Computer animation has clearly dominated the film industry over hand-drawn animation. Even though hand-drawn animations continue to be made in anime and TV shows (i.e. The Simpsons), computer animations have been overwhelming success in comparison. Movies such as How To Train Your Dragon and The Incredibles show how successful they can be.
Ironically, hand-drawn animation was how animated movies began. It could be argued which is better (hand-drawn or computer animation), but there’s no doubt that hand-drawn animations bears more of a human mark. The drawings are imperfect in themselves, such as pencil strokes, and uneven lines across the frame.
In computer animation, even though we know that there is an artist working behind it, we are more or less watching a rendering of their work. The images don’t bear any imperfect lines or pencil strokes. The images are detailed and realistic.
It seems that viewers want to see more realism in movies and animation overall. Just as computer games have improved in terms of graphics, the same could be said of movies. Hand-drawn animations are obviously meant to stylize reality, just like comics and anime. But perhaps there has been a shift away from a stylization of reality and a move toward a realistic representation it.
Why is that? Perhaps our way of seeing, as an audience, has changed overtime. People in the past watched black and white films because that was what was available to them. Then came sound, technicolor, and decades later, digital film.
An evolution could be said of animation. Films were predominately hand-drawn until they CGI came along. After that computer animation burst onto the scene with Toy Story being the first big animated film.
But in each phase, the previous one influenced the that came after it. It’s obvious that the computer animators of today were influenced by the hand-drawn animators of the past. The methodology has changed, but the style and storytelling remains.
And with each new phase of technology, the imperfections are erased, and the films appear closer to reality. It’s as if the world of film (or animation) should be seamless compared to our own. But as this trend continues, do the artists behind the film become mere technicians? Are their voices lost in the pursuit of realism? Will the story get lost as well?
Besides, isn’t realism just one way to tell a story? By this, I don’t mean to say that the film must be grounded in reality, but that the depiction of that world is no longer expressing the distinct eye of the filmmaker. Perhaps we’ve veered away from what was considered the auteur idea of filmmaking, and seek a rather generalized type of film.
And with regard to animation, we’ve veered away from imperfection of the hand-drawn to the perfection of computer renderings.
Fallton Havenstonne 