So Disney has decided to close down its theatrical animation production operations.

Wow.

How amazingly foolish can a giant corporate conglomorate get?

--Well, amazingly so, if one looks at the many examples of corporate billion dollar self-destructive activity recent history has provided us with. But the question is meant to be rhetorical. Where should I even begin. . ?

Right. My own reactions. Always a good point to set out from. Let's start with 3D animation, since this is where Disney will now be re-focusing all of its production might. . .

To be blunt, I find the stuff just doesn't, "feel right." As entertaining as films like, Toy Story and, Finding Nemo were, they seemed plastic-looking and weirdly sterile as compared to hand-drawn animated films. The reasons for this aren't so baffling on the surface. Computer generated movies look like high-end video games, with that over-bright, fuzzy feeling which always seems to accompany. But there is something else. The films brought to us by the new computer technology, while big, fun, flashy, well-scripted are somehow still. . . Well much time has passed since my first viewing of, Toy Story numerous years ago, and I've come some distance in working out what it is exactly that bugs me about the new medium.

To begin with, I pondered if perhaps it had something to do with just how difficult it is to animate characters using a computer.

--There's a reason Pixar and Disney chose Fish and Toys and Monsters (inc.) for their subject matter. Computers are horribly ineffectual tools as compared to the humble pencil when it comes to the job of capturing and expressing complex emotive substance. --Oh, certainly, there was some delightful expressiveness in the animation of those fish and monsters and toys, but it seems to me that if the subject is more complicated than a plasticy blob creature, (or in the case of Toy Story, creatures which were actually supposed to made from plastic), then computers quickly run into trouble. Humanoid subjects are terribly demanding. Witness 'motion' capture devices and costumed actors augmented in post-production with computer generated faces, etc. --Even in, Finding Nemo, the most technically advanced of the Pixar/Disney model, the human characters still seemed to move around like department store dummies.

Now pull up a Warner Brothers cartoon and watch the Bunny and the Duck do their thing. Pull out your copy of Aladdin, (you know you have one), and compare. The motion and expression of reality in those characters feels easy (and humanoid), all of it smoothly convincing without seeming at all, 'strange'. When Aladdin put an arm around his girl, there was a perception of genuine softness. . . Her hair, just a black shape on screen really, was nonetheless an expression of the idea of a girl's hair. Rendered computer objects, however, are no longer just shapes and ideas. They cross a boundary and actually become objects.

See, here's the thing. . .

A flat, 2D drawing can pretend to be a 3D drawing. Indeed, it must pretend. But while it is doing this, that same drawing can pretend to be other things as well. It is not confined to the cold mathematics of 3D geometry. In fact, a 2D drawing while invoking the imagination, can in fact perform the impossible.

Rather like the, Matrix as described by Lawrence Fishbourn's character, the world of 3D animation must obey rules, and as such, it creates its own limitations. --Whereas 2D animation is limited only by the imagination.

Think about that crazy 'baby and rabbit in the kitchen' cartoon at the beginning of, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Unless you start animating via Photoshop or Flash, (both 2D tools), you will simply never get a computer to achieve those same kinds of effects. Remember? --Black and white kitchen floor tiles soaring over the screen at ten thousand miles per hour, flying babies and rabbits, kitchen implements, irons and creamed carrots hurtling through a universe which a 3D animation program couldn't even begin to rationally comprehend. --But which the human mind can embrace as easily and as naturally as understanding laughter. Human minds are so much more!

"There Is No Fish"

Bugs and Daffy cannot be reduced or understood by the painfully literal musings of a CAD (computer assisted design) program. It's that simple. And why somebody would ever want Bugs and Daffy reduced as such, is not just beyond me, but it's even vaguely horrifying.

Unless you can do the impossible, then you'll never be able to capture the essence of Duck, Rabbit or Humanity convincingly through animation. You'll never accurately mirror the human soul, which is certainly not limited to the X, Y and Z axes. --Animated eyes popping out in shock simply doesn't work in 3D. In fact, animated eyes popping out in shock is faintly disturbing in 3D. In 2D however, such an effect is a metaphor, not a direct reality. And that's the key. That's what this is all about. Metaphor.

In short, 3D animation is simply not the same animal as pencil and paper animation. It's not even the same species. It's closer in nature to clay animation, which while having its appeal, is. . . Limited. And Disney, in their lack of wisdom doesn't seem to realize that they are abandoning the medium upon which they were originally founded in favor of something which is not an improvement on an existing product, but rather a different invention altogether. --One which is, to my mind, far less powerful.

And further, I wonder what will happen to children when they grow up into adults having watched only 3D animation, being told to think of that as the height of the creative power. Training kids to think in 3D only, and to not offer avenues which lead to places beyond. . .

Yes. I wonder what happens when you put kids in boxes and tell them to grow up within those confines. After all, our media is not just a mirror. It is also a mold. After enough time, the soul becomes that which it gazes into, and sometimes I even vaguely wonder if Disney might not on some level be aware of this, and somewhat deliberate in its manner. After all, consumers are much easier to control, (squeeze profit from), when their minds are tightly chained and prevented from wandering too far from the plantation. . .

Oh, and I just discovered that two of the most creative directors at Disney are being let go. John Musker and Ron Clements, directors of numerous animated features including, The Little Mermaid, and, Aladdin, are no longer under the employ of the Big Mouse. What a shame.

Cheers, to you, guys! Your work has been well loved.

-Mark Oakley

Jan 25th, 2004
Wolfville, Nova Scotia