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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2537 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 3, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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It seems that 3D CGI animation has completely won against more 2D traditional animation styles. Looking at the animated media consumed by my kids these days, EVERYTHING is 3D-modeled CGI. I don't know of a single piece of animated media for kids that is not anymore. But is any such 3D CGI better than traditional animation? When I say "better" I mean, does it make better art than it would be if they did the same thing in traditional animation? Is there anything that this medium does really really well? Does it connect with us in a better way, make us feel more in any way?

I'm going to guess that the best thing that CGI does is "be cheaper". This makes sense, as once you produce a CGI model, you can use it forever, and you can adapt it to make new models. Do you want to make a scene of a crowd cheering? For traditional animation, you'd have to draw each person in the crowd over and over and over again, 24 times for each second. That's a lot of people to draw! For CGI, you can take one model, change it slightly to make other people, or use other preexisting models, and then animate them in a much less time consuming process than drawing frame-by-frame.

However, most 3D CGI stuff that I've seen looks kinda bland. As a case study, we can look at all of the Disney live action stuff vs the original animation. With the original animation, the artists pour lots of character into their characters. They exaggerate movements, change their faces to be very expressive with human-like characteristics. With remakes that extensively use CGI like The Little Mermaid and The Lion King, the characters are just kinda flat. I suppose this is exacerbated that Disney has tried to make all of the characters seem anatomically appropriate, resulting in Simba looking kinda like he's meowing instead of horrified when he sees Mufasa die, etc. But even without this caveat, I can't really think of any CGI that I feel like did something amazing. As another example, I've heard about the animators who make pokémon sprites complaining when pokémon switched over from 2D sprites to exclusively 3D models starting around 2013 ish. They complained about how you just can't give the same level of character to a 3D model as you can to a 2D sprite. Just making something look realistic does not necessarily make it better art.

Can anyone point to any 3D CGI media that does something really well, that elicits an emotional response that traditional 2D animation could not? Is CGI just a cost-saving measure to churning out bland media?

Are you aware of bluey? Maybe you don’t have kids? Bluey is an outrageously popular 2D animation show for kids that looks like it could have been made in 1995. It’s made in a software called celaction2d.

I can’t really overstate how popular it is. It’s made in Australia. It’s so popular that I suspect it will start having more copycats from more modern first world countries. (Just kidding Australians).

It’s also extremely wholesome. I can’t think of a single but of degeneracy in the entire show.

Not even a gay couple walking in the background? Strange.

Fellas, is it degenerate to walk down the street with another man?

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