Should this be in here or the Discussions board?

You know something I've noticed?

Whenever I've seen animation discussed on the internet, especially by the 'smart' crowd (which essentially translates to the people who use grammatically-correct English and so get all huffy about) and even on animation blogs, and even on this site where we really should know better, I've noticed a huge trend.

Apparently, CG animation automatically means bad writing, bad jokes and 'snarky' dialogue, while traditional animation means heart and care and all these wonderful wonderful things that 'they just can't do anymore because they're idiots and we're smart but of course we're going to just sit here and complain and b*tch and snicker about it instead of trying to do something like really smart people'.

Yes, all the bad traits of recent animated movies have been dumped onto the animation style. And I just find it bloody ridiculous.

So I'm gonna explain a few things right now.

1) CG animation is "always used for low-budget cartoon films with bad scripts".
Indeed, low-budget. The thing about computer technology is, it's not just gotten better graphically, but it's also gotten cheaper. What was so much dearer than traditional animation fifteen years ago is now so cheap anybody can do in their own home without training. It's not that CG influences bad writing, but that the low budget calls for CG because other methods of animation are too expensive, and that lack of budget is also responsible for the bad script, and guess which came first? Incidentally, the films with low budgets can be spotted just from their trailers. The animation is undetailed and the lighting usually flat. But seriously, rewind time and this kind of film was produced with traditional animation as well.

2) Traditional animation "has heart".
This is a trend started by Disney, of course. Low-budget traditionally-animated films owe all their bad and annoying points to various Disney characters and settings. They tend to be overloaded with sugar, with cutesy talking animals and magic and love and all those things while trying to actually have heart, which is nothing the animation style can do on its own. If you need me to actually give examples of low-budget films like this, try watching Ferngully, The Swan Princess and The Pebble and the Penguin.

3) CG animation "has no heart because it's snarky and full of pop culture references".
This trend was started by the original Shrek film, I believe, which did it well. And even then, that was going off a theme set by Hercules, which did it so-so. (Incidentally, both of those films have plots with 'heart' in them, which overpower the snark and parody.) But you shouldn't blame it on the animation style - nearly everything produced in the twenty-first century has these 'smart' undertones, likely because of the whole 'realistic dialogue' thing they're trying to get at. Because people in real life do snark and they don't try to pretend that brands don't exist. The thing is, like a lovey-dovey traditional animation plot, it's very hard to get right, but film-makers don't care either way when they're trying to make money.

4) Traditional animation is "better because the animators actually care about what they're making, while CG animators just click buttons and the computer does all the work".
Of course, both of them require a lot of work from the animators. Traditional animation can be considered easier for people to just pick up because absolutely everything is just drawn onto the page and quite easy to edit, plus there's only two dimensions, so movement is easy to animate. With CG, however, to create a decent bit of animation involves wrestling with a computer, and the only bit the computer does automatically is playback (for checking that an animation has been done correctly) and rendering (turning a clip into smoothed images that are then merged into film). The reason traditional animation actually costs so much is the paper - one mistake and you're buying more of it. But a computer can just delete a bad frame with a click.

5) "Audiences much prefer 2D to 3D. Look, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer got more people watching than Shrek the Halls! Isn't that proof enough for you?"
(Yes, this stupid comment was on an animation blog, and apparently took a long time for somebody to give a correct answer to, which was then immediately rebuked.) First off, that Rudolph animation is stop-motion animation, so it's more akin to CG than it is to traditional. Second, what families watch on television is often delegated by what parents think is more appropriate for their children, and usually this translates into 'what I watched as a kid'. Obviously, Shrek the Halls only came out a couple of years ago, and Rudolph's been around for decades. It's got nothing to do with the animation style whatsoever.

6) Common misconceptions about animation.
Animation is a process of film-making, not a genre of film.
Animation is, obviously, not a genre specifically for children.
Not all animation is Disney.
Anime and animation are actually the same thing. They're the same word.
If you really insist on telling me 'Pixar is the same as Disney', then call ABC, Miramax, Touchstone and ESPN 'Disney' as well. I bet you won't.

 

I am honestly sorry for picking only on this point, but the rest of your argument seems to be valid. However this particular point bugs me. Yes, fundamentally, they're the same in terms of creation, but there is a world of difference between them in terms of style, despite anime initially being based upon the animation of Walt Disney. Animation will laboriously animate a single character's every move, while anime will tend to have more detail and less animation. Anime has evolved into many different genres, from Shounen to Shoujo to Seinen and even to Hentai. In comparison, animation in the west has progressed far less, splitting into two categories of "Heartwarming Disney-esque films for kids" and "Comedy for kids". Family Guy, The Simpsons and Adult Swim are moving the latter more towards just plain "Comedy", but it's no where near the diversity of anime.

The names may be similar, and the word anime may have come from animation, and it may even be used to refer to all types of animation if spoken in Japanese. However in the rest of the world, anime has become a term used strictly to refer to Japanese animation. There's great debate about whether Avatar, something that's got all signs of being anime, sans being Japanese, is actually anime. Languages evolve, and this is how the terms have evolved. Anime is Japanese animation. Anime may fall into the category of animation, but in no way are they the same thing or the same word.

 

Ah, but I kinda just meant the fundamental processes here (anime just seems to have a much lower frame-rate). Yes, there is a difference between the use of animation in the west and in the east, but both terms just refer to a process of working.

 

Anime (when used in English) is used specifically to refer to the Japanese style of animation, as opposed to the western one. It's easily a big enough difference to stop them being "the same thing" or "the same word", which are extremely strong claims to make.

Both are animation, but from the way you phrased it, it seemed as though you were trying to say more than that.

But this discussion is going to drive the thread off-topic. We should try to get back on track, discussing CGI.