The trend of CGI in Animation by Richard
Over the past 20 years, so many things have changed, with the advent of high
tech gadgetry such as cell phones, mp3 players, PDA's, DVD's and so on.
Nowadays we even wonder whether a time when all those gizmos were not around
really existed. Remember how you had to be home to actually get a phone call or
drive all the way to the store if you wanted to get a book or check the price
of some item, and I won't even tell you about calling someone halfway across
the earth, which was to be done on special occasions only considering the cost.
Well, all those things and more have completely changed.
For those of you who want to take a break from the big digital convergence, you
might wanna go see a movie in your favorite theatre, an animation why not, with
its painstakingly handmade drawings filing past the big screen and creating the
illusion of motion, the kind that has been enjoyed for over 80 years ... And
that's when you find out with a bit of surprise that those animated features
which you enjoyed so much as a kid are simply not there anymore. Instead, you
will have to choose among a plethora of animations of a new type, and when you
do and start watching the feature of your choice, you notice how smooth the
image is, how incredibly life-like the characters are and you start feeling as
though a real camera has taken those shots. And the depth, you can feel it's
there and then you start wondering how ...
How on earth could they draw with such accuracy and create such crystal-clear
images, and soon it hits you and you begin to understand that even the art of
making animations has finally been caught in the big canvas of new
technologies. And later when you ask a savvy friend how they do it and he
explains that they use computers and 3D softwares to reach that level of
accuracy, you realize that nothing will ever be the way it was before. But it's
ok because you end up seduced by the beauty of those images of a new kind, and
you got plenty to choose from, about 15 full length releases in 2006 alone and
many to come in the next years. There you are, hooked up on computer rendered
landscapes and characters that you now fully enjoy.
You might even wonder if you could still spend 90 minutes watching the Lion
King or Alice in wonderland and its desperately out-of-fashion two dimensional
sceneries, but you dismiss that thought and think about your kids. For them CG
Animation is just the regular thing and old cartoons never really did the
trick. Already a generational gap is growing because no matter how much you
enjoy those flicks and think you know everything there is to know about them,
you end up realizing how ahead of you your kids are. You might understand and
appreciate the CGI trend but they know how it is done and even what programs
are used to create the stuff and where to find them on the net. But that
thought is also dismissed and becomes irrelevant because all you want to do is
sit down and relax in front of your widescreen LCD high definition tv, the
latest blu-ray release of your favorite CG Animation already in the player, the
future became the present and the past is lost far behind. You have a good time
with your family and presently that's all that matters.
About the Author
Richard is a long date CGI geek. He shares his deep knowledge of Computer
Generated Imagery on http://www.cganima.com/
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