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Kind of sad, kind of scary...

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Kind of sad, kind of scary...

This is taken from the Ed Hooks Acting for Animators newsletter:

CRAFT NOTES, PART TWO
Reuters reported on June 3rd that Michael Eisner, at a securities representatives meeting, said this: "The 2D business is coming to an end, just like black and white came to an end."

The issue is story, story, story, Mister Eisner - not 2D, 2D, 2D. You are wrong.

Until next month....

Ed Hooks

Shows you what happens when you put non creative people in charge of making entertainment. They just don't get it.

ed

Ed_Gavin's picture
Department of Computer Animation Ringling College of Art and Design Sarasota Florida

Department of Computer Animation
Ringling College of Art and Design
Sarasota Florida

2d

it's time for CGI to take over :)

it's time for CGI to take over :)

Is this a serious remark? I certainly hope not... If it is, I suspect it will spark a pretty big, heated, pissed off response from many folks in here.

"Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard" - Paul Simon

Don't tag the body bag just yet!

2D dead? I hope not, just begining to work on a 2D TV series. That'd put an awful cramp on my day... :)

Seriously, does anyone REALLY believe this? It IS all about story, well-crafted characters and heaps of imagination. These have been in abundance in most of the 3D flicks so far, but this isn't inexorably linked with them. There isn't any software that writes good scripts! (When that day comes, I'm leaving. The planet!)

The telling time will be the next few years, as the technology becomes cheaper and more prevalent. When the market starts being flooded by CG films produced by people only after a quick buck, with no care for quality. THEN, as these second-rate flicks start bombing, hopefully those naysayers will start to wake up from their crazy pixellated slumber-land, and realise what Pixar realised when it set out with Toy Story: Story is King.

I have no beef with either medium, I just believe in good, well-written, well-executed toons. There is room for all forms.

Here endeth my rant.

Noticing a pattern...

When id Software produces first person shooter games like Doom and Quake, every wanted to be the next one. The "Quake-killer," with odds in favor to pick a game that ironically used a version of the engine from the game against which they were competing, wound up actually being the original company's sequel.

Man people claim to have very deep and personal conversations with God in many forms. Neale Walsch makes his public and everyone's open about it for the first time in a long time.

Spider-Man was done as right as possible, and now we've got a hundred and forty seven needless clones in future sights seeking to reap the cash-cow benefits, not because there might be quality cinema in it, but because attracting the lowest common denominator they think folks will go "Hey, it's comics" and go see it regardless of how lifeless and obscure and terrible it it. So far only the sequel, X2, and Hellboy have gotten anywhere near close the praise.

What I'm getting at? 3D and 2D are not at war. 3D is an extension to 2D. By definition it is an added dimension, and being done on computer it is animation in a different medium. Quality 3D on the computer almost completely necessitates quality talent in 2D on paper. You must understand the basic principles to be convincing, regardless of what medium or nth dimensions. A few companies (though in my mind I am singling out Pixar) hit it big and the same mistake is being made. The intelligent and diverse movie-viewing public those movies attracted recognize the quality story and well-roundedness, but moron C- average outsider execs go "Hey, it's purty, let's do one" and even more moronic reviewers go "Treasure Island/Emperor's New Groove/You Name the 2D are extremely terrible movies because they cannot hope to live up to the visual quality of 3D animated films." Yah! That's it! So now there's a tension as some of lower-integrity folks in power decide whether or not to push the red "crap-release" button and unleash terrible movie hell upon us.....I contend that so far with a few minor exceptions we're playing it safe; something tells me that unless Eisner has absolute dictatorial power the company is not so overconfident and mentally gone as to play their 3D cards anything but right. But there is no death to 2D. Even if you don't see a 2D movie for seven years, you'll see three in the eight. Change is the only constant, and nothing is permanent. If just for the very nostalgia of it, we'll always have a place.

I think the first movie that Pixar will release after they're through with Disney is going to be a 2d movie. After that, they'll team up with Warner Brothers.

[]s, Cassandra

Yeah.. I heard that also..
the two d feature that pixar is (maybe) doing..
didn'thear anything about a warner bros partnership Though!
P.

It's an opportunity for refreshment...

I might not know a lot about the bussiness of animation, since I'm only an art student and Animation is not exactly my specialty, but I want to say something anyway.

Everytime someone questions the capacity (or remaining life, like in this case) of 2D it's because unlike 3D -so far-, mainstream 2D has been awfully repetitive trogh the years, and, as we all know, the mainstream dictates the opinions of most people, creating prejudices about 2D animation. That's just the obvious result of how many crap has been made in the exact same way ('cartoonish' characters with no personality, TV shows and movies that consider 'childhood' as a synonym of stupidity, and so on...) in 2D, using formulas instead of forms.

I strongly believe that the possibilities of 2D, in a lot of fields -not only in image- are even bigger than the ones offered by 3D (I see 3D only as a fashionable thing), but 3D had the luck of being born when a lot of those prejudices about (not 2D, generally, as happens with comics...) animation were already formed, so those who worked on it were more careful on deciding what to show, ergo, their work seemed extremely 'refreshing'. I think the problem right now is to make 2D appear refreshing again, and going in the same way in which it's been going for years is not the answer. As many of you have said, the STORY is what's most important, but caring only about it is forgetting for a second about the suppleness of animation, so I think it's about mixing the only things 2D can offer with the strenght of a well written script, and forgetting once for all that Animation is not a medium for telling stupid things, or in the given case, to despise those who think that way.

2D is death, long live 2D!!!

mabye pixal will do 2d animation using a Paint Shader technique (?).
i don't like this technique, it can have nice outcomes, or irritating image.

those who unfamiliar with PaintShading, its an algorithm to shade 3d objects into 3d - 2d image.
keeping outlines, source light and dark shade light and base color.

example:
this is a 3d model, transformed with PaintShader (3dmax)
http://s95147397.onlinehome.us/art/prowl2web.jpg

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Transformers!!!!!! Yeah!!!!!!!!! \o/