Sunday, April 08, 2007
The Last Great Artform
Having recently finished reading Arthur C. Clarks novel Childhood's End, I was struck by one paragraph in particular.
The book opens with enormous alien spaceships appearing one day over all of Earth's major cities. The aliens, who become known as the Overlords announce their benign intentions and desire to help mankind. The Overlords quickly end the arms race and colonialism. Mankind enters a golden age of the greatest peace and prosperity ever known, but at some expense of creativity and freedom.
One such group establishes a new community called New Athens. As much as they tried, the creativity floundered...
"But it was in the art of the cartoon film. with its limitless possibilities, that New Athens had made its most successful experiments. The hundred years since the time of Disney had still left much undone in this most flexible of all mediums. On the purely realistic side, results could be produced indistinguishable from actual photography -- much to the contempt of those who were developing the cartoon along abstract lines."
These words ring quite true today. Computer animation is approaching realism that will soon be indistinguishable from live action motion pictures. A bifurcation of animation seems inevitable. One part will be realism with virtual actors; the other part will pursue abstraction. The latter may very likely hold the former in contempt.
The book opens with enormous alien spaceships appearing one day over all of Earth's major cities. The aliens, who become known as the Overlords announce their benign intentions and desire to help mankind. The Overlords quickly end the arms race and colonialism. Mankind enters a golden age of the greatest peace and prosperity ever known, but at some expense of creativity and freedom.
One such group establishes a new community called New Athens. As much as they tried, the creativity floundered...
"But it was in the art of the cartoon film. with its limitless possibilities, that New Athens had made its most successful experiments. The hundred years since the time of Disney had still left much undone in this most flexible of all mediums. On the purely realistic side, results could be produced indistinguishable from actual photography -- much to the contempt of those who were developing the cartoon along abstract lines."
These words ring quite true today. Computer animation is approaching realism that will soon be indistinguishable from live action motion pictures. A bifurcation of animation seems inevitable. One part will be realism with virtual actors; the other part will pursue abstraction. The latter may very likely hold the former in contempt.
