2012 Awards Season (Oscars, Golden Globes, etc.)

[ImOscardotcom]

I said "limited". "Limited" doesn't necessarily mean "worthless". There are potential uses for rotoscoping, but those potential uses are so few, and the problems inherent in the technique are so large that you would almost always be better off just using regular animation.

[bratpop]

I'm saying there's a reason for the distinction of animated films in the Oscars, and it's not just because they look different. The rotoscoped movies are purely an aesthetic choice, not film created from scratch. They were live action before they were drawn over. I'm sure real animators would be pissed if those movies won. Fully animated features are awarded separately because of the pure imagination involved in creating all the characters and sets from nothing. They're not hampered by Keanu's acting ability.

[ImOscardotcom]

I'm sure real animators would be pissed if those movies won.

Oh, that they definitely would be. Believe me, my views about rotoscoping are positvely liberal compared with more than a few animators I know of.

[Petey Wheatstraw]

I said "limited". "Limited" doesn't necessarily mean "worthless". There are potential uses for rotoscoping, but those potential uses are so few, and the problems inherent in the technique are so large that you would almost always be better off just using regular animation.

Rotoscoping allows filmmakers to combine the complexity of live-action film with the artistry of animation. I don't recall any problems with rotoscoping at all. The technique has produced some of the liveliest animation I've ever seen.

I'm saying there's a reason for the distinction of animated films in the Oscars, and it's not just because they look different. The rotoscoped movies are purely an aesthetic choice, not film created from scratch. They were live action before they were drawn over. I'm sure real animators would be pissed if those movies won. Fully animated features are awarded separately because of the pure imagination involved in creating all the characters and sets from nothing. They're not hampered by Keanu's acting ability.

Rotoscoped films are made by real animators. Like I said before, they don't simply trace over live footage. There's a whole process that goes into creating the look and feel of the drawings and animating the actual scenes themselves. And the process of creating backgrounds for animated films is usually done separately, by the way. Background artists are not animators. They are painters. They don't create moving visuals. Artists who create moving visuals are animators.

And Reeves did a good job in A Scanner Darkly.

[ImOscardotcom]

I said "limited". "Limited" doesn't necessarily mean "worthless". There are potential uses for rotoscoping, but those potential uses are so few, and the problems inherent in the technique are so large that you would almost always be better off just using regular animation.

Rotoscoping allows filmmakers to combine the complexity of live-action film with the artistry of animation. I don't recall any problems with rotoscoping at all. The technique has produced some of the liveliest animation I've ever seen.

See, that "complexity" is one of the big problems I mentioned. One of the arguments for rotoscoping that I've heard is that a live actor will come up with little "touches" that an animator drawing at a desk woudn't. But usually, in order to preserve as much of the orginal actor's performance as possible, the animator will have to keep a lot of other unnecessary business as well, thus diluting the original actor's "touch" instead of sharpening it. And if the animator is good enough to recognize those little touches and highlight them, he-or-she'd probably be better off just creating the whole thing from scratch, perhaps only using the live actor's performance as reference.

[bratpop]

Yeah well, as I said we could argue it forever, but it comes down to how animated films are created.

I like A Scanner Darkly very much, but it's not something the Oscars would recognize, animated or not.

[mrbasehart]

From the imdb:

In a surprise result, DreamWorks's Kung Fu Panda beat out the favored Wall-E as it picked up 11 Annie Awards, including best animated feature, Friday night at the 36th annual awards presentation of the International Animated Film Society. The film's other awards included best voice acting in an animated feature for Dustin Hoffman. Despite nominations in eight categories, Wall-E, which remains the favorite to take home the Oscar for best animated film, was shut out.

I liked Kung-Fu Panda, but better than Wall.E? Never.

[Doctor Who?]

What what a fun little movie that didn't really do much to break formula beat out Wall E.

If Wall E gets shut out of the Oscars I will be mad.

[ImOscardotcom]

From the imdb:

In a surprise result, DreamWorks's Kung Fu Panda beat out the favored Wall-E as it picked up 11 Annie Awards, including best animated feature, Friday night at the 36th annual awards presentation of the International Animated Film Society. The film's other awards included best voice acting in an animated feature for Dustin Hoffman. Despite nominations in eight categories, Wall-E, which remains the favorite to take home the Oscar for best animated film, was shut out.

I liked Kung-Fu Panda, but better than Wall.E? Never.

Not really a suprise to me. Quite a few animators I know of disliked (if not outright hated) Wall-E.  I guess that this was supossed to be their 'rebuke'.
Ah, well. Probably will still win the Oscar.

(Keep in mind that I haven't seen either movie-and I don't plan to- soI don't have a dog in this hunt.)

[mrbasehart]

Why'd they hate it?

[Doctor Who?]

Yeah it really seemed to be a good use of animation,why would anyone hate it?

[Tripe]

Q: How many actors does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: 10; one to screw in the ligh bulb and 9 to seethe, "that hack, it should be me up there!"

I'd imagine there is something similar going on in this situation too.

[ImOscardotcom]

Why'd they hate it?

Hmm. That's a bit complicated, but try and follow me.

The main complaint seemed to be that, animation-wise, it was indistinguishable from CGI effects in live action films. It tried so hard to be photo-realistic (I believe that Pixar even hired a live-action DP as a consultant) that, at least until the 'humans' show up, it was impossible to tell it apart from a standard special-effects movie.

Keep in mind that Pixar is pretty much the biggest animation studio around today, right? And currently, the whole future of the animation industry is pretty much in uncertain limbo thanks to the almost-total death of hand-drawn animaton (which resulted in a lot of 2D animators being forced to switch to a computer if they wanted to keep working) and the development of things like motion capture, right? And for many animators, their whole attraction to animation stems from the fact that it's not like reality, capable of caricature and exaggeration, right?

So, when the biggest animation studio in the world releases a film that's near-impossible to tell apart from a live-action film, they're not going to take kindly to that.. Come awards time, they're naturally going to vote for the overtly 'cartoonier' film-in this case, Kung-Fu Panda.

They're just scared that Wall-E is just one more step to the day when they'll be reduced to creating FX for live-action or tweaking mocap.

[mrbasehart]

I guess that makes some sort of sense.  So what you're telling me is that The Frog Princess is going to win every single "Annie" Award next year?

[ImOscardotcom]

I guess that makes some sort of sense.  So what you're telling me is that The Frog Princess is going to win every single "Annie" Award next year?

Depends on if it brings back hand-drawn animation or utterly destroys any hope of reviving it.