Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Where I'm Calling From

Rumor has it that Jeffrey Katzenberg reads The Illusion of Life every year. I can relate; as an animator, I make it a point to curl up with Robert Appleby's Modern Business Administration every Christmas.

Seriously though, I kind of wish Mr. Katzenberg and his peers would read John Culshaw's
The Virtues of Flatness instead. A mere five pages, it's shorter than the even the index of Frank and Ollie's book, but it masterfully articulates how engaging animation can be if it weren't so hung up on apeing realism. Published in The Fortnightly in 1953, it's uncannily prescient in its discussion of the "Third Dimension," a term Mr. Culshaw used to describe the extent of Disney's rendering quality
at the time. In the context of today's animation, it's pretty easy to apply that term to another, more current technique. Does this fifty year old argument still hold up? Take a look:




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