In this age of technology, many "old-fashioned" animation techniques have been abandoned for computer-generated imagery. However, a new trend is emerging, one which uses the computer as a tool to achieve the look of old-fashioned techniques while taking advantage of the ease of production that technology offers.

Case in point: South Park and Blue's Clues. "What could these two radically different shows--one for adults and one for pre-schoolers--have in common?," you may ask. The answer is that they both use computer animation software to create a look that many uninformed viewers assume is the product of painstaking cut-out animation. What most people don't know is that quite a bit of technology is at work to achieve that "home-grown" look, shadows, textures and all.

South Park. © Comedy Central.

South Park
At a production studio hidden away in Marina Del Rey, California, animators and technical directors on the South Park TV show and feature film use high-end equipment: Silicon Graphics workstations running Alias|Wavefront's PowerAnimator software to create a virtual plane--in 3D space--on which "flat" computer-generated characters are animated. Even the texture of construction paper is applied in the computer, and that "no-platen" shadow look is achieved by separating the character's parts with a small layer of space as would occur in real cut-out animation, which is, in case you were wondering, the technique Trey Parker and Matt Stone used to create The Spirit of Christmas, the animated short that spawned the Comedy Central series. Monica Mitchell, a production manager on South Park, pointed out that it would have been nearly impossible to produce the show with construction paper. "Time and flexibility are the bottom line," she said, noting that changes to the show are often made the day before broadcast.