Theory of Animation Response

I thought this reading was pretty interesting. I've never thought of animation with the same categorical breakups as live action. I always thought of film genres as narrative, doc, animation and experimental. This reading really brings forward the idea that animation has most of those categories all by itself.

I also thought the criteria for defining "orthodox" vs. "nonorthodox" animation was interesting as well. This made me realize how similar the animation that I grew up watching was to the live action film that I watch now. They both had characters that had defining traits, personalities, and voices. Both had linear plots with a beginning, middle, and end, and followed the classical hollywood style in which editing is made to be invisible.

One difference that is strange to me is that with big directors in live action films, the style and artistry of the director is generally intended to be known, regardless of what company they are working under. For example, Hitchcock has many stylistic choices that define his own artistry as a director, whereas Wells argues that with major animation, the individual artistry of a Disney artist or Warner Bros artist is meant to be hidden under the encapsulating style of Disney as a company.

One thing that I didn't like about the article was that to me, it seemed that Wells was implying that orthodox animation is "worse", for lack of a better word, than unorthodox. I thought it was strange that he seemed to be comparing the quality and artistry between the two areas. To me, neither is better or worse, they are just different ways of animating, and both fulfill different needs of different animators.