Following up on my Miyazaki post from last night, the unveiling of this year's Oscar nominations shows Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle nominated in the Best Animated Feature category. THe other nominees are Corpse Bride and Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Interesting to note is that none of the nominated films autilize 3D computer animation. Howl's is traditional 2d cel animation, Corpse is stop-motion and Wallace & Gromit come to life via claymation. I know Aardman used some computer animation to augment their iconic cheese-loving clay characters. (In fact, the studio's next picture is entirely CGI, but made to capture the Plasticine look of their previous films.) I read that Miyazaki will allow some CGI in his films, but it cannot make up more than 10% of the total screen time. Burton used off-the-shelf digital still cameras to shoot the frames for his film. So there may have been some
digital technology employed in each of these, but none of them were created entirely on the computer.
This is interesting because a few years ago, Disney famously put all their animation eggs in the CGI basket. The result? Chicken Little. Enough said. I read at the time that Disney Animation sold all of their cel animation stands. When they got out of the 2D business, they were out for good. The Disney execs believed that what made Shrek and the Pixar films popular at the box office was the technology. That's what you get for letting paper-pushers make creative decisions.
But maybe Disney didn't get out of the 2D biz after all. When they sold those animation stands, they were snapped up by a little company in Northern California... called Pixar. Hopefully the animation stands won't be the only traditions coming home to Disney. Maybe the idea of telling good stories will return as well.
