When you watch an animated film, it's amazing how much you take for granted. Each minute of animation that you see is comprised of 1440 individual drawings. Initially, each original frame of animation was completely hand drawn, as were frames in succession - characters, background, incidental details were all redrawn on each frame. A huge breakthrough in animation occurred when clear acetate came along. It meant that for each scene, a background could be drawn on a sheet of acetate. Another sheet could be overlaid on top of the background layer with a moving character, for instance. This cut down on production costs and working time for each animation considerably.

You might find it interesting that the roots of modern animation can be traced back to spy intrigue of World War II. During World War II, the British were desperate to break German codes. The Germans were using an encryption machine called "Enigma" which used a system of rotors to disguise all of their communication. Early on, Polish mathematicians found a way to link a series of machines together to produce the encryption key the Germans were using, which changed on a daily basis. The Germans, however, quickly conquered Poland and, without even knowing that the Enigma machine had been decrypted, increased the complexity of their codes. The Poles fled to England, where mathematicians and cryptologists continued working on the Engima problem. Among those intellectuals was Alan Turing, who towards the end of the war, in order to consistently read Engima transmissions, wound up inventing what amounted to the first computer. It was the size of a room and its only job was to read German coded messages.

Computers perform mathematical operations. Basically, they can add and subtract. Everything we see on monitors is a product of a binary code. Here's the interesting stuff: monitor displays are made up of pixels, and we have the power to control each and every pixel. More interestingly though, computers can calculate vectors at an amazing rate. This enables us to more or less create a three dimensional world based on vectors using computers.

So back to the animation. Cell animation, despite being better, faster, and easier to make than original animation, is still incredibly costly and extremely time consuming. Happily, computers are very helpful in terms of cutting costs and cutting time.

Film translates to roughly 720 pixels by 480 pixels. This means that it's entirely possible to create cell animation on a computer. If you can do all of your drawings on the computer, then you don't need to spend money on acetate. That's one of the first ways computers cut down on costs. The Little Mermaid, produced in 1989, was the last Disney film to be hand-painted. After that, Disney switched to a computerized technique that for the most part mimicked cell animation.

Meanwhile, in 1986, a man named John Lasseter, working for a company called Pixar, released a short animation called "Luxo, Jr."

"Luxo, Jr." is the story of a desk lamp, its parent, and a brightly colored ball. It's about a simple, timeless, non-verbal communication. In short, the larger desk light watches the smaller desk light play enthusiastically with a ball, without really knowing how (desk lights don't exactly have hands, you know?), until eventually it pops, saddening the little desk light. Another, larger ball bounces through the scene. The hopeful little desk light, having learned nothing, chases after it. The minimalism of the action, much of which takes place off-screen makes it memorable, but most importantly, it's all done using three-dimensional animation techniques.

Stop for a moment and try to get a handle on the magnitude of "Luxo Jr." It's 1986 - that means "Top Gun," "Platoon," "Aliens," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Computers were already able to calculate the vectors necessary to represent a desk light in three dimensions.

Disney immediately recognized the genius of 3D animation, forming a deal with Pixar and releasing "Toy Story" in 1995. "Toy Story," of course, was the first full-length feature done completely in 3D animation. It featured the voice talent of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney and a whole bunch of other people. The only thing that most people could fault "Toy Story" for at the time was that technology hadn't quite evolved far enough to render humans with any degree of accuracy. Fortunately, people don't play a big part in Pixar's movies.

Following the huge success of "Toy Story," Pixar and Disney released "A Bug's Life" in 1998 and "Toy Story 2" in 1999. 3d animation was rapidly becoming a new genre in film. "Antz" was released in 1998 to compete with "A Bug's Life." More recently, in the last year or so, a series of 3d animated movies have been released, including "Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within," "Shrek," "Ice Age," and "Monsters, Inc."

Each one of these three films has made huge technical leaps over the previous 3D animated films, contributing immensely to the realm of special effects. This being said, let us look at each film from a non-technical point of view. Are these good films?

First, Monsters, Inc. It's a Disney/Pixar creation. Technically speaking, its major contribution is the realistic motion of the fur of one of its major characters. Each strand of hair on a real head is treated as single graphic, so when a character in an animated world calls for fur, the computer is forced to create a new calculation for each strand of hair. Now we look at the story. A couple of monsters, whose job it is to frighten children, wind up with a child. At first frightened of it, they eventually grow to love the kid. It makes little baby noises. Everyone in the movie is cute. Some bad things happen. In the end, the world becomes a better place, where instead of making little children cry, monsters make them laugh.

It's an interesting premise. Unfortunately, Pixar, when working on its own, tries to do new things from time to time, but when working with Disney, is constantly working under the shadow that is "Luxo, Jr." In "Toy Story," on its most basic level, they're retelling "Luxo, Jr." from the ball's point of view. In "Monsters Inc." there are sequences that echo "Luxo Jr." very closely. The whole construct - the older figure watching the younger one act and appreciating his acts, both stupid and endearing. It's just a lot longer, with more technically advanced visual representations for the characters. Unfortunately, there's also dialogue. Pixar does really well with sound effects. The sound effects always enhance Pixar films. Dialogue does not.

Was "Monsters Inc." a good film? Eh. If you've never seen a Pixar film before, or perhaps if you're a small child, it would be a good movie. Would I have seen it had it not been done in 3D animation? No, absolutely not.

