Animation history?

First off, it was an observation and a question, not a statement. Second, I'm glad to hear you've experienced the opposite. Since you're on the other side of the world from me, it's not hard to believe that you'd see something different in your peer group than what I see in mine.

My apologies, I've re-read your question (not statement) and understand you were looking for other people's opinions.

I need to update my profile. I'm back from New Zealand and in New York. Before that I was kicking around in the Bay Area. And I also did find a number of my co-workers to be surprisingly ignorant of the history of their own companies, let alone the industry. And it wasn't limited to kids, but people who had been in the business for years.

For instance, I'm still amazed at people who give Lucas credit for digital animation when it was his (and his board's) decision to 'give' Pixar to Catmull because they didn't find it viable (kind of paraphrasing, but you get the picture).

I'm inclined to agree that a lack of history won't necessarily hurt you, but I also realize the benefits of knowing it if only to prevent you from repeating the bad stuff and to keep you from having to reinvent the wheel on the good stuff. For instance, the Flash production pipeline with swap animation is far from new. Hannah and Barbara had been doing it that way for years. There's a lot to be learned from history, and the names/dates are the best way to reference that information.

Are you saying that all animation must incorporate caricature?
See, this is what I'm talking about: people become brainwashed by "academia."
There are plenty of animated characters that aren't caricatures or employ little caricature:
all the animals and tall characters in Snow White, half of the human characters in Cinderella, all the characters in Bambi, Watership Down, The Iron Giant, King of the Hill, The Polar Express, many Pixar characters, much of anime, nearly all CGI animation, most superhero cartoons, Winsor McCay, Polar Express, Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, Jonny Quest, etc.

I get what your saying about 'you need to know this,' 'you need to that line of thinking. It's extreme and isn't true for all of animation. If you want to do certain styles, it would be beneficial to have certain skills. But it doesn't preclude you from doing all of animation. You could do some brilliant animation using magazines and pushing around pictures in front of a camera without knowing a stitch about anatomy, caricatures, or even how to hold a pencil (or push a mouse). In this case, knowing how to use scissors would help, but you could still get away with tearing the paper.

However, on a separate thought, I think your a bit off the mark on the caricature thing (I disagree with your definition, not your point of needing it for animation) but just to play devils advocate, aren't all (or nearly all) of those examples of caricatured characters? They're lighter than others, not necessarily suited for carictures in the sense of Political cartoons, but more in the broad definition of the term. They are still all iconified to be simpler to draw (or render) and still retain and exagerate the features that make them recognizable. Each of those examples have choosen character traits to exagerate (anime - eyes, superhero - muscles and facial features, Disney's animals - simplified to be easier to draw and still look like the animal, Polar Express - expressionless botox forheads, etc.). Even Scanner Darkly has been simplified to be recognizable (or unrecognizable depending on the scene), but it keeps the parts that make Keanu looking like Keanu. Much less a caricature, but still retains some of the definition (although I'd settle on this not being a caricature as well, could be argued either way convincingly, I imagine, I'm personally leaning towards caricature).

Basically, you'd be hard pressed to find anything in real life that actually looks exactly like those examples. You'd find similarities, but that's the point of caricatures. CG Digital doubles would probably be one of the few examples that strives not to be a caricture of real life, although I would accept the argument that the toys in Toy Story are much less abstracted (and characterized) than most animation (however, I'd like to be shown an bug, car, or person in real life that looks like any of Pixar's other characters), but 'many' was a quantifying word, so it still fits.

Damn, another semantics thread...

Some years ago, whilst I was working in Porto (north of portugal, where the port wine comes from), I was really priviledge to go to an exhibition about Ladislas Starewicz's fabulous work organised by the studio where I was working. I was set up by his granddaughter who now owns the puppets, and featured puppets and sketches from all of his films.
Animation history does matter, everyone either in the business or considering it, should be aware that the beautiful armatures made by Mackinnon and Saunder for the "corpse bride" are still based upon Starewicz's genius designs, and he was around from almost the very beginning of this animation thing that were always talking about here. People like him, Windsor Mc Cay, Lotte Reinninger, Emile Cohl etc are just some of the names that anyone in love with animation should be aware of.

p.s... people must be aware of what has already been done and be inspired by it... but , this doesn't mean that anyone should be forced or feel forced to join a "group" or a "style". animators, when doing their own work must be adventurous, patient and stubborn enough to pursue their very own views and dreams!! As a friend of mine once said "an animator is somewhere between a shy actor and a dictator" :D