Kenversations™
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The Two Fronts of Animation's Near Future
The fact is that animation is currently thriving on two fronts.

One front is digital animation. Digital animation is becoming increasingly photorealistic, moving beyond sparse use for special effects in the past to animate central characters of "live action" films. This is one area that may cause difficulty in classifying a feature as animated or not. Although most film fans probably think of "Song of the South", "Mary Poppins", and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" when they think of mixing animation with live-action, films like "Dragonheart", "Starship Troopers", "The Lost World", and "Star Wars - Episode One: The Phantom Menace" are just as much and even more a mix of animation and live-action.

Of course, as this has happened, it has left a shrinking need for traditional cel-style animated features, which work best with stories that couldn't have been made through live-action. Now, with operations like Industrial Light and Magic and The Secret Lab, a director can simply fill in the locations, sets, props, costumes, special effects, and characters with digitally created or added versions of things and people that weren't practical to put before the camera. There aren't many stories these days that would need to be told through cel animation.

Alas, the second front is that of artistic statements through stylistic animation. We don't care that the chickens in "Chicken Run" don't look like real chickens. If the director wanted that, it could have had them, but the film wouldn't have been as fun to watch. Such animation is freed from the constraints of trying to reproduce reality as we literally see it, and can become much more diverse and imaginative.

The Animated Feature Lives
I said at the outset that the animated feature isn't dying - in is morphing. "Morphing" refers to a special effect that was so noticeable when it was first being used and wasn't so commonplace. Morphing involves using digital techniques to make something on the screen change into something else smoothly. One of the earliest uses was in the film "Willow". Making a photorealistic digital image of something opened up the floodgates.

Using technology supplied, in part, by Walt Disney Imagineering, "The Abyss" was able to feature an alien silvery/water creature that could mirror the image of the actors. The next step was taken with "Terminator 2", in which the T-1000 "liquid metal" character could make his hand turn into a spike, mend bullet holes before our eyes, and even change the direction he was facing without moving an inch. It was quite a site to behold at the time. Soon, we were seeing realistic dinosaurs running around on the silver screen, and so forth. Digital animation started getting more and more prominent in films, and will continue to do so. It has allowed films to be made that just wouldn't have been possible to make as "realistic" just a few years ago.

As digital animation takes up more screen time, the Academy will have to make some tough choices about how much is enough to be considered "primarily animated". After all, just what is animation? That will have to wait for the next of the Kenversations™…

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-- Ken Pellman

©2001 Ken Pellman, all rights reserved. Licensed to LaughingPlace.com.

-- Posted February 12, 2001