I really wish animation would be treated the same as live action in the US

[VGmaster9]

Anyone else feel that animation in the US is really dumbed down compared to the rest of the world? It's for two reasons.

1. 95% of the time it's either child friendly stuff or adult comedies, there's almost never a middle ground compared to other places like Japan.

2. There's been a real lack of hand drawn animated films, even when there's been a digital solution to traditionally drawing on paper.

The only way we'll only see animations that are neither kiddy or crudely adult, or an abundance of modern hand drawn animation, is on the internet. I'd love to see a theatrical film that uses the latest technology that looks like this.



I just hope that someday we'll see a major US animation studio as big as Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks that makes both 3d and 2d and have the maturity of most live action films.

[Paul Fierlinger]

I don't understand, this looks crudely childish to me.

[2dbert]

I agree with Paul. Also, while I might have agreed with your wish some time ago, the current situation of live action movies doesn't really call for envy, I think. My perception of US cinema is probably a bit distorted, since I guess that about as few independent American films make it to theatrical release over here in Europe as vice versa. But from what I see, animation is blossoming everywhere, albeit not the sort that wishes to be perceived as such, unfortunately. Even something so far off a cartoon as the recent Scorsese gangster movie can't actually be called live action anymore. But at least the "Irishman" is definitely not trying to please adults and children alike. The dominating sort of current (rudimentary because to a great extend animated) live action cinema however does: Superheroes, Star Wars franchise, Disney remakes and so on are essentially kid's stuff, glossed over with some gloom and doom to give people my age an excuse to still go to the movies, aren't they? I usually still don't, so my judgement might not be fair. But in an age of omnipresent all-inclusive family entertainment, I find films that are openly aimed at either children or adults not so bad, actually. At least I don't see how this could be to blame for the sorry state of a genre. And European cinema's state may be different, but not better. So my completely subjective impression is that all sorts of western filmmakers have currently reason to enviously glance at their Asian colleagues rather than at each other.

[Jet]

That animation is OK for what it is but it's a bad example for what you're discussing I think, because I'm left wondering what "latest technology" means, we've been able to draw on computer screens for two decades, a better example would be the Klaus lighting tool-chain (I forget what they call it) or the old Disney DeepCanvas (but perhaps Blender will at some point provide that one).



But what makes a middle-ground? I imagine Wes Anderson, Laika, Don Bluth create what could be considered middle-ground productions? Take Titan A.E. which was made by Bluth, it's an average movie with some unlikable characters, but what struck me about this movie is I at one point said to myself "this could have just been made as a live-action", that's when I knew I had a bias against animation, I was seeing it as a genre instead of a medium, which might be the difference between how US directors largely today treat it (the audience too, probably) as opposed to directors from Japan or France. I'm much older and wiser today, and I regard animation as nothing more than a medium.

Just a medium...

[sean121]

Yeah, I totally agree with you. Way to go for the US in animation content. I wish we rule the world in the anime world with our technology and content as we are with our live-action movies.