Laika Mostly Gives CGI the Chopping Block

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Taha Q

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Well, this is certainly a change in pace. I wonder if other studios will follow by example. Any changes made in the animation industry seem to be following a domino effect nowadays (anime companies collapsing, promotion/demotion of CGI).

Do you think my head is a little TOO high in the clouds, though? I'm not sure...
 
I doubt all other studios will follow the same. I mean, Coraline was popular, and artistically acclaimed, but movies like Shrek or Madagascar are way too big of money grabbers to throw away. CGI movies (even the ones that aren't so good) have done so well for major studios like Dreamworks that there's probably no turning back any time soon.

And besides, I wouldn't want all theatrical films to be completely stop-motion. It would ruin the artistic quality of it. I wouldn't want all movies to be traditional or CGI or stop-motion. Why can't we have a decent mix??
 
I say it's bad news. The entire animation industry is getting worse. With Geneon gone, ADV giving all their properties to Section 23 Films, The Anime Network to Valkyrie Media, Fox gone to weekend infomercials, CN showing reality programing, Nick splitting it's blocks Nick Jr. and TeenNick into separate channels, Toon Disney becoming Disney XD, and Adult Swim not acquiring anime anymore and just turning back to all comedy again, I don't know what will happen to animation.
 
Nick Jr. and Teenick haven't really been blocks in the traditional sense for a while now. All they're really doing is renaming The N and Noggin to be uniform.
 
I never know if you honestly believe this stuff or if you're just joking, JTaylor. No offense, but when you say things like that, you sound like Bad Luck Shleprock.
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This is not a big deal. Stop motion animation is just another art form; no better or worse than CGI. Just different. And just because 1 studio has given CGI the boot, that doesn't mean that all CGI animation is going to disappear with the next year or so, as much as the CGI haters would probably love that. :D

BTW, except for 1 or 2 shows, the CN Real (reality show) block on Cartoon Network is failing. By no means does is CN done with animated programming. CN Real will probably be just a bad memory by this time next year, so I wouldn't worry about that at all.
 
The sky isn't falling, Jtaylor. Animation will be fine. It's been around for a century or more and things come and go in cycles. Besides, most of your post doesn't make any sense. I mean for example, ADV giving away properties, The Anime Network becoming something else and Adult Swim no long showing anime certainly doesn't stop anime from being made in Japan, where the stuff is made in bulk. Additionally, CN isn't showing too much reality programming right now, especially considering CN Real was a ratings failure. They're got more cartoons on the horizon. And what exactly does Nick splitting Nick Jr. and Teen Nick into seperate channels have to do with animation? There's still Nicktoons Network, which shows animation 24/7, and two of the main Nick channels biggest successes are animated (Spongebob and Penguins) with more cartoons on the way.

Animation will be fine. The world isn't coming to an end. Relax.
 
Can you give a reason why? All you did was mention other aspects of the animation industry that you didn't like while dancing around this topic in particular.

What about a company transitioning to stop-motion is "bad news" to you?
 
Well this is good News for Stop motion animtion (wich seems to be Highly under appriciated for the most part) BUt bad news for CGI Animation, wich I think is a liitle to big for its britches if you know what i mean.

Im glad that there doing this, but feel sorry for the animators used to working on CGI.

(Personally Ive Never liked CGI all that much, very few 3d movies have been good at convying Belivable emotion & most have seemed kind of stiff to me, I'd Say Happy Feet, Kung Fu Panda, Incredibles & Wall-E are the Only Exceptions to this..IMPO.)
 
This is only bad news for the CG animators formerly employed at Laika studio, who stand a good chance of picking up work at other studios.

Animation is a lot like acting or video game development or a lot of other things that are produced on a project-based schedule. A lot of people get hired as a project moves out of pre-production, then a huge chunk of them get laid-off after the release. It's almost inherently a temp-job.
 
They want to specialize in the stop-motion animation. CG can augment that technique in some cases, but they don't want clients coming to them looking for that CG work when they'd rather be playing with dolls and clay.
 
There are more than enough CGI productions out there to fill anyone's needs - I mean, come on, Pixar and Dreamworks - that it's nice to see a studio focus on the more underappreciated art of stop motion animation.

So I say it's a good thing.
 
No, but I don't think that this is any kind of trend for the industry at all. Stop-motion is such a painstaking process that not many people are willing to spend the time and effort to do it. I think it makes a lot of sense for Laika, since that's where most of their expertise is, but the success of Aardman doesn't seem to have triggered any massive wave of companies clamoring to do stop-motion films (although, sadly, this also seems to be because their success in the US has been creative but not financial). I think Laika is positioning itself to be the Aardman of the US, where the stop-motion is central to their studio look-and-feel.

Besides, if they're going to play in the CGI feature film arena, their direct competitors are Pixar and DreamWorks, and to a much lesser extent Fox, and they're the ones that they will be compared against by the public. I think it's getting easier and cheaper to turn out workable feature-film grade CGI, but the money and expertise you have to develop to compete seriously with those guys is now a pretty formidable barrier to entry for newcomers. The failure of movies like Igor and Delgo probably had as much or more to do with their obvious budget CGI look as the fact that they really weren't very good movies.

Moving into stop-motion means that Laika avoids that fight entirely and have a playing field almost entirely to themselves. The painstaking effort to do stop-motion also means that they have a natural barrier to entry for any competitors as well. There is less direct demand for stop-motion, but that just means they can be in a position to create that demand by making high-quality films. There wasn't any demand for CGI features before Pixar did Toy Story, either.
 
I dont know if I should be happy to hopefully see more stop-motion or be mixed of the fact of people losing work.But I do like stop motion animation, maybe we might see something good for animation. But as for the other studios we just have to wait and see....

The only thing I do know about stop-motion being used in other places other then this is Aardman and CN's Chowder and Flapjack. So maybe we could see some more stop-motion animation from other places if people pay to see them.
 
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