Whoa! I just saw a new Chips Ahoy commercial done by Wil Vinton Studios that was actually done in oldschool California Raisin style stop-motion.
I don’t know a whole lot about how they do things at Wil Vinton Studios nowadays, but I remember reading an article in ’96 about how they’d begun the transition from stop-motion to CG. Within a few months after reading the article, I began seeing the Chips Ahoy spots they had been animating with CG, which made me equal parts sad and glad, for at the time I thought computer animation was the bees knees, but had a fond place in my heart for stop-motion.
I recognize that CG animation can be equally technical, often surpassing the amount of skill and work required to create the same thing with stop-motion, but my opinion of it is generally very low these days. It seems like bad CG is everywhere, so much so that even good CG has lost its appeal to me and rarely impresses me. It’s like when Frontpage came out; suddenly everyone could make crappy webpages with minimal effort, ensuring that every web page you saw was in fact crappy.
In comparison, I can look at the stop-motion stuff Harryhousen was making like 50 years ago, and it still blows me away. That stuff just looks so incredible to me, but I’m obviously biased.
That said, I’m way too lazy for stop-motion, so my various planned animations will be done with a 3D animation package, though hopefully without looking like it.
