With a few rare cases, I find the best animated films are when they make use of the fact that it is animated. For example, a lot of Japanese Anime is just mellow drama. Why bother making this an animated film? Maybe Jap animation is a bad example, as I’m sure the Japanese culture loves animated mellow dramatic films. God forbid the day Bollywood starts making 3 hour, 3D motion captured, dramatic dance spectaculars… But you get my concept.

Really, we watch films to be immersed in a good story. Who cares if it is animated or live action? But, we do watch “animated” films because we want to see something special done with the use of the animated media that couldn’t be done in live action. Spirited Away, Antz, Akira, Toystory, Bugs Bunny, Pom Poko, crazy takes, exaggerated poses, stylised characters and backgrounds etc

Of course there have been films that have blurred the lines of live action and animation very successfully as well. The Mask, Kung fu Hustle, A Scanner Darkly etc.. I actually quite enjoyed Monster House because the character designs, script and the direction was well done(I thought). God knows why they didn’t hand animate it though.

Why would someone bother to make a film like Polar Express completely “animated” with motion capture, when it could have been made with live action characters and cg effects for a quarter of the price? (A rumor was going around that it cost $300mil to make and only made $45 mil at the box office)

I guess I’m just sore because I don’t understand what the point of motion capture is, and maybe, there’s a chance that one day, I’ll lose a job to motion capture clean-up artists.
Of course when I animate I use video reference as much as everyone, but I wouldn’t call myself an animator if I completely motion captured all my character animation.

This topic stirs up emotions inside of me that I don’t understand. Perhaps, in a previous life, I was the animator that got assigned the task of tracing over the girl that did Snow White’s performance. And I’m still pissed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Film Making. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.