A bastardized quote:

How do we make beautiful films? General animation principles… are good enough to create elegance, but not beauty. Beauty requires an awareness of human affairs outside the studio.

…and another one:

When storytelling decisions aren’t made in reference to human concerns, they can only be made in reference to each other, leading to a self-referential bundle of nonsense suspended by a sky hook…

When we treat our stories as no more than conduits between human imaginations, grand vistas open up.

I’m pretty far removed from the main animation community, being an amateur who lives in the Midwest. But I do read some animation blogs and books here and there. Most seem to be concerned with industry related matters, or with technical issues. Rarely do any of them talk much about the big picture– why in the hell does anyone make or watch cartoons in the first place? Where does the original impulse come from? What is their real, useful function in the world, and how are they different from live-action films, comics, theater, and music?

It’s something I think about a lot. I find it helps me to put off doing my work.

Jaron Lanier is a computer programmer, musician, and humanist. Oddly, I think he has produced more inspiring and useful writing on these matters than (with a few exceptions) most animation critics — even though he’s usually talking about software. (also, he’d make a wonderful cartoon character, wouldn’t he?)

The bastardized quotes from above are from an essay he wrote for the Association for Computing Machinery, on the subject of “hope” in the next 50 years of computing. (with apologies to Mr. Lanier) I replaced a few words (”software” with “film,” etc.) and presto! the quotes apply to animation!

I suppose these particular exerpts are a bit like a fortune teller’s platitudes (”Love is precious to you…” “Love is precious to me! How did she know?!”) So, they would likely apply to just about any creative profession… try it at home!

Still, there are some strange parallels between the software and animation businesses. Both are faced with figuring out how to make money when everything can be duplicated and downloaded easily… Both are perpetually locked in struggles between the needs of large industrial proprietors, and those of the small, independent innovators off of whom they feed… If they expect to thrive, both must figure out how to escape the shadows and defy the legacies of some powerful, looming corporations (Microsoft and Disney)…

For me, all this reinforces the notion that there might be real human usefulness to be found in both fields. Maybe (as Mark Mayerson has suggested) animation has never warranted this kind of discussion. Maybe it’s all counter-productive navel-gazing, anyway.

I don’t know what my point is. I’m just putting off my work. I hope I have helped you put off your own for a few minutes. Get the hell back to it! Make something useful!

Below are the original quotes from Lanier’s essay. Alther them to suit your own creative profession!

Lanier:

How do we make beautiful software? General engineering principles… are good enough to create elegance, but not beauty. Beauty requires an awareness of human affairs outside the computer.

…and:

When software design decisions aren’t made in reference to human concerns, they can only be made in reference to each other, leading to a self-referential bundle of nonsense suspended by a sky hook…

When we treat information systems as no more than conduits between human imaginations, grand vistas open up.