Kids flicks?
Whatever you’re watching, they’re not from Pixar.
Please. It’s this attitude that makes some people take the “All CGI cartoons suck!” stance. Pixar is very good at what they do, but let’s not fool ourselves here, their movies are first and foremost made for children.
Just because adults like them too is a bonus.
I miss traditional animation too, because I know how much more work went into drawing and painting each frame and cell by hand. Computer animation is too perfect for me. It lacks the individuality that you can see from various old cartoons, and the various cell layers moving from frame to frame.
I’m 22 and I’m already reminiscing about the “good old days.” Consider myself terrified.
I would like this thread to be about feature films.
Thank you. There is a difference between an “All ages” movie (Star Wars, Fantasia), and a “Kids’ movie” (everything Pixar has made.) The fact that Pixar worshippers claim otherwise is part of what’s so confusing/annoying about them. I heard for months, basically, that Finding Nemo was an ADULTS’ movie. Non-Pixar worshippers can imagine my surprise when I sat down to watch it and saw what was very much a childrens’ movie.
For the record, I don’t think all CGI cartoons suck. I liked Hoodwinked and thought several others were decent. I just think they are in general overexposed, overrated, overhomogenized, etc. Nothing I’ve seen from this generation has the spirit of a Peter Pan or the aesthetic of a Snow White.
I think the difference is, Pixar may throw in a few higher-level jokes that only adults will get (for the sake of those who often get dragged to the Pixar movies anyway). Those jokes don’t necessarily make them animated adult movies (come to think of it, that’s a whole different genre…).
Before anyone jumps down my throat, I’ll admit that The Incredibles is closer to an “all ages” movie. And Ratatouille - I dunno who that valium-on-a-disc was targeted towards but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t children.
That’s 2 out of 9.
I’m fighting ignorance.
Yes, but if you say that it’s because you don’t like green fruit while pointing at a canteloupe, he’s going to assume that you really don’t know what you’re talking about.
No one’s saying that you have to like animation - but dislike it for qualities it actually has, not for qualities that have been incorrectly assigned to it.
Warner Bros. has been doing this since the 1930s.
Since we’re fighting ignorance… CAPS wasn’t used until The Little Mermaid. Xerography, with a few improvements later on, was used from One Hundred and One Dalmatians until Mermaid.
That’s great to know and all, but in the field of motion picture arts and sciences, I’m almost exclusively concerned with the art. You seem very wrapped up in the science. Your bolded comment especially shows that you’re way farther down the 3D side of the scale than I am on 2D’s side.
I don’t see how Finding Nemo was a kiddie movie. It was about a father who was so afraid of losing his son Nemo that he basically didn’t let him live his life. Suddenly his son his thrust out into the big bad world and Marlin had to confront his worst fears and finally come to terms with the fact that his son needed some independence. That’s not kiddie material that’s adult material and makes Finding Nemo a movie for all ages.
Marc
Oh please. I’m ignorant because I used “genre” in its perfectly legitimate broad sense of “kind”? (Words can have specific meanings as well as more generic ones at the same time.) Nice schoolyard gambit: “Ha-ha, you said my shirt is blue, but it’s really azure, nyah-nyaaaah!!” I don’t care for this kind of movie. I have seen some, and I thought the stories and jokes were lame. The ones I haven’t seen, I’ve seen the ads, and NOT ONE OF THEM intrigues me in the least.
amarinth: Yes, this studio’s animated movies may be different from that studio’s animated movies. Guess what? Still don’t care. I am not interested in any of them. The qualities that I have assigned to them are “annoying,” “lame,” and “boring,” and from my point of view that is absolutely correct. You are free to assign any sort of qualities to them that you like; doesn’t change the ones I’ve assigned to them. And I have yet to find any sort of melon that I like. Yeah, they’re different from each other. I still hate them all. Big whoop. More melon for Mr. S, who loves them.
…isn’t going to be able to get funding. Or at least wide playing. For ages animation was something that Disney did for kids straight to video, and I don’t think that animation that isn’t “an hilarious romp through x by anthropomorphic y’s and z’s mainly for kids but with some adult zingers thrown in that the kids won’t catch” isn’t going to get off the ground.
For one thing, the guys with the $$$ know only 1 recipe for making money from animation. The other is that the general public still think that animation = kids show (and point 1 doesn’t help). IMHO Princess Mononoke could have been the film you describe, except for the above. I recall begging my dad to go see it with me but he declined saying he didn’t really like animation, only to later infuriate me by reading the newspaper and offhandedly remarking that Princess Mononoke had gotten pretty good reviews; perhaps he should have gone to see it. :rolleyes:
While answering not-your-question, I realized that a lot of the good animated movies I could think of came out 20 years ago:
[ul]
[li]I don’t like everything Studio Ghibli make, but Princess Mononoke, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and Howl’s Moving Castle were excellent IMHO.[/li]
[li]Compared to Heavy Metal, my brother bought the animated Aeon Flux that came out a while ago, and likes it. (Haven’t seen it myself). It’s certainly fairly original in animation style, plot, and story telling.[/li]
[li]My favourite animated movie ever has to be The Wings Of Honneamise, which I actually own with my own money. (Would shock most people who know me).[/li][/ul]
BTW gaffa: You’re being a bit hypocritical about anime IMHO; you’ve gone to great lengths to differentiate between 2D and CGI companies and subgenres, and then say that because I like Ghost in the Shell that I must like Dragon Ball Z? 
Yes, actually, you are. “CGI movies” are as much of a genre as “color television” is a genre. And it makes about as much sense to dismiss one en masse as it does the other.
An irony to me was when my friends realized their elementary age kids knew the “fairy tales… with a twist” but didn’t know the original fairy tales. That’s when they started renting the old school Disney faire, and the kids much preferred the fractured versions. Perhaps in a generation there’ll be a revolution to go back to the basics- “the twist with a twist”, which is to say the original. (Of course the Disney and other classic animations were a different kind of twist, an upbeat one, on the Brothers Grimm and HCA versions which were usually a lot darker.)
I don’t really mind CGI movies- there are things about them I like better than and not as well as the traditional hand drawn classics. What I can’t stand are directors who incorporate CGI into live action films seemingly thinking that CGI is indistinguishable from real life. George Lucas is the most notorious of course, along with Peter Jackson as next up perhaps, but there are many films with characters and scenery that are no more lifelike than the painted sets you’d find on a theater stage (except in theater it works because you don’t expect realism, and movies you do).
My problems with anime are specifically stylistic ones - the very limited frame-rates, over-use of walk cycles, “Bambi-eyes”, spiky hair, expression shorthand unrelated to nature (winks, throbbing eyes, bizarre mouth shapes) - and how thoroughly these elements have infiltrated Western animation. The most awful thing about anime, Miyazaki uncluded, is how they animate the damn things and dub in the audio in later. They don’t sync up even in Japanese (I saw both the English and Japanese theatrical releases of “Spirited Away” at Chicago’s McClurg Court theater). In this way, anime sets animation BACK to a time before the invention of the dope sheet.
Where did I say that? Please don’t put words in my mouth. I pointed out that anime defenders constantly use a half dozen examples to defend anime that doesn’t share any of the elements that made those films good. I’m not denying that some anime titles may well have great writing and excellent character development, but the stylistic conventions are so repulsive to me that I can’t get past them. A person who doesn’t like to see people killed will never be able to enjoy “Pulp Fiction”.
Too long, I agree.
I think you’re not giving enough credit to 3D movies, and too much to old 2D ones. Many of the older Disney movies have the same general feel and character design. This comes from the fact that it’s the same group of people working on different movies. Looks changed most when new people or new technology were brought in, such as the free reign Eyvind Earle was given for Sleeping Beauty or the adoption of Xerography for animation cel tranfer. The three movies you cite are 25+ years apart from each other. Give 3D that much time and I guarantee you’ll see drastic visual changes.
Pixar movies have a visual style that remains relatively constant because they, too, are the same group of people working on the same movies. However, when you say The Wild looks like Madagascar, you need a new contact lens prescription. Horribly derivative? Yes. Visually derivative? No. (FTR, neither of those two are Pixar production. The Wild was unmitigated crap; Madagascar was 2-stars with a few good characters.)
That all being said, there are things you can do with 3D besides having it look photo-realistic, and I would like to see something like that done in a feature sometime soon. (and I don’t mean a toon-shader) Imagine a film matching Maurice Sendak’s illustrations, complete with cross-hatched shading.
This problem is certainly not unique to 3D animation. Few, if any, of the old Disney movies could really be considered pure comedies. It’s harder to pull off a serious movie, so they don’t try. It’s too bad. Shrek 2 took the fairy tale twist in a logical direction I liked, but 3 was crap. Dreamworks focuses on comedies in part, I think, because Jeffrey Katzenberg’s attempts at ‘serious’ 2D like The Prince of Egypt failed to make money.
Pixar, again, does not go for the stupid laugh. There’s humor included, but plots are independent of any humor, often driven by complex emotions. When they want to make you laugh, they make a short. I challenge anyone to avoid laughing at Presto.
This has been addressed above, and in previous threads.
The key part of this is the “taking it self seriously” part. It also needs a compelling and accessible story with likable characters. And music. Not a pop star singing over a montage or the credits, but real, live, great, in-story songs.
John Lasseter, for one.
Bit of a hijack, but this is one of the things I like about anime. It allows for more detailed characters. (Of course, look at anything with a real budget and you’ll get the best of both styles). As far as the rest of your points, eh, tastes vary.
I have to admit I prefer mixed cel animation and CGI to pure CGI. I don’t want my animation to look like real life–that’s what live action is for. And the motions of CGI characters never look quite right. That said, I can’t help but swoon over Appleseed Ex Machina. Gorgeous…
But we’re not talking about matters of taste in some of these cases, we’re talking about technical elements of the anime style that would cause a beginning animator being schooled in the Western tradition to get a poor grade.
There is simply no excuse for recording the audio after the animation rather than before. When the original language version of “Spirited Away” was not in sync, and the behind the scenes documentary proved that the vocal recording session only happened after the animation was completed, that’s when I gave up on trying to appreciate anime. You can’t have a decent “illusion of life” if lips don’t match speech.
To get back on track, 3D animation by default is full frame rate. There is little economic advantage to not animate and render every frame. In theory, one could do the vocal track after animation, but I’ve never seen an example of it - most 3D programs allow one to load in an audio waveform and match movement to speech.