The animators who made "Shrek" paid particular attention to the differences between their human characters and their fairy tale characters, giving each one a different amount of gravity, a different way of walking, of interacting with the world around it.

The voice talents for this one include Mike Myers ("So I Married an Axe Murderer," "Austin Powers"), Eddie Murphy ("Dr. Doolittle," "Coming to America") and Cameron Diaz ("There's Something About Mary," "Charlie's Angels"). It's a comedy. It's a spoof of Disney, and many of the lines and scenes really serve no purpose other than to spoof Disney. Which is good if you, like me, dislike Disney, but really does nothing to enhance the overall impact of the film. Parts of it are still legitimately funny. There's a scene where the bad guy, voiced by John Lithgow ("Cliffhanger," "All that Jazz") interrogates the Gingerbread Man. It's priceless.

But then, it's a movie that's supposed to have a message. The message is supposed to be that people who are ugly deserve to be loved as much as people who are beautiful. I think. At any rate, the beautiful princess turns into an ugly ogre and the ugly ogre who happens to be the hero, still loves her after seeing her true face. In fact, being that he is an ogre, he should probably love her even more. The message is undercut by the fact that the bad guy, who happens to be particularly unattractive, is not deserving of love, or any sort of happy ending in the eyes of those who made the film. So, what? Ugly people are okay as long as they were pretty when we fell in love with them? And inter-species relationships are cool? Well, that's what I got out of "Shrek" anyway. Would I have seen it had it not been done in 3D animation? There's a strong possibility. Would it have received a nomination for an Oscar? I doubt it.

"Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within" is seriously different from the other two movies in that a) it was made by a Japanese director and b) it is not in any way geared towards children. Technically, it took the animation of humans to a whole new level. Some shots (many in fact) are still awkward, but then, there are those that are so perfect that they look almost real. It's stunning.

But then there's the script, and the plot and the characters and the acting, all of which were distinctly sub-par. Voices included those of Alec Baldwin ("The Shadow," "State and Main"), Ving Rhames ("Bringing Out the Dead," "Mission Impossible"), and Steve Buscemi ("Fargo," "Dead Man"), all of whom have done decent work in the past. For some reason, this one just didn't work for them. The interesting thing about this film is the direction it took, possibly because it was headed by a Japanese director, and the Japanese tend to view animation as a medium that can be used for more adult-geared films. Technological and subject-matter standards set by "Final Fantasy" may prove to be important for the 3D animation genre, which, being only a decade and a half or so years old, is still practically in its infancy.

Was this a good movie? No. Would I have seen it had it not been done in 3D animation? Well, I'll admit it. I may have, being a science fiction buff. Would I have been disappointed by it? Unquestionably.

There is a second use for 3D animation. While computers can be used to create whole new environments and worlds, they can also be used to recreate the physical world, substituting mathematical mock-ups for real-life events. In other words, they can be used for special effects in movies set in the real world. In this way, computer animation had a huge breakthrough with the Matrix in 1999. Given the performance by leading man Keanu Reeves ("Speed," "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure"), there were scenes where the effects really drove the rest of the film. At the time it came out, it was amazing. Since then, any number of films have come out with similar effects, or effects that are technically superior. We consider these films all to be derivative of "The Matrix," much in the same way 3D animated motion pictures are derivative of "Luxo, Jr."

But after a spate of Matrix-effects-driven movies, filmmakers have finally settled down to use effects within their films, rather than basing films on the effects. This year (2002) has been a remarkably good year in that respect. "Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring," for example, used an extremely interesting method of animation for their battle scenes, but rather than talk about that, critics all over the world are talking about the rest of the movie - the acting, the writing, the cinematography, and how good the film is as a whole.

The hope is then that animators will someday accomplish the same. Rather than making 3D animated movies, they will begin making movies using 3D animation. We still live in an age where technology is constantly expanding. So, for a long while, we're still going to be blown away by mediocre movies with incredible animation techniques. But after a while, they're going to have to become good movies, or the genre will die out, which would be a shame, considering how far it's already come. After all, it's been less than 60 years since the computer was just a machine for decoding encrypted messages. With that in mind, it's easy to understand why viewing audiences get so excited to see what it looks like when the computer calculates the complex folding of a piece of cloth, or the force of gravity when a woman walks across grass. It's an amazing feat.

What's more amazing is that there's still room for improvement. We scarcely have time to master the technology that we have when something new comes along that blows away what we've just learned. For this reason, I can understand why 3D animated movies tend towards the mediocre - if you don't hurry a movie along, it will be obsolete by the time it's released. Does this mean that technology will have to slow down before someone makes a truly great 3D animated movie? Are we just seeing mediocre movies because the genre is so young and viewing audiences are so indiscriminate? Or is there some other reason entirely?

Thus far, animation has evolved from a long, tedious and costly process of drawing frame after frame after frame, to a long, slightly less tedious, though possibly more costly process of creating a 3D model and moving it through a 3D space. We can do things today that half a century ago, no one could even have dreamed. But how is this helping us as a society? Is it enabling us to make better art? Well yes, but not for mass-production. There are amazing 3D animated short films, but almost no one has seen them. Full-length feature films in 3D animation have all been in some respects successful, but in other respects have failed completely. Some day this will change. It may even happen soon - only three years separate the special effects blow out of "The Matrix" and the subtle crafting of "Lord of the Rings."

Discuss this Story in our Forum!