Animation has always been an enormously time-consuming medium. Animators painted, sculpted or drew each frame -- 24 frames for each second of screen time. A five-minute film could require 7,200 individual pieces of art.
That's why animation, for its first century, was dominated by deep-pocketed studios and assembly-line production techniques. A dedicated independent animator might labor painstakingly over a movie, but the average independent filmmaker stuck with live-action movies, where a minute's worth of footage took a minute to shoot.
However, thanks to a new breed of tech-savvy animators, independent animation is becoming less of an oxymoron. At the 2002 Sundance Online Film Festival, which launches Thursday, 12 of the 26 films are animated. Those 12 animations will feature both online and in an in-theater program to be screened at the Sundance Film Festival, which opens Jan. 10, 2002 in Park City, Utah.
Chris Ferrantello, a professional illustrator who has worked for Esquire and The New York Times, is an example of how digital tools, and in particular Macromedia's Flash format, encourage DIY animation. His Twin Killings, a meditation on the Sept. 11 attacks, is featured at the Sundance Online Fest.
"Twenty years ago, I was interested in animation, but didn't think I'd have a chance," Ferrantello said. "You needed real equipment. But once I got a computer and got my hands on (Flash), I was able to recycle my illustrations and make them move."
Ferrantello's movie represents another new trend in animation -- the ability to create and exhibit topical works (a scan of ifilm's most popular animations includes Osama been Flatten and Harry Pothead and the Magical Herb). Artists also are making cartoons that would scandalize the average Nickelodeon- or Disney-fed animation consumer.
"The Internet has functioned to produce a new kind of audience that accepts a less polished look in exchange for more interesting and provocative content," Marina Zurkow said. Her animated series Brain Girl, showcased at Sundance, was too racy for MTV, which showed a clip but cropped out part of her title character.
"I don't want to be ghettoized as an animator -- I'm a filmmaker who uses animation tools to tell stories," Zurkow said. "I wanted to tell stories in a way I can afford ... it made a lot of sense to break out of the real-world constraints of traditional filmmaking."
"Anyone can now shoot live action with digital cameras and bring it to their home computer to edit," said Motomichi Nakamura, whose music video "Add Boiling Water" is up at the Sundance site. "The same is becoming true with animation -- the tools have become very handy."
The best of times for Web-based animation may have been a couple of years ago, before the collapse of the Internet entertainment industry. Still, digital animators are heartened by the success of Waking Life, the independently produced animated feature that opened this fall.
Could the advent of digital tools turn animation into a more significant component of independent cinema? Will young filmmakers swap their cameras for Flash? Jesse Jacobs, vice president of content for ifilm and author of a forthcoming history of the Internet, is skeptical.
"Either you are an animation guy or you aren't," he said. "It's a different artistic temperament -- you'll either use live action or you won't.... Live action will always have more appeal and attraction with mass audiences."
But Sundance programmer Trevor Groth, who curated the Online Fest, believes digital animation could revitalize cinema. He recently visited an animation studio and was struck by the relative ease of making 21st-century cartoons.
"Seeing what can be done with digital tools, compared to what animators used to have to do with celluloid, makes it clear that the technologies are changing everything," he said. "I think more and more people will turn to the new animation tools to tell stories in different ways."
