The weather intends to taunt me all weekend. This morning Katherine and I went to meet a friend of hers who was showing her visiting mom, aunt, and uncle around DC. As we walked to meet them by the Washington Monument, looking at the pretty cherry blossoms as we went, the temperature constantly shifted between being barely too warm for my jacket and just cold enough to need it. And the rain started and stopped at intervals such that about 45 seconds after I’d put down the umbrella it would start again, then stop, then start again. Tomorrow it may snow. What’s up with that?
After meeting Katherine’s friend Catherine’s family for lunch, we went to Visions in Dupont Circle where they are showing this year’s Oscar shorts. (Thanks go to Dre for that one!) As expected, they were all astounding and had a wide range of emotions, themes, and countries of origin.
They showed ten shorts, five of which were live action and five of which were animation. Of those, only one was hand-drawn-looking. One was claymation (and really cool!), and the other three were pure CG. I began to think about the difference seeing a story in CG versus done with traditional artwork makes on the mood of the piece. The quality of motion and images that a good studio can put out with enough computers is I feel very quickly reaching its asymptotic limit. Each year we’ll see more good computer generated films, but I don’t think they’ll keep getting closer and closer to reality at the pace they have when looking at the difference between 1995’s Toy Story and 2001’s Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It’ll get to the point where making scenes look more like real life will require spending months designing the trillions of imperfections every surface has. But I think that near-but-not-perfect look works for the animated medium. And I think fantasy is where it’ll really shine. Shreck and Monsters, Inc. worked so well because they looked real enough, but were still cartoons. CG has a wonderful power to be immersive and breathtaking while still delightfully escapist. Or, it can just be cute, as was this year’s Oscar winner, “The Chubbchubbs.”
Tomorrow I hope to go see Spirited Away.