The Simpsons Movie: Relic of a Dying Art?
What is happening to traditional, hand drawn animation? If one looks at box office receipts lately, the multiplex really has been dominated by Pixar Studios and their imitators. It seems that computers has taken over, becoming the dominant method of animation. Lets think about it this way. How many CGI films came out recently? Ratatouille, Surfs Up, Shrek the Third, and so on and so on. How many hand crafted cartoons? None that I can think of this year, and looking back through recent history, the only thing that comes to mind, besides the forthcoming Simpsons Movie, was the cinematic version of Spongebob Squarepants.
Apparently, according to the BBC, this is a view that Simpsons creator Matt Groening shares:
Speaking at a press launch in central London, he said The Simpsons Movie was “a tribute to the art of hand-drawn animation, which is basically disappearing”.
“All the animated movies these days are computer generated,” he said, adding that his film had been created in “the old-fashioned, clumsy, ‘erase it if you don’t do it right’ way”.
“It’s not a CGI movie with a thousand perfect penguins dancing in unison,” he continued - a reference to Happy Feet, the winner of this year’s Oscar for best animated feature.
July 6th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
You know, I KNOW there has to have been SOMETHING after spongebob because that’s just sad. I honestly can’t remember what though…maybe one of the Treasure Planet movies from Disney? *goes off to check online….*
July 7th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
I think a number of traditional animated movies are being made, it’s just that most are being made for television or straight to DVD release and not for theatrical release. There may have been one or two wide releases, but there really hasn’t been a non-CGI blockbuster cartoon in a while.