Sunday, September 11, 2011



Pixar has long been a source of animated entertainment, which has most likely shaped all of us in some way or another. Dreamworks and Pixar both are renowned for some of the best animation of humans, and other characters ranging from robots, insects, every type of animal imaginable, even mythological creatures.

When I was still in high school, debating whether or not to choose a major in animation or live action, I looked a lot at the similarities and differences between live action film and animation. While animation is now entirely digital and created from computers, whereas live action is shot using real people on a set/location, there are some similarities.

Live action is frequently used in animated films, where someone hooked up to a motion tracking system performs the actions of the character, and the motions are recorded and used to create the motions of the character. On the other hand, animation is frequently used in live action movies to create the backdrops and special effects that would otherwise be impossible to achieve.

Through both styles, the same basic concepts are held constant, where every shot is thoroughly thought through, every line and every motion is carefully planned by teams and teams of crew members.

But besides making some deep concepts more "kid friendly," what is the purpose of choosing animation over live action? Because as far as I've noticed, almost all animated films (except stop-motion shorts) are comedies. Any thoughts?

2 comments:

Jackie Campbell said...

Hi!
As I was reading your post I started thinking about Avatar. I know that everybody talks about it, but it was definitely a movie that used animation for a purpose other than comedy.

The scene where hometree is destroyed shows that pretty well. I think that animation can be really powerful when used for movies or shorts other than for kids or for comedy. I am excited to see more in the future.

Anonymous said...

Good point! I guess my train of thought along the lines of pixar and dreamworks led me to forget about the deeper works of animation, and even with just pixar or disney or dreamworks, there's still a lot of deeper meaning hidden in those movies (but that's for another day) ;)