Modern Animation

Those of you who are friends with Damios on Facebook (which in all honestly is probably everyone who would read this) may have noticed that he posted the video for “A Whole New World”, from Aladdin. If you scroll down a bit, you can read a conversation between him and me, which at one point discusses the animation quality of Aladdin compared to more recent works. We also discussed time travel, THE BURNING HUMAN SPIRIT, the fact that Crowley proves that my attempts to make Omegia asexual inadvertently turned the entire setting into a gigantic mental/spiritual orgy, the fact that Omegia also is documented proof that I am a creepy pedophile, and that Jesus is David Bowie. However, you really only need to focus on the animation part.

Go ahead and watch the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8VfN2BhJA8) or if you own a copy of the movie, just watch it instead. Pay attention to the animation. It’s GORGEOUS. Prior to watching the clip, I had assumed that a movie from the 90s wouldn’t have aged well. After all, we live in the future, with computers which can drastically reduce the amount of work needed to animate; plus, modern CGI should have improved dramatically since then. Except that’s not the case here; I watched the clip from Aladdin, a movie I watched when I was just a wee lad, and realized that its quality was superior to the majority of recent animation that isn’t PIXAR.

The oddity doesn’t just end with 90s era Disney. Look at the works of Studio Ghibli. The animation in their film Ponyo is hand drawn, but it is far, far superior to animated movies using computer technology to assist the process. True, Disney and Ghibli had larger budgets than most studios, but we’re comparing hand drawn animation to studios that presumably have the help of modern technology.

The problem isn’t just restricted to movies; many cartoons and animes have animation quality which makes me feel sad. There are only a few shows which I find visually appealing; Code Geass, Death Note, and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei are the only series I’ve seen recently where I’ve said to myself, “Damn that’s pretty” while watching. Part of it is a slight, personal problem I have with modern anime style: everything is so damn shiny and colorful. Even Code Geass has this, with bright primary colors thrown all over the screen every scene. It’s like they think we have the attention spans of children, and need the rainbow effects to keep us entertained. Death Note avoids this with a more subdued, realistic color scheme, but everything is still so bloody shiny looking.

Maybe I’m just ranting. In fact, I definitely am. I’m not an animator; I have no experience with the process it takes to make a cartoon. But when I look at modern work, I expect it to be higher quality than works that lacked modern technology. If it doesn’t, what’s the point of having all that expensive stuff in the first place?