Animation Can Take It
The animation field has had to fend off some pretty tough blows this past year. First is the pressure from the economic situation that caused fewer commercials to be made. Then there was the everpresent reality of work leaving traditional areas to be completed in other cities and other countries. Add to this the competition from recent advances in computer technology and the continued interest in live action filming and you can sense the problems old and new that beset this medium.
Until the late 60's hardly a year went by that did not witness the starting of several new studios and the growth of some of the already established ones. In the late 50's and early 60's the demands of a field tied to the vagaries of advertising fashions began to wear heavily and studios began to close only to be replaced by spin-offs eager to fight the battle with fresh vigor. By the close of the decade several of the more affluent animation shops, now encumbered by overhead that often included live action facilities, began to tumble.
In the wake of this misfortune, out of work animators began to open their own little shops to not only scoop up commercial work but to fish among the many educational film deals that were suddenly being proffered by corporations that had decided that they would solve the nation's learning problems. Many of these studios suckled at the breasts of The Children's Television Workshop which in turn was being nourished by healthy grants from the Ford Foundation and the United States Government.
As the recurring pattern of inflation and recession took its toll on the costs of labor and materials, the grants became smaller and money to the schools became scarcer. The mighty corporate giants that had envisioned themselves as free enterprise crusaders against illiteracy suddenly divested themselves of recently acquired film libraries and teaching machines.
Studios that had been coasting on the promise of increased productivity, which seemed almost assured in those days of high expectancy in the educational market, either grabbed the opportunity to move into the more lucrative television spot area when the teaching films halted, or simply fell by the wayside.
Since the early 70's the amount of new studios that do traditional animation began to decline in the New York area. It was in this period that the ascendency of the optical service studios began to be noticed. The tendency to look upon animation as a device to be employed for special effects and for graphic enhancement of commercials and entertainment films suddenly cut into the number of uses that cartoon animation could be put to. The 70's ushered in the demand for spots utilizing heavily animated scenes incorporating rotoscope as well as complicated visual effects that required intricate camera technique often combined with costly optical bench technology.
The past decade owes its prevailing styles and commercial demands to two inspirational films that appeared in the 1960's. Both "2001, A Space Odyssey" and "The Yellow Submarine" laid the groundwork for many of the commercials that have been produced since then. "The Yellow Submarine" had a profound affect that only began to fade towards the middle of the 70's while the promise of "2001" became more virulent as the development of improved optical printers and the sudden leap to prominence of computer devices for creating graphic displays.
At the start of the 80's videotape technology, a mode that had seemed to be doomed to the mundane recording of filmed work, suddenly sprang into view as an entirely new form of entertainment. The average television viewer could now decide which programs to watch and when to see them. The stockpiling of television shows and favorite films purchased in stores now proliferating the nation's cities has turned the idea of television viewing into a new aspect that was barely conceivable just a few years ago.
This same electronic device that allows the home television user to record a favorite show and play it back days and months later, can also be applied to the recording of stop motion images, drawn, painted or modeled. Obviously, with the speedy turnover in electronic engineering developments the next few years will definitely herald systems that will redefine how we prepare and shoot animation.
Animators surely realize that these are revolutionary times, yet there have been other revolutions in the field that caused anxiety and consternation, yet somehow the business survived. When sound was ushered in just over fifty years ago, it created a scurry for developments that would enable animators. to draw their characters to the strains of music as well as figure out how to make them talk. In the late 40's UPA gushed forth with new styles of animation, and I can remember the confusion that ran through the ranks of animators who were suddenly reinvestigating their design approach after the appearance of the landmark "Gerald McBoing-Boing" film.
Today when queried, people in the field respond with an initial frown denoting the grim aspects of what appears to be a decline in the use of traditional animation. As the conversation develops several factors come to light. It becomes obvious that animation will always be needed to do the many tricks that cannot be done in any other way. The advent of computer and video techniques will become a boon to animators once the new systems begin to merge more readily with the old knowledge, just as it did in the early sound days. Even now animation is being used to explain computer advantages in commercials and informational films.
With further developments in the direct to video methods of animation, there will be even more cartoon and design graphics being produced to satisfy a new demand for animation that can be accomplished more quickly and on the air sooner. Still, the wide area of video cassettes, videodiscs and the promise of more and more cable outlets will eventually explode in a rush for more and more animation.
Even now the burgeoning video game market depends on simple animation to supply the images for the electronic gadgetry, who knows what will be in store in years to come as this fledgling field grows and develops. Remember, the movies began as an arcade entertainment which went from kinescopes to theater presentations to television. The arcade games of today may be the new animation/film/dramatic medium of the future.
What do we do today till the Buck Rogers future arrives? Animators and producers must remember that they are not needed only for the mechanical knowledge that they possess, but for what got them into the field originally, their ability to create fantasy, ideas, cartoons and humorous drawings. For now they may have to turn to other pursuits that can utilize these same talents, but in the future they will be back creating the ideas to augment the new technologies. It will be a great day, because so far I haven't seen any laughs in all the mass of new electronics that surrounds us.
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