3D Ain't So Bad

Well, I'm a big fan of traditional animation. I used to admire all this 3D when it started flooding the TV screen... All the pretty colours and shadows... And later on, I realized that most 3D animation was mostly popular because of those reasons... ooh shiny... and that most of it was not so good. Not to say that there wasn't any good in it... Although the animation on ReBoot wasn't very good at the beginning, the show won me over with its charm and it became better as time went on.

One of the true pioneers of good and great "3D" animation is Pixar, without a doubt. Teaming themselves with Disney(for distribution at first, later on... they were bought) might've seemed a bit fishy at times but they still make good if not great movies. And, let's not forget Disney was a pioneer of traditional animation... and they're very good at mixing different animation mediums without making it obvious. So, the two of them together might have been a good idea after all.

Of course, I found out that Pixar has all creative control over their movies and that Disney wasn't responsible for any of them. I used to believe, like many, that the two studios worked hand in hand on each movie.

And then came... The Incredibles... Up to this point, I hated how humans were portrayed in CGI animation... Sure, I liked the Final Fantasy movie, the visuals were great... but I kinda agreed with one of my animation teachers that the characters were emotionally stiff... Although, he put it in a much more crude way "I've seen Muppets with more emotion than those characters"... but I'm not here to bash on that movie.

The Incredibles made me believe that humans could look just as cartoony and flexible in a CGI movie than they can in a traditionally animated movie. I thought that movie was so awesome and I liked Bob Parr's character design so much, that I drew him over and over for awhile after seeing the movie. No reference was used...

Enjoy,

~Guy H.L.

"The Incredibles" © of Pixar Animation Studios, distributed by The Walt Disney Co.