Wow....I had no idea these perceptions existed. I mean, I always assumed that people generally look at animated films as targeting younger audiences, but I never realized that would in any way influence their perceived credibility as a legitimate film. Every film is targetted towards a certain audience these days....women with all the romantic comedies, younger men with all the big summer action flicks, families with many PG rated films like "Cheaper By the Dozen" (why did
that pop into my head as an example?), etc. But they're all still full-on feature films.
The comment that surprises me most here is the one from you, Tom.
"I'm also in agreement with Kein, in that CG features are part of the blanket term 'movie' now, whereas traditional cell animations aren't." That may be a perception that does exist, but I don't understand it. The creative process is exactly the same aside from the fact that one is created with a pencil while the other is created with a computer. The first feature I worked on was Lion King, a traditionally animated film, then halfway into my career I worked on Stuart Little, a live action film with animated characters, and then I just finished up on Open Season, a cg animated film. All different mediums, but each one every bit as much a "movie" as the other in my opinion.
And in fact, if you watch the special features "making of" stuff on the Open Season dvd, you'll hear some talk about how we set up the show to allow us to incorporate more of the traditional, 2D artistic principles into it than was previously possible in 3D films. It's something we're always trying to push towards because it affords us more artistic creativity whereas cg animation tends to have inherent artistic limitations to it. And incidentally, I'm one of the people they show interviews with in that section of the dvd. And if you watch the film with the Director commentary on, they talk about my role on the film a few times throughout, too. Just thought I'd throw out some shameless self-promotion there. Support a fellow dirt, people!!
