Aaron Blaise
artist insight Hand- drawn animation is one casualty of the move to digital over
the past decade, says artist and educator Aaron Blaise Based in Florida, Aaron Blaise has worked on all kinds of animation projects for Disney and other big studios. For him, there’s something sad about how hand-drawn cel animation is now a fading memory, particularly for companies that pioneered the technique and supported it, such as Disney and DreamWorks.
“We’ve seen the virtual extinction of hand-drawn, feature-length animated films. I’m so happy that some small European animation houses are still out there creating them by hand. A great example is last year’s Song of the Sea, which earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination,” he says.
On the other hand, he’s happy working digitally because experimentation is relatively easy and you don’t have to worry about making a mistake. For instance, he helped develop a Disney film called King of the Elves, seen below.
“The ink and watercolour images are pre-digital days. While I like them for what they are, they’re a far cry from what the film would actually look like,” says Aaron. “The digital images are from my post-digital days. These images much more closely resemble how I pictured the particular film.”