Simpsons, animation and CGI

[johnmiic]

I may be out of touch here but I saw an interview with Matt Groening on NY1 news and he said the Simpsons Movie was a tribute in a way to traditional animators because it was drawn and not CGI. is the Simpsons TV show, and most cartoons, now drawn and animated on computer and not on plastic cels? Painted in photoshop and not with paint anymore?

[ctc]

>is the Simpsons TV show, and most cartoons, now drawn and animated on computer and not on plastic cels?

Most cartoons nowadays are run through a computer at some point. A lot are done entirely on computer, while the remainder are often drawn by hand with cleanups and colour done digitally.

I've had friends tell me that the funny thing is; the computer stuff is more expensive, but the execs insist on it. (Probably pushing for a time when it can ALL be done digitally, and we won't even need actors any more. Hmmmm.... let's have character 123 in setting 4345, with plot 3321.)

Don C.

[megoscott]

The drawing for a 2D show are still done by hand by animators, but inking is no longer necessary. The clean pencil line drawings are scanned into a computer and adjusted to look like ink and the animation is colored and assembled in a computer. In the old days the ink was drawn, the cell was painted, and the whole thing was photographed sequentially on a camera stand. Now all of that is in the computer. The credits said US Animation, one of the older standard ink and paint systems in use. Ink and paint is much cheaper than traditional from a manpower perspective, plus the ease of making changes on the fly adds a lot of value.

The character animation in the Simpsons movie was all hand done and really very good. But Matt doesn't know what he's talking about or is being disingenuous, because there was a tremendous amount of CGI in that movie---way more than you see in the TV show. All of the vehicles and a lot the more complicated background camera moves were accomplished with toon-rendered 3D, the same way Futurama used it (to great effect). Looks great, but it's not exactly hand-made, and definitely more expensive. Still requires a tremendous amount of work and artistry and plenty of hand drawing and layout/design work to get it to that point.