Joseph Gilland on hand-drawn Special Effects

There is an interesting article on AWN at the moment by effects animator Joseph Gilland about the virtual extinction of hand-drawn special effects. What sets this apart from the usual 'end of an era' reporting is his observation that the classical skills that made effects animation an art from; design, exaggeration, posing and dynamic timing, are not being carried over into the visual effects industry like the classical skills of character animation.

For me, effects animation has always been about sharing with an audience the wonderful elements of nature, that fascinate me so much, in a creative and artistic manner. I think Gilland's words resonate in the world of traditional 2D and mixed media animation. I've seen so many examples of drawn animation over the last few years that have been diminished by replacing hand-drawn effects with unimaginative particle simulations which not only look out of place, but fail to bring the richness in design that drawn animation can.

It is not limited to TV projects with limited budgets. Tim Burturn's "The Corpse Bride" is an example of a film that, as great as it looked, would in my opinion would have looked richer still with drawn effects. In his earlier masterpiece, "The Nightmare Before Christmas", smoke and fire took on highly abstract shapes that complimented and enriched the stylistic world Burton created. I certainly miss working on animation projects like this and I miss seeing them in the cinema.

The title sequence for "Thunderbirds" made brilliant use of drawn animation to support the design. Trying the find a spare place to put my light box amongst all the computers (really!) I felt like something of a museum piece even then.

There is a huge amount of exciting work being produced at the moment. Exciting design is being pushed like never before, and I don't think I'm being hopelessly old fashioned to sugest that drawn effects could have an exciting role to play in that. But without, I suspect, all the needless tones and shadows of the 90's.

You can read Joseph Gilland's article here: