The Unlimited Possibilities of Animation

This essay, by Sylvia Woodbury, 19, who is taking a gap year, in Sharon, Mass., is one of the Top 11 winners of The Learning Network’s 10th Annual Student Editorial Contest, for which we received 12,592 entries.

We are publishing the work of all the winners and runners-up over the next week, and you can find them here as they post.

The Unlimited Possibilities of Animation

Every fall, graduating students at Gobelins, School of Images, release their animated shorts on YouTube. From “Louise,” a historical vignette with the looseness of line and bold palette of a Toulouse-Lautrec poster, to the richly-detailed fable that is “Colza,” these films validate and renew my love for animation.

Yet when I turn my gaze to American film culture, I find that mainstream animation lacks the creative diversity of these student shorts. In the history of the Academy Awards, only three animated films have been nominated for Best Picture, all of them Disney-Pixar releases; since the introduction of the Best Animated Feature category in 2002, 3-D films intended for children have won 19 times.

The Disney-Pixar sensibility dominates. Smooth, uniform 3-D generates a slightly-exaggerated realism. Plot tends toward the