 19, 2010 John Lasseter was raised on traditional Disney animation styles before he developed the new digital process, and he has stated he at no point considered his new animation style superior in any way. "I've never understood why the studios were saying people don't want to see hand-drawn animation," Mr. Lasseter said at a fan convention earlier this year. "What people don't want to watch is a bad movie." Mr. Catmull said. "We wanted to make great films; great films are independent of technology." For a good many years, the goal of most things **Disney** could be summed up in one word, ‘fun’ (alright, you might put in ‘cute’ as well). That goal, and I think Walt would back me up on this, sucks. They should be fun, of course, but that’s not a goal. Not a legitimate goal anyway. Bent  on achieving this goal, **Disney** fare spares no expense (interesting characters, story, etc.) when it means tossing in inane gaggery, and silly sidekick high-jinx. //Treasure Planet//, on the other hand, spends its time putting forward a story we can latch onto, and does so in a way that loses us in the adventure. -2
 * 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. ** 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, as well as include insightful and interesting characters with a truly inspiring depiction of a lost civilization. An even better example of an under looked Disney masterpiece would be Treasure Planet, the 2002 Science fiction adaption of the classic novel, Treasure Island. ** Treasure planet was aimed at the same goals the original Disney movies attained, a sense of wonder and adventure. **


 * At this point in the movie industry, Disney had mastered the traditional animated technique and was moving on to more complex and moving storylines. While Treasure Planet is successful in this to a huge extent, Disney overlooked it’s communicative power because of it’s commercial failure. The huge box office failure of Treasure planet, as well as similar Disney movies, caused the company to give up on the art medium they started an industry with. **
 * Major companies should not by any means, completely switch back to traditional and cease computer, since this is the same mistake they made already in the computer animation era. Animation is an art form, and it needs to be treated that way, since it’s production is so intensive, that it’s existence is only possible through the dedication and handwork of true artists. **