Pixar and the Animation Revolution at Year 25

The Era of Computer-Slickness Challenges Hand-Drawn Cartoons

Different parts of the art world mark their histories by milestones along the road, such as the invention of the squeezable paint tube in 1841. For animated movies (also called feature length cartoons), that landmark was the introduction of computer generated animation.

            That came just 25 years ago. It happened in a little studio on the east side of the San Francisco Bay at a company later to be called Pixar. The name, of course, derives from the pixel, which is the tiny electronically-generated square of color that makes up computer imagery on a film or on our computer monitor screens.
            The movie-going public, especially families with children, has had no doubts about the benefits of the Pixar revolution. The company produced a raft of memorable and entertaining movies (and other studios followed suit). Pixar began with “Toy Story” in 1995 (done in cooperation with the Disney Studios). This year Pixar released its 12th feature film, the sequel titled “Cars 2.”
            When the computer animation revolution was born, Pixar was struggling to sell a small animation computer product. To promote its capabilities, one of the staff produced a (now famous) short to show at a Dallas computer-graphics conference called SIGGRAPH. That was in August 1986. Titled “Luxo, Jr.,” the computer animated short film told the story of parent and child desk lamps (Luxo brand) playing with a ball on the table. The breakthrough was noticed. However, Pixar still had to prove itself viable by first doing TV commercials.
            What Pixar had done was escape the process of producing thousands of hand-drawn “scenes.” Instead, each frame could be replicated by using computer instructions. Once the basic images are scanned into a computer, it can produce subsequent movements automatically. One artist can produce in a short time what a whole studio of illustrators turns out over weeks. It was classic technology replacing manpower; classic John Henry the “steel driver” verses the steam-powered machine. We can see how quickly a “Luxo” short gave way to vastly more complex, human-and-animation movies such as “Avatar” (2009), which ran nearly three hours.
            The days of hand-drawn animation are still in memory. When the Disney studio revived feature length animation in 1989 with “The Little Mermaid,” it was all hand inked and painted. It was shot frame by frame. “Little Mermaid” was the most expensive art-man-hours project Disney had funded. The investment was worthwhile: it launched the so-called “Disney Renaissance” (a decade of successful animation films) and got other studio going that direction also.
            Now, computer animation is the genie out of the bottle. Anyone with a powerful computer can try it out. Younger Americans, moreover, have been watching this kind of animation since 1995. A growing number of art students at the college level are now seeking degrees in computer animation. Not coincidentally, they have learned that Pixar movies grossed $7 billion worldwide.
            At one art school not so long ago, a painting major produced an animation of her grandmother. The relative had sad memories of the Holocaust. In the manner of the South African artist William Kentridge, the art student did one charcoal drawing of her grandmother and then altered it many time. She took a photo of each change and then load them into animation software on her computer. Because of Pixar, she was able to do this. However, what impressed an art professor viewing the clip was its hand-drawin quality, seen less and less, he said. “This kind hand-crafted animation is making a comeback,” he told her. “Everyone is a little tired of the slick stuff, like at Pixar.”
           In the movie business, Pixar has touted the slower pace and deeper plotting of its films. By contrast, one Pixar founder said, Disney animation feature films such as “Aladin” are all action, razzle-dazzle. It’s spectacle over story. Though Pixar films do not use musical numbers or rely on Hollywood stars for voices, it claims to keep audience attention through longer cartoons by the story itself. Pixar opened the way for animated films to receive Oscar nominations for writing, plot, and dialogue. Its creators found a way to tell stories of sadness, joy, loneliness, loss, and even death through talking toys, cars, and insects.
            For a few years now, Pixar has been owned by Disney. The lament on the 25th anniversary of Pixar’s legacy is that, yet again, a quick technology has made art slicker and slicker. Art becomes formulaic. Push-button convenience produces a slew of low quality animation. Some of it reaches theaters. Most of it floods the Internet. However, the same could be said of the tube of paint. At first it allowed painters to leave their studio and paint out of doors—a real revolution. It produced the Impressionists and other marvelous plein air (open air) craftsmen.
            It also produced all the Sunday painters and amateurs around the world. The benchmarks in any art field, whether in painting or animation, tend to have the same democratizing effect in the long run. What is left is to sit on the rare laurels of being “first,” or to take the old-hat technology and keep doing something extraordinary.