ANIMATION – Can the General Public Tell the Difference Between 2D animation and CG animation?

The Simpsons Quote:

Homer: This place looks expensive. I feel like I’m wasting a fortune just standing here. I better make the most of it.
[Homer burps]

Something has come to my attention that’s kind of odd to me working in the animation industry, but I found this to be relatively true.  I’ve asked on my Twitter page about this and my Google+ page and I found a few things out, but it’s still inconclusive.

So here is what bothers me.

The general public, the non-animation aficionados or geeks or fans or employees don’t really know the difference between 2D animation and computer generated animation.

That’s what this post is video/post is all about.  You can watch the video or read the transcription below:

It all Started at Figure Drawing

I was speaking with a friend of mine at figure drawing at work.  On Tuesdays, we go figure drawing.  We got to talking and one of the things that my friend, Richie Chavez, said kind of struck me as odd, which was, that the general audience doesn’t know the difference between CG and 2D animation.

I didn’t believe him.  I’m like no, that can’t be right.

An Eye Opening Conversation at a Kid’s Birthday Party

But then I went to a birthday party for a family friends’ kid.  Now this is a family friend.  They know what I do for a living, okay?  They know I work in an animated cartoon.

At this children’s birthday party they were showing The Owls of Ga’Hoole and Lilo & Stitch.  That was what was on TV.  And while they were watching Lilo & Stitch I decided to go up to one of my friends.

It was his child’s birthday.  They were watching the cartoon.  And I went up to him and I asked him so, do you know how this is done?  Do you know the difference between the hand-drawn 2D stuff and CG?  And he turns to me and he says,

“Well, now that you mention it, I kind of have an idea that there is a difference, but I’ve only recently become aware of it,”  And I asked him,

“This cartoon, Lilo & Stitch, CG or 2D?”  And he’s like,

“I’m not sure,”  I mean seriously, he didn’t know.  He did not know the difference between hand-drawn.

Explaining the Difference

I told him one is, you know, a computer generated puppet that you move around.  There’s more to it than that, but it’s generally, the gist of it is that you have a computer generated puppet and you move him a little bit and then you take the picture and you move him a little bit and take the picture.

Sort of like that.  It’s not really how it happens, right?  But I just kind of wanted to get his head in, thinking that way.

And then I told him in 2D, you do the same thing but with drawing.  You hand draw the thing and then you put it under the camera.  You take a picture and then you do the other drawing.  You take a picture.  Then once you have 24 drawings of those or 12 drawings of those exposed twice, for 24 frames there’s one second and the same kind of goes for CG.

Sometimes they go with 30 frames a second, sometimes with 60 frames a second.  But I was trying to explain to him the difference between a hand-drawn thing and a CG thing and the difference in the way it looks.

What’s Your Experience with Non-animation Fans?

By looking at the movie, you should be able to tell the difference.  So I guess my question is, is your experience the same as his?  Can you tell the difference?

When you’re a fan of a thing you tend to be really into the thing.  So you kind of know more than the general public.

But if you are part of the general public or better yet ask your mom that’s not in to this stuff.  Ask your spouse, whoever it is that is not into this stuff.  Ask your friends who are not into this stuff.  Ask them if they know the difference between 2D and CG animation.

I would love to know the answer because if you are a fan then you are not the person I want to hear from.  I want to hear from the people who aren’t fans, because I would love to know if they can tell the difference.

So yeah, leave a comment at the bottom of this blog.

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But let me know about this.  I’m very curious.  And I’ll see you next time.

MOVIES – I Wish I Was More Excited About the Man of Steel Sequel

As you may or may not know, the Man of Steel movie sequel was announced at Comic Con.  It’s going to have Batman in it.  Now, this would be great news, except for a few things.

1. This is the sequel to Man of Steel. I would have liked another stand alone Superman movie before they introduced other Superheroes, so we could flesh out Superman’s character a bit more.
2. Batman is arguably, more popular, he’s going to overshadow Superman in his own sequel.
3. It’s going to be about Superman and Batman fighting.

Normally you’d think that if Superman and Batman fought, it’s no brainer, Superman wins right? Well, no.  For the last 30 years, just about every time Superman and Batman fought, Batman would win. So…yeah.

If they keep to this tradition then Superman would lose to Batman in his own movie.  That would suck.

I was going to do a video about why all this bothered me but then I saw the video below.  This guy says EXACTLY what I was thinking and feeling about this whole thing.  EXACTLY. It’s amazing.

He cusses a lot so be warned.  Oh, the only thing I don’t agree with is that Christian Bale should play Batman.  I actually don’t want him to, otherwise, I agree with what this guy says.  He basically said it all for me.

What do you think?

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