What’s wrong with that? Well it’s not that the current approach is wrong. But left unchecked, it will stunt CG’s growth.

Hanging on to the old ways too long creates a self limiting view. It’s like looking at a nail that’s been hammered into the wall. Since all you see is a metal disc, you may start to believe that that is all there is to a nail and therefore fail to see it’s most useful and unique characteristics.

So we need to be aware that, when it comes to CG, we are really only looking at the head of the nail. In other words, this is just the beginning.

In order for the new technology to reach its full potential, it has to start exerting its own properties. So instead of looking for what makes the new technology the same as the old one, we have to start looking for what makes it different.

Photorealism gets creepy. An example is Shrek’s Princess Fiona. Courtesy of DreamWorks Pictures.

Freed from the past, a new technology begins to develop its own syntax, which then connects it to new kinds of content and forms of storytelling. We know that a new technology is really coming into its own is when it starts to do things that couldn’t be done in the old technology

Think of when live action realized it could move the camera and thus ceased to be merely filmed theater. Or when plastic stopped pretending to be wood and started being only plastic (and then fake wood regained its cool with post modern irony).

Early commercial animation, like Mutt and Jeff, was often based on comic strips. As you watched the film, the underlying structure of the strip so obvious you could pretty much see where the layout of each panel would be. Even more importantly, the animation made little or no difference to the story — it was just window dressing. Then along came Felix the Cat, and suddenly there was real film structure. And there were stories and jokes that depended on movement and magic.

So how is CG different from its predecessors? Of course, CG’s most unique quality is its ability to simulate realism (more accurately, photorealism) to a degree unimaginable by even the greatest masters of the old technologies. At first glance, this seems like a dream come true — the finale to a great quest, but is it really that simple?

In fact, once we start to examine it, we discover that this one attribute brings up many issues — some more problematic than others.

Right off the top, it’s odd and thrilling, but also unsettling to suddenly find that one’s obsession has been matched with a new technology that holds the promise of fulfillment.

The drive to realism in 2D has been with us for decades, but the old tools had those natural built in limitations which contained the obsession, disciplined it. Animators had to be content within the boundaries which kept the drive in a lower gear. Meanwhile, their excess energy could be channeled into figuring out inventive ways to create an illusion of a third dimension, of reality.

CG raises the dilemma of photorealism: something recorded vs. something invented. Above are two Chris Landreth works, Bingo (left) and Ryan (courtesy of Copper Heart Ent. and the National Film Board of Canada).

But then, the animators get handed this new tool, one that dangles the promise of a manufactured photorealism which one day will be indistinguishable from the real thing. As it turns out, the promise has dangled there for years, the technology developing much more slowly than predicted but still making regular enticing advances: talk about a tease…

Of course, animation has always been an obsessive art form, but before CG we had control of the tools: how far you could take the illusion was between you and your pencil. No one was stuck waiting while the engineers worked toward perfecting the pencil, an excruciating process with new features added yearly. No one longed for the day the ultimate pencil — the one that allowed you to really draw to your full potential — would finally arrived on the market.