This week as I was brainstorming some blog-post ideas, I stumbled upon a UK site that I initially mistook for an entertainment news website. The article had a bubbly fun scrawl along the top that read: “Animation Trends 2012: Discover the hottest new forms and styles”. Wait. Can animation go out of style? “Mom I can’t watch Wallace and Gromit. Jessica says claymation is for poor people!”
I obviously continued reading the page and learned all sorts of knowledge.
For instance, California-based animator, Gabe Askew, is the Jessica of trendy animation. He explains— “The gloss of CG has become commonplace… characters tend to look beautifully rendered but to act as stiff as zombies when not animated in painstaking detail.” Sorry all you CG lovers out there. You’re just, well, you’re not very hip. Good luck trying to sit next to Gabe at the lunch table you big loser. Unless, of course, you like CG when it’s blended together with vintage animation styles… “It’s not super-new,” Gabe admits, “but there definitely seems to be a trend in mixed-media animation…Animations are no longer stop motion, or 2D, or CG or puppetry; they are all these things blended together – and a small team or even one person can be proficient in all these mediums.”
Ticktockrobot’s Me, Marionette is a good example of this new (but not super new) animation trend:
Me, Marionette from ticktockrobot on Vimeo.
Me, Marionette combines the stylistic look of marionettes using computer generated images. A.K.A. The epitome of trendiness. You go girl! Stay tuned for more animation updates, or, just check out the Digital Arts Online page.
