2d Animation - Here For 100 Years And Going Strong Again
2D animation has captured the imagination of generations of film goers for almost 100 years. Since the birth of television, new generations have grown up captivated and fascinated by cartoon characters like Tom and Jerry and Wylie Coyote. Most of us will know the names of several great animators from the golden age of Hollywood, such as Walt Disney or Tex Avery. And who can’t remember seeing cartoons on television created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. I suspect that not many people today could name a great 3D animator! With the advance of technology, many of the skills used by 2D animators have been lost, particularly the ability to make a drawing seem to act. It has been said that 2D animation was made by actors who could draw not draftsmen who could act.
The good news is that Disney has decided to go back to 2D style animation for their next feature length film “The Frog Princess”, due for release in 2009. Hopefully a whole new generation will learn to love 2d animation. Just as computers have revolutionized 3D animations today, back in 1915 the invention of the cel changed animation forever. Before the cel, each individual frame had to be hand drawn. However the coming of the cel meant that only the parts of the frame that changed needed to be redrawn. A cel is simply a clear piece of cellophane onto which the animator can draw. If a background doesn’t change it can be drawn on a separate cel and reused many times. The technique was perfected when cartoons started to be mass produced for television. This allowed them to be completed in a fraction of the time they would have taken if drawn normally. Little did the animators know that the cels that they worked on would become collectors’ items, with cels from some films now changing hands for several thousand dollars.
The last full length animated films to be made using traditional pen and ink techniques were in 1997. Occasionally an independent film maker will release a film made in the traditional manner, but generally a process called digital pen and ink is used to help speed up the production process. Not to be confused with computer generated imagery (CGI), the process is still labor intensive and requires considerable input from the animator.
Although the processes are changing significantly, the future of 2d animation seems stronger now than at any time in the past decade. With 3D animators striving for more realistic results, it is left to the 2D animators to continue refining the processes invented 100 years ago and keep producing those “Old Style” cartoons.
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