CGI

In November 2007 I went to the Bradford Animation Festival, part from enjoying seeing animation in a theatre again I started to analyse what I felt animation had to offer. CGI shorts were those that I disliked the most partly as they reminded me very much of Sci-fi cartoons that are so common on channel 5. This I feel is an oversight from the animator as it is vital to understand what other animations exists with the same aesthetics to understand how yours will be read. A piece called man particularly lost my interest, the emotional theme of environmental erosion wasn't conveyed as eloquently as it would if they hadn't used CGI. The clear lines of CGI mean that it directly imitates real life, its almost as if your watching live action with lighting, skin, texture, movements, materials existing as in our world as we see it. If they had used traditional animation not only would they create a new world, interesting and intriguing, but the brushstrokes, colour, texture and form would all contribute to the emotion of the piece. I think this was demonstrated with another animation called Celestina which had similar setting and form as man yet used clay, the characters were alive and communicated their plight so much more convincingly that in man.

I don't believe that CGI can even compare to the strengths of live action where you can identify emotion quite clearly from a real person. It is easy to identify the emotions of a person because of a humans natural formation, learning how to read faces, expressions and mannerisms. An animation character is an unfamiliar face, you are being introduced to a new concept, both in environment and personality so by reading the other aspects of animation, the form, structure, the way it has been constructed enables the viewer to read the piece fully.


man


celestina