What’s so great about computer animation anyway? Sure it’s slick, often seamless, and visually compelling, but where’s the love?

Despite the fact that Canada has become renowned for its ability to churn out top-shelf computer animators, who often feed directly into the stream flowing south, some established Canadian animators are quick to see through the polish and shiny metallic imagery. Among them are those who bravely refuse to trade in their pencils for pixels while others are just beginning to accept the computer’s potential in their workaday world.

At Toronto’s Calibre Digital Pictures, animation director Willy Ashworth has done nothing to curb the evolution of the computer as an animation tool, but by the same token, he says he and his pencil are doing just fine without it.

‘I’m kind of a rarity,’ says Ashworth. ‘[Despite having] dabbled with Flash animation, I’m a traditionalist at heart. I feel like an old watchmaker because I’m sitting in my little room and all of this technology is going on around me. I’m aware of it and I like it, but I haven’t embraced it. I’ve just kind of shook its hand.’

Ashworth goes on to say he does not feel the slightest desire to park himself behind a console.

‘It’s not something at this point in my career I enjoy doing. I enjoy the old way,’ he says.

Ashworth says working at Calibre, where a good portion of the business is cg, has made him appreciate the techniques used by good 3D animators. Despite their differing disciplines, he says he and the computer artists work together extremely well.

Being a traditionalist at heart, Ashworth has seen a number of his colleagues and friends in the animation game make the jump to cg. He says the reviews from those who have crossed the line are mixed.

‘I know a couple of 2D animators who went to 3D and miss 2D immensely,’ says Ashworth. ‘They really miss the hands-on and getting graphite on your fingers. Even when I haven’t been drawing for a while and I go back to it, I feel really comfortable. There is a comfort level there that I really love.’

Across town at Evening Sky/The Animation House, a friend and former employer of Ashworth’s, Mitch Nadon, the shop’s gm, is excited about a new cg commercial job they’re working on for u.s. restaurant chain Sonic under the creative direction of Michael Crabtree.

Using Maya and Renderman on an sgi platform, Crabtree and company are creating 7.5 seconds of cg animation to plug a promotional offer from Sonic, which will be inserted into the commercial. The spot marks the launch of a new cg department at Animation House.

‘Rather than establish this as an independent department, [we will] try to sell it as a capability that expands on the existing capabilities,’ says Crabtree. ‘There are very few shops that have exposure to all the disciplines out there, but this place has done it all. We are able to handle everything they throw at us. The cgi department is just a natural extension of what is already being done. It is not a wannabe thing, it is a necessary thing.’

Toronto’s Cuppa Coffee Animation made the move into 3D a decade ago, and is currently hard at work on a new ‘top-secret’ cg project for hbo using a software package known as Cinema 4D, which founder Adam Shaheen says is very user-friendly.

Shaheen says he has been observing the way things in the cg world have progressed and worries that those learning to animate solely on computers may be missing out on some of the more important fundamentals of animation.

‘We still find that [with] the reels we get from a lot of the schools and kids coming out producing computer animation, there is still the stiffness and sterility of whatever programs they are using, which I believe is not just a product of the software,’ says Shaheen. ‘It is a product of the people not fundamentally understanding life drawing or basic principles that should stem from a solid training in the arts. If you have studied life drawing, you have a pretty good understanding of how things move and how they turn and twist.’

Shaheen says although he is not completely sold on the alleged unlimited potential of the computer, placed in the right hands, cg can be very effective visually.

‘There are some things computer animation does fantastically that other techniques and styles can’t do,’ he admits. ‘Animation is a million different things and computer animation is just one slice of it, but because it is new it is being forced a bit clumsily.’

Crabtree shares many of Shaheen’s concerns about the medium, saying some schools with computer animation programs may be turning students and future animators into one-trick ponies of sorts.

‘I think the best animators are the ones who have a traditional animation background or have studied traditional animation and then gone into cgi,’ says Crabtree. ‘There are exceptions to that, because I’ve seen some exceptional animators who haven’t had the background. But the ones who go into computer animation school with no traditional cel [animation knowledge] or don’t study form and movement don’t ever really get it and they end up being quite limited in their abilities.’

Calibre’s Ashworth worries about the seemingly endless parade of young animators who have not studied life drawing, cel animation, etc. After viewing many of the reels that fall on his desk from potential 3D animators, he says many up-and-comers still have a lot to learn.

‘I think there are a lot of people sitting at computers who know their zeros and ones but don’t really know the principles of animation,’ says Ashworth. ‘Animation has soul and it has heart, and if it is character animation, you should be able to see the character thinking. In a lot of computer animation you don’t get that.’ *

-www.cuppacoffee.com

-www.calibredigital.com