3D Animation is Dead!

You heard me. I said 3D Animation is dead. For all of you out there who hoped to work on the next Pixar film or any 3D animated cartoon for that matter, pack up your things and head for home. If you're a student who is even considering majoring in Computer Animation, switch to Botany now while you still have a chance.

Okay... I'm kidding.

You'd never know it though by the huge mountain of blog postings, magazine articles, and forum topics about how "Film A" didn't do as well as everyone had hoped or how "Film B" died a quick death at the box office. If you were an outsider, you'd think that 3D Animated films had already gone the way of the Guam Flying fox (it's extinct... look it up if you don't believe me).

Disney's "The Wild" only managed to generate around $38 million at the box office.

I've also read articles in which people ask if the flooding of the market with 3D animated films this summer is a possible cause for slower-than-expected box office returns, and it probably has something to do with it. When Pixar was the only kid on the block and there wasn't any real competition, it was much easier for them to pull in massive numbers. Now with companies like Sony and Dreamworks giving them a real run for their money, customers are forced to make more decisions with their hard-earned money.

All that said though, I really don't see a need to panic just yet. Believing that a market rich with animated features is going to somehow kill the industry is like believing that way too many comedies is going to kill the comedy movie genre, which it most certainly hasn't.

It isn't the number of films in any genre that makes people stop going.


"The Ant Bully," which received overall positive reviews, isn't seeing big box office returns.

You wanna' know the real kicker? I hold the golden ticket as to how movie studios can make as many animated movies as they want and still rake in the cash.

You ready for this?

Make good movies.

Tell me that doesn't just blow your mind. The very idea that by making nothing but quality films that aren't dependent on marketing dates or reaching key demographics or coinciding with the launch of a new line of Happy Meal Toys is just about the most earth shattering idea that could have come from this tiny, little, pea brain of mine.

It sounds simple, but it obviously isn't. Hollywood studios are already doing what they do with every other successful trend, which is to release a hundred versions of that single success, only put less than a tenth of the effort into each one. After all, if you can make a film just like Pixar does on a third of the budget, you'll make even more money, right?

Wrong.


"Barnyard" is pulling in decent numbers, but nowhere near that of other summer 3D animated films.

Now I'll stop here and now and explain that I am not calling out the work of any individual, team or company, nor am I suggesting that recent films that haven't done well at the box office were due to lack of effort on the part of the team or individual contributors. No need to threaten to shoot my dog or anything like that, because I'm not implying anything at all.

What I am saying is that, when compared against each other, there are some 3D films released this year that stand out above the rest in terms of their overall presentation. It's just the way things work.


"Over the Hedge" has made over $150 million at the box office so far.

What business-minded people never seem to grasp is that while some of those lower tier films may do well initially, eventually the consumer starts to get gun-shy and will stop going to films because they're afraid they won't get a strong enough return on their investment. So pumping out sub-par films and diluting the market with them is a great short term way to make some cash, but in the end it only winds up hurting the industry.

It happened with 2D animation as well, and more than once. There was an industry that was extremely successful but then companies started to worry more about the cash flow than the product on screen and the industry shriveled up as a result. It came back even stronger, only to repeat the same mistakes and die again.


"Cars" is being touted by some as a disappointment, despite it making $240 million in domestic ticket sales alone.

In the grand scheme of film history, 3D Animation is still in its infant stages, and has the legs to potentially be around for a long time to come. It's certainly going to be around for the next 10 years at least, but it's all up to the number crunchers to decide if it's going to be around longer or not. If they have faith in their teams' visions and allow them to create the films that they have the talent to create, then there really is no end in sight. If, on the other hand, they get too greedy and allow the quality to be sacrificed in the place of the bottom dollar, then we'd all better watch as many of these films as we can, because 25 years from now, we'll all be looking back on "the golden age of Computer Animation," and talking about how great it used to be.