Animation Software: The current state of the art

Animating with software has always seemed to be a bit of a touchy subject. Traditionalists bemoan the fact that the end product has no heart (or rather none of the heat that they know and love). Pixar has long led the industry in the 3-D CGI field of animation thanks to their proprietary Renderman software. Many consumers associate computer-produced animation with that type of animation. But computer animation is present in many other forms and the speed of today’s computers makes it possible to create almost any type of animation without even picking up a pencil.

I guess this post is partly inspired by the launch party I attended in New York for Toon Boom’s latest piece of software, Animate. Pitched as a complete studio package, it is proof that computers can truly replace the pencil and paper as the tools of the trade.

The very first feature to be produced using computers (Disney’s Tron) wasn’t even computer animation in the modern sense. Every scene had to be animated individually before being processed into a moving image. At this rate, computers would have offered no advantage over the cel. But like all things, time changes things, ten years later, Steve Jobs’ company Pixar turned the animation world upside down with their movie Toy Story. The world and his wife is familiar with that event, so there’s no need for a re-cap here.

What Pixar’s Renderman software did was create virtual 3-D models, that could be mapped and textured to the animator’s heart’s content. But what about 2-D animation. After the enormous success of Toy Story, many predicted that as movie genre, the writing was on the wall. To a certain extent it was, Disney, Sony and others left the traditional animation business (although Disney rethough their decision, with the department headed up by none other than Pixar’s John Lassater). Traditional animation is far from dead though, The Simpsons Movie was traditionally done, although those in the know are aware that some cheats were used in that production.

So what am I getting at here. Well, after a demonstration of what Animate can do (performed admirably by Aaron Simpson of Cold Hard Flash), I came away rather impressed. Futurama was the first series that I remember seeing that utilized 3-D elements (like the Planet Express Ship or scene pull-outs) in conjunction with 2-D elements. The results weren’t always seamless, but they were certainly impressive for the late-nineties.

The point of the demonstration, and indeed, the aim of the developers, is to create software that caters especially to animators. Adobe Flash has been in use for years and has proven immensely popular because of it’s cost and ease of use. However, it was never intended as a vehicle for programme production, it was originally for simple banner and ad animations on the web, until of course, someone realized it was good for something else.

So what are the advantages? If you’ve got a few minutes, listen to Ralph Bakshi explain his thoughts on the topic:

With drawing tablets, it’s possible to draw directly into the computer and manipulate everything in there, instead of drawing and erasing and scanning and so on (think of how much less animation will hurt the earth now that all that paper isn’t being wasted). What’s great about such tablets is that things are still hand-drawn in the traditional sense, they just don’t exist in the traditional sense. Now does that mean that paper will disappear entirely? No, it just means that a more efficient way of doing things has come along; like how digital cameras replaced 35mm ones for all the normal stuff that doesn’t have to be perfect.

The other upside is cost. Traditional animators (such as Walt Disney) know that a camera is by far the most expensive piece of equipment, so much so, that most usually rent the time on one as they could never afford to purchase one outright. With studio software, that step is obsolete, because the camera is built into the computer. I am sure that in years to come, we will see the benefits of this, and not in the sense that all animation will be reduced to the cheap, crap that can be found all over the internet right now.

The proliferation of softare like this may be something to keep an eye on if you’re in the industry, it’s definitely the future, it just has a bit longer to go before it’s perfected.