conventional animation | the m0vie blog

Toying With Us: Pixar’s Animation Legacy

Posted on May 8, 2010 by Darren

This is one of my entries on the latest cross-blogging event, tracking down some of the most overrated movies of all time. It’s being run by Mike over at You Talking to Me. I can’t spoil the list by giving you any of the other titles, but I did take a quick look at Spider-Man‘s legacy earlier in the week.

I love Toy Story. I love Toy Story II even more. I am anticipating Toy Story III with baited breath. I adore Pixar. The only two films they’ve produced that fall short of excellence (in my opinion) are Cars and A Bug’s Life and both are still above average as films go. So it may seem odd to critique the legacy of perhaps the first great computer animated film – but this is a strange world we live in. Think about it, though. Pixar have essentially killed conventional animated films – at least in this part of the world.

Computer-generated animation spreads its wings...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: animation, cgi, computer animation, conventional animation, disney, dreamworks, films, Movies, pixar, toy story, toy story 2, toy story 3 | 8 Comments »

Getting Animated – The Revival of Old-Fashioned Animation?

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Darren

We live in the era of 3D and CGI. I remember back in they day there were worries and complaints by all the unions in Hollywood that the advent of perfect CGI would mean the end of actors in Hollywood – why pay Jim Carrey $20m a film when you can create a character for a fraction of that? Needless to say it hasn’t happened yet and I doubt it will. Hollywood and movies have always been the land of personalities. Get rid of those personalities and you have very little. It isn’t the antics of directors and writers that fuel the tabloid industry. So it’s logical that the part of the industry that has been most threatened by the marching on of science is the one where there is already minimal personality. I speak of course of the death of 2D animation. Although I hope I’m being premature – there have been two stories in the past 24 hours that indicated that old-fashioned non-live action films may not be quite dead.