CGI or Traditional animation?

[Trassk]

I was watching wall-e with my nephew the other day, one of my fav cgi animated kids movies. After that, i put on a dvd of snow white for him to watch, but by then he seemed more interested in banging the furniture with his toy tool set.

I started to wonder, with the advancement in CGI, in gaming, movies, tv and such, since those early days of bad cgi, its come a long way, and i realised, I could not remember what the last traditionally animated movie was I last saw. I think it might have been the princess and the frog, after that nothing else came to mind.

Buy regardless, we're at a time now where it seems traditional old style draw animation is slowly becoming a thing of the past, and CGI is overtaking it in all forms. With the exception of some tv shows, but even some of those seem to rely on using CGI in a lot of they design now, looking at the simpsons movie for example.

Anyway, simple question, do you miss the days of traditional animation and wise to see more, or do you like the advancement of cgi and fine with animation studios making movies only in this format now?

Edit: I didn't include stop-motion animated, because they are so few and far between, even gold nuggets like nightmare before christmas, Wallace and Gromit, Coraline or Robot chicken, and you don't see much of it now

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Traditional drawn animation and stop motion. I've fallen in love with the olden style, Sleeping Beauty cartoons and stop motions like Nightmare Before Christmas. I connect with the pictures and makes me feel like I really am looking at a film. I do not get that feel with CGI or computer drawn animations.

[Feali]

CGI. Sorry not sorry. It just looks more polished. And kill me for saying it but: The Hobbit looks absolutely stunning and it's the greatest visuals I have ever witnessed. Not even joking.

[Gallahadd]

Why not both? It's possible to use hand drawn animation and... Spruce it up with some CGI.

Perfect example of that is Last Exile. The animation is just stunning.

[Deleted]

I like both.
Sure, most stuff is made CGI today but traditional shouldn't be forgotten.

Mixing it sometimes makes the movie look good, ex The Iron Giant. And sometimes weird, ex Dragonball: Battle of Gods.

The Pixar short film Paper Boy that came out 2013(?) used both aswell and it looked really, REALLY good

[Shinzai]

I have the utmost of respect for masters of CGI and hand-drawn or digitally drawn artwork. Both take huge amounts of effort, coordination, time and care to create. Having seen the evolution of CGI effects from things like The Abyss and that Sherlock Holmes film with the CGI stained-glass figure to today's films has been a great journey in itself.

CGI still hasn't fully matured in my opinion and has a lot more time to grow and develop. We're reaching the point where you can tell designers and 3D artists are becoming more comfortable with the medium and are starting to consistently create more and more impressive works. I feel it would be insulting to the people who create these works to dismiss them for trying to create something still relatively new. People often forget that it's not just the creatures or explosions and such that are designed by them, but also the backgrounds. Scenery, objects, locales and more are often created from scratch, or modified heavily in post to create otherworldly, artistic vistas, the likes of which were only possible with huge, hand painted water-colours and limited set designs in the past.

[Nekovivie]

Both have their merits. CGI is great, as long as it's well done, like Frozen or Wall-E for example.

Regular animation can be great too, like the recent DBZ movie. I lean towards CGI though.

[Trassk]

guess I should have put a both vote in.

[hellhamster]

Third option: practical effects.

[Miyani]

I love traditional when done like this -



This is all hand drawn. Another good one is the movie redline.

[Deleted]

Something that seems to be trending in the animation world at the moment is using 3D to replicate 2D visuals. Paperman, Disney's Beast and Guilty Gear XRD are all really good examples of this. They're done really well aswell, I hope they catch on.

[Mirishka]

CGI. Sorry not sorry. It just looks more polished. And kill me for saying it but: The Hobbit looks absolutely stunning and it's the greatest visuals I have ever witnessed. Not even joking.

I totally respect your opinion but I think the Hobbit movies looked incredibly fake. Distractingly so. I made the mistake of watching the first one in theaters at 48 FPS and the whole time I sat there, thinking about was how phony it all looked.

Hell Ian McKellen even spoke out against the relentless amount of fake green-screen BS in those movies.

[Feali]

I totally respect your opinion but I think the Hobbit movies looked incredibly fake. Distractingly so. I made the mistake of watching the first one in theaters at 48 FPS and the whole time I sat there, thinking about was how phony it all looked.

Hell Ian McKellen even spoke out against the relentless amount of fake green-screen BS in those movies.

It's really sad for the actors. But imagine if you never watched a movie without CGI before. It wouldn't look weird it would look normal to you.

[hellhamster]

I'm also of the opinion that the Hobbit CGI looked like shit. Only Smaug and the big smelt golden dwarves were done well.

[Gallahadd]

Hell Ian McKellen even spoke out against the relentless amount of fake green-screen BS in those movies.

Aye. One of the things that won me over to the new star wars trilogy is JJ saying that he'll be cutting back on the amount of CGI used, opting for more practical effects.

[Anonymous Coward]

We won't be making a return to the golden age of animation that existed in the 90's. Gotta remember there were huge studios of animators then, drawing frame by frame, which by today's standards is horribly inefficient, and requires paying too many artists too much money. This, coupled with the fact that most studios in general won't produce movies that don't have a guaranteed audience, means CGI use will continue to be the primary means of animation.

[Dasffion]

Aye. One of the things that won me over to the new star wars trilogy is JJ saying that he'll be cutting back on the amount of CGI used, opting for more practical effects.

Thank god, that's the thing that ruined Ep 1-3 the most for me. The insane amount of green screens used in those just made it annoying to watch.

[Tokru]

Hand drawn animation has limits that CGI doesn't have. And don't tell me about details in old Disney movies. They all lose against Akira. The only problem is that nowadays not many people properly use CGI to full extent. That's why all animated movies have the sme cartoonish style. It's just easier than a lot of details. I would love to see more movies like Final Fantasy that tried to do realistic CGI with modern technology.

[Zoaric]

Both have their places and charm in my opinion. I do miss seeing fully traditionally
animated movies come out, but fortunately I have a massive backlog to catch up on
for that.

[Skizzit]

For me, I enjoy both as long as they are well made. I guess I may lean slightly more towards 2D animation but then again my favorite animated movie of the last year was The Lego Movie. The fact that they made an entire world that really looks like it was a stop-motion movie made with legos is amazing.

Even hand drawn animation is all done with a computer these days as far as I know. At least it is animated that way. No more drawing each frame by hand on a cell or anything.

As for CGI vs. practical effects like in The Hobbit or Star Wars movies, that is an entirely different discussion.