Lost Art?

Thinking about the difference between traditional (i.e. hand drawn) animation and computer animation. Many extremely talented artists were thrown by the wayside as traditional animation has been for the most part phased out. I appreciate that the computer animators of today have their own set of skills, but I think for the most part they are no match for the old style guys.

Computer animators are in a way more like puppeteers. While they do have to analyze and understand movement of humans, animals, water, smoke, whatever just as was the case for traditional animation, they do not have to "recreate" the character (or object) for every frame of the picture. The character already exists, built by someone else. The computer animator controls its movements, gives it life, but is not really required to be able to recreate it from scratch. I could see someone being a perfectly competent computer animator who couldn't even draw. Not that there isn't an art to being a puppeteer; just look at Frank Oz. But I think that probably the traditional animators had an understanding that is not necessarily called for today.

The traditional animators not only had to know anatomy, "squash and stretch", understand movement, be an "actor" with their character but understand the physics behind what was being animated as well. Each new drawing, 24 per second, calls for this total understanding from the animator. Can't leave gravity, wind, environment, whatever to the computer; the animator had to know it. That's why it took years for an artist to become a top animator. And then their talents were thrown away like yesterday's newspaper.

In cases like this I like to use a test to demonstrate who has the better understanding. In this instance: let a traditional animator learn computer animation and let a computer animator try his hand at traditional animation. Do this for a year and see who comes closest to mastering the other's art.

I know Disney (finally) came around and started doing traditional animation again, but they threw a lot of their best artists to the dogs before coming around. An amazing art form was almost lost. I wonder if the new artists will ever get the chance to become as skilled as the masters of the past, or if they will keep getting jerked around. There is a certain quality to animation of this type that nothing else can reproduce. It's like stop motion animation: much more labor intensive but the look is like nothing else; a certain dreamlike quality.

New does not necessarily mean better.