tools of theater and animation, uses the virtual world
of computer-modeling software to generate the ani-
mation. John Lasseter’s Toy Story(1995), produced
by Pixar, was the first feature-length digitally ani-
mated film. A commercial and critical success, it
humanized computer animation and obliterated the
fear that computer animation was limited to shiny,
abstract objects floating in strange worlds. Toy
Story’s focus on plastic toys, however, helped dis-
guise the limitations of early digital-animation
techniques. Six more years of development enabled
digitally animated movies such as Andrew Adam-
son and Vicky Jenson’s Shrek(2001) to present
compelling characters with visually interesting
skin, hair, and fur.
The production of digitally animated features
begins with less costly traditional techniques that
allow filmmakers to test ideas and characters
before starting the difficult and expensive com-
puter-animation process. Thus, in the early phases,
filmmakers use sketches, storyboards, scripts, pan-
tomime, puppets, models, and voice performances
to begin developing stories and characters. By cre-
ating a digital wire-frame character with virtual
joints and anchor points, digital animators use
technology to do some of the same work that stop-
motion animators do by hand. Typically, a clay
model is created and then scanned into the com-
puter with the use of a digital pen or laser scanner.
Animal and human actors can be dressed in black
suits with small white circles attached to joints and
extremities, allowing for “motion capture” of the
distinctive movement of the actors. The advanced
motion-capture technologies developed to animate
the Na’vi natives in Avatarblur the line between
animation and live action.
In digital animation, animators manipulate vir-
tual skeletons or objects frame by frame on com-
puters. To clothe the wire-frame figures with
muscle, skin, fur, or hair, the animators use a digi-
tal process called texture mapping. Digital anima-
tors also “light” characters and scenes with virtual
lights, employing traditional concepts used in the-
ater and film. Specialists work on effects such as fire,
explosions, and lightning. Compositing is the
process of bringing all these elements together into
one frame, while rendering is the process by which
hundreds of computers combine all the elements
at high resolution and in rich detail. Because the
backgrounds, surface textures, lighting, and special
effects require a tremendous amount of computer-
processing power, animators typically work with
wire-frame characters and with unrendered back-
grounds until all elements are finalized, at which
point a few seconds of screen time may take hun-
dreds of computers many hours to render.
Although the process is extremely expensive and
labor-intensive, digital animation’s versatility and
aesthetic potential have made it the method of choice
for studio-produced feature animation. Aardman
Animations, the Claymation production company
behind the popular Wallace & Gromit movies,
designed their project Flushed Away(2006; direc-
tors: David Bowers and Sam Fell) with the stop-
motion plasticine look of their popular Wallace &
Gromitcharacters but created every frame of the
film on a computer.
After a string of traditionally animated failures,
ending with Will Finn and John Sanford’s Home on
the Range(2004), Walt Disney studios announced
that it would no longer produce hand-drawn fea-
tures. Ironically, Pixar mastermind John Lasseter
has now assumed the position of chief creative
executive at Disney, and this king of digital anima-
tion has announced plans to revive the studio’s
hand-drawn tradition. The move comes as no sur-
prise to those familiar with Lasseter, who began his
career drawing cel animation and is a vocal propo-
nent of the hand-drawn animation of Japanese
master Hayao Miyazaki, the director of the Disney-
distributed Academy Award–winning Spirited
Away(2001) and the Oscar-nominated Howl’s Mov-
ing Castle(2004).
With the release of Hironobu Sakaguchi and
Moto Sakakibara’s Final Fantasy: The Spirits
Within(2001), audiences were introduced to the
most lifelike digitally animated human charac-
ters to date. To create these sophisticated repre-
sen tations, the filmmakers used an elaborate
process (since dubbed “performance capture”)
whereby actors perform scenes in motion-capture
(“mocap”) suits that record millions of pieces of
data that computers use to render the motion of
CGI characters on-screen.WHAT ABOUT ANIMATION? 113