Today’s animation buzzword is CGI (Computer Generated Imagery). This system of making animated films is a far cry from the original Disney method, painted by hand, cel by cel, twenty-four cels per second of film. Movies like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty were the product of years of animation work by an army of animators. Today, individual cels from these early animated films sell for a small fortune. Each is an individual work of art.
Disney had to prove again and again that animated film was more than a fad. He produced his first full-length animated movie in 1938 with Snow White. Despite his doubters and detractors, the movie was a howling success. So too were its successors, until one of them slipped in the early 1940s. This was hailed by the critics as a sign that the age of animated films was over. Disney had a hard time financing his next film, and the studio nearly failed. Of course he went on to make Peter Pan and many other highly successful animated films. Nobody but the critics and the financiers ever really thought animated films were only a fad.
By not long after that, there were alternatives to cel-by-cel animation. Stop-motion animation was a system that got an early start. It amounts to making models, and moving them in tiny increments, then photographing each small change on another frame of film. In the 1950s a series of “monster movies” captivated audiences with the jerky motions of dinosaurs, centaurs and other mythical Greek creatures, sci-fi spooks and just plain Godzilla-style behemoths. Most of these were done by the legendary Ray Harryhausen, the muse who worked alone with his models, moving little parts ever so slightly, then shooting another frame, then making tiny adjustments and shooting the next frame, moving at the glacial rate of about 13 frames per day – about a half-second of film. His animation was then coupled with live photography and yielded stories like Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, and Jason And The Argonauts. It wasn’t unusual for Harryhausen’s work to take as much as two years for a single film. Most of the Harryhausen products were less than great thespian vehicles, but even today they’re entertaining, like playing songs from a jukebox in a 50s café.
CGI came with the computer age.
But the real explosion was at Pixar Studios. Led by Apple Computer guru Steve Jobs, Pixar broke through from the earlier CGI world of glowing outlines, light sabers and created backgrounds for live action, to 100% computer-generated images – people, animals, everything. Jobs made a series of shorts that charmed the industry, and Disney put Pixar under contract. Toy Story, made in 1995, was the world’s first fully computer-generated full-length feature film. And people loved it. It was one of the most successful animated movies in history. With its sequel, Toy Story II, it made about $850 million dollars, for a cost of only about $120 million.
Pixar went on to make a series of blockbuster CGI movies in partnership with Disney, but that venerable company, set in motion by the revered father of American animation, had descended by the new millenium into a profit-motive hardball corporate philosophy. When it was time to re-up the contract, Jobs and Pixar said, “No thanks.” Disney CEO Michael Eisner and his minions appeared to think Jobs was simply negotiating, and they continued to assure their stockholders that all was well. Jobs et al were on a different wave length though, and had made the decision that life was too short for Eisner-style histrionics. Eventually it was clear that the break was real, not a negotiating posture. Falling stock values, plummeting ticket sales and the fact that carnivorous management had estranged the most profitable growth part of the company led to a stockholder revolt, and Eisner, once the most highly-paid CEO in
So now that we’re satisfied with the march of technology, from hand-painted cells to stop-motion animation to CGI (with a couple of hybridizations and other oddities in between) we stare slack-jawed at the current crop of successful animated films. The three that are nominated for academy awards this year are none of them CGI!
The front runner is the touching and very imaginative Corpse Bride by Tim Burton. Featuring well-developed and expressive characters and a great story, this touching film is a rich drama – and it’s played by tiny mechanical puppets about a foot high that have intricate machinery. The film was made with stop-motion animation, and the characters were incrementally moved between frames with tiny adjustments with watch-size screwdrivers poked into ears and mouths to curl a lip or drop an eyelid. In 1938 audiences fell in love with an animated personality in Snow White, proving that an animated figure could have a life of its own. Today it’s hard not to give your heart to the empathetic bride in Corpse. She has more personality than some of the old Bond girls.
The British Wallace & Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit is an incredibly imaginative and entertaining story made with a type of stop-motion animation called claymation. The characters are made of clay, and the frame-to-frame adjustments are made by reforming the clay ever so slightly. (Think Gumby – the greatest claymation character in television history.)
The third, Howl’s Moving Castle, is made by Japanese genius Hayao Miyazaki, the creator of the enormously successful Spirited Away.
