Artistic Graphic Shading in Cartoons VS Cold CG

Isn't this painting beautiful?Eddie has been doing some posts about 2d vs 3d graphics, so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon.

In old style cartoon paintings, none of the lighting attempts to be "realistic", which to me is the appropriate way to render a cartoon.

http://uncleeddiestheorycorner.blogspot.com/2008/08/thinking-about-3d-animation.html

Most CG movies I've seen try to light everything sensibly, which translates to without imagination or an artist's touch to me. Certainly without fun or cartooniness.

Even when they attempt to be less realistic, it just looks like blurry Photoshop to me.

CG also has a way of really looking fake.I actually like the colors in this, but they aren't helping the characters come alive or anything

Feet don't stick to the ground. All the separate parts are floating on top of each other. It looks like a collage to me, rather than a whole artistic image and statement. It sure doesn't look like real characters.

Compare it to the beautiful, clear and natural painting of Lady and the Tramp above. With much less work, but a lot more skill and confidence, it achieves more depth ...or "reality".

Characters can't even make eye contact in CG, let alone ground contact.

It seems the more real the execs try to make this medium, the more unreal, floaty and cheesy it looks. And it costs a zillion times more than actual entertainment made by real entertainers and cartoonists.

what are we looking at here? is this an accountant creating a comedy expression?

CG studios have an unnatural obsession with spending a fortune trying to outdo each other making realistic water. Can someone explain this fetish to me?

I mean, I can turn on the tap anytime I want for free and the water looks even more realistic.


They also seem obsessed with seeing who can make the ugliest plastic humans. I'm not sure who the winner is in this contest. There is a ton of competition.


Humans are hard enough to do in 2d, but in 3d they are guaranteed to look like rubber cadavers. But they refuse to give up.

It seems like a medium that fights everything that comes natural to cartoons and animation. - and for that matter-live action, which it thinks it is emulating.

Unlike this old time illustration/cartooning combination style which is full of life and appeal.
Anyway, I have nothing against the idea of rendering or shading in cartoons. I loved these old cartoon paintings from Golden Books when I was a kid. Still do. They don't look fake at all. They look fun, perfectly natural and have the joy of an artist's hand caressing our CG-wounded eyeballs.

This kind of rendering is not photographically real but it has a much more artistically controlled kind of depth than a camera can give you. The effect and appeal depends completely upon the skill, talent and personality of the artist. It's also way more natural, in effect more "realistic".
What I find unappealing about most CG is how unimaginative and soulless it looks. It looks like a machine made it, instead of an artist. We have all talked about why this is so. Is it the inherent handicap of the technology? Is CG like photoshop? Like, no matter how good a traditional painter or artist you are, you simply can't get Photoshop to look as good as your real paintings. Is that the problem with CG?


Or is the problem that the people in charge of billion dollar studios just choose to be machine like and unartistic? It's very hard to say. I know many artists who have great skill and talent who work at these studios, who in private tell me they hate the limitations (both of the medium and the executives), but I also read on blogs that CG is limitless in its creative scope. That's what I would imagine - if I hadn't already seen a dozen CG movies that all look equally mechanical, bland and like not a living soul ever touched them.

Also interesting to me is how good these low tech old viewmasters from the 60s look and they are just photographs of sculptures . The "realistic" lighting doesn't hurt these.

http://uncleeddiestheorycorner.blogspot.com/2008/08/which-has-better-background-styling.html
These Flintstones Viewmaster sets are beautiful. Why doesn't someone make a cg movie with this much design and appeal? Surely it would cost a fraction of the outrageous budgets of the average movie today and look 20 times better. How much can a good designer cost?

These suggest that CG could actually make fun looking more natural and artistic movies.
Someone on Eddie's blog said that CG is still in its infancy and that's the reason it's still so primitive compared to 2d. I don't know about that. It's at least 20 years old and characters still can't talk naturally, walk on the ground, have weight or be actual characters.

2d developed at an incredible pace. From Steamboat Willie to Snow White in 9 years. CG, to me anyway, is still crawling its way towards Steamboat Willie. At least Ub Iwerks' first films were able to have characters look at each other....and they were actually imaginative and fun on top of that.

..and CG animators have the advantage of 30 years of golden age cartoons on video that they can freeze frame and study, whereas the people who made the great more natural cartoons had to create all the techniques from scratch.



Well I still believe, against all the evidence, that it is possible to find a way to use cg artistically, abstractly and even in fun cartoony ways.


I just wonder how long it's going to take, and in the meantime ... why will no one make some 2d for a fraction of the cost that is much easier to make natural and fun?

A much lessy risky enterprise.


The most creative animation I ever saw in CG was something Chris Wedge made in the late 80s for a Nickelodeon logo. I forget what it was called. It was a funny little character made up of disconnected tuber like blobs. It was funny, imaginative, appealing and magical. It was using the medium to do what you couldn't do in any other medium.

someone help me out and send me link to an image or clip of it!