This winter, two new features, Shrek and Final Fantasy , will raise the bar higher. Murphy, who plays a talking donkey in the upcoming CG feature Shrek , was joking. I remember the chrome phase of computer images, says Shrek s co-director Vicky Jensen. It s tempting to go crazy with what we can do now, and let the technology run away with us. But you ve got to restrain yourselves.
Animation is still animation.
At the start of the 1980s, such a scenario was unthinkable. The great tradition of animated feature-film making was crippled by the immense cost of employing artists to create hundreds of thousands of frames by hand. Animation was headed for a ghetto life in television and short films. In the next decade, the computer not only saved the animated feature, but expanded its possibilities. The Little Mermaid , Beauty and the Beast , Aladdin and The Lion King followed, reviving animation s viability.