Animation April sub genres

 

I love animation so I'm so excited to feature a months worth of it. There are several sub genres but these are the ones I will feature. 

Disney animated feature films. 

Walt Disney was a dreamer and a pioneer. Although, some will say some other not so flattering things. However, you cannot say that he did not make very compelling features starting with Snow White in 1937. Disney films tend to run like they Hays code still exists. There is a happy ending for the protagonist and a not so happy ending for the antagonists. It heavily features traditional values and roles. Although, that is changing now. The films have a Hero's Journey element to them but not all of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey . Sidekicks and talking animals are very common. Technically, I don't see it as a sub-genre anywhere but I want to add it. 

Stop Motion Animation. 

Gosh I sure love stop-motion, so much so I created a short. Basically its taking a model of some kind and moving it just a tiny bit. Click. Take a Pic. That's one frame. Move it again. Click. Take a pic. That's two frames.  It is so tedious and so much harder than people realize. What I love about it is that the animator is acting. The director is acting. Although, many creators copy the movements of the actors. which they capture on film.

Digital Animation

This is my least favorite style where characters and movement are designed, created and animated in the digital space. Its cheaper so creators tend to use it and ship off the workload to animation houses in S Korea. The problem for me is that it tends to look "generic". What many creators are doing to compromise is combining hand drawn with CGI. 

Hand Drawn Animation

So lovely, so stylized but oh so expensive. At first everything was hand drawn and took years to crank out a film. It was great but...expensive and oh so time consuming. I love it and so many other people do too. There seems to be a second renaissance of hand made animation including stop motion. 

Japanese Anime

Anime is technically Japanese originated animation that's been around since the early 1900's. I'm not a big fan. I like it but there is just so much of it I cant watch tv that much. I have a gen Z child to help with that. It has a brightly colored style with light whimsical lines. I'm told there are sub sub genres here. Anime can be both hand drawn and CGI. 

Shōnen anime geared to wards young boys. Think Dragonball Z. 

Shōjo anime geared towards young girls. Think Sailor Moon.

Seinen anime geared towards more mature audiences. Think Ghost in the Shell

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