Since the days of the Disney’s first short Steamboat Willie, the art of animation has evolved to become a growing industry and occupation. We see companies like Disney, Industrial Light and Magic, Weta, and Marvel studio utilizing the advancement of computer technology to produce animated content. Animation uses a wide arrange of tools and technique to create moving images using computer technology that has led the artform to a new age of digital creation. Every animators had a unique skill like characters designing, background, effects, or coloring. These skills were best practiced with using the waterfall approach to animation. However, it would coordinate the animation team to understand the bases of the project and work to better define the project parts.
There was little room for errors in the traditional animation, due to the large risk in human error and needs. Since every frame was drawn by an individual, animators are faced with risk in redoing frames if they mis-drawn the animation sequence. Another disadvantage in traditional drawing is that the production process is slower due to the need of buying specialize tools, whereas just having a computer and software.
Digital animation, like 3D and digital 2D animation, comes with advantage of being cost effective and create a large margin of error since computer animation allows for undo’s on mistakes creating less delay in changes.
Traditional animation encompasses technique like Claymation, 2D-cel animation, and stop-motion. The workflow in this method follows the waterfall model. The project would begin with a story board, a rough layout of what the film will look like with limited definition in character and design. Animators would synchronize prerecorded dialogue to then match during the animating process. In a digital workflow, animator have a pre-production phase. This allows the team to frequently modify scenes elements without delaying the project if there was a mistake or director critique.
Some of examples of the disadvantage of traditional animation is the series Bee and Puppy cat, a short series that featured a young girl and her pet friend Puppycat. This series had much popularity in a wide demographic pool but faces a heavy drawback in their production. They were an all-traditional animated series that focused on creating the series using hand drawing and coloring than digitally drawing. After there success of producing their first episode, they needed money to continue creating more episode, so they decided to crowd source to fund the series. Fundraising through their follower was successful however they slowly lost followers because the timeline for funding and content creation became so distant that fans began to forget about the series.
They were determined in creating a fully traditional animation series even though the disadvantage of that is times and attention through a quick attention span of audience. Some studios understand the disadvantage of traditional animation but intergraded this practice with new tools. For example, the indie video Cuphead caught fire in the gaming community with it unique 1930’s art style in a modern game. The game character was animated using traditional animation techniques and later integrate to a game engine to be designed into a video game. In this case, marrying the two processes allowed the creator to artistically express their concept but design a process that used modern tools to follow audience attention.
Links
sofanimation.com/traditional-animator-vs-digital-animator/
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/animation-skills
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/frederator/bee-and-puppycat-the-series/description
https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/28/16378364/cuphead-art-design-1930s-animation
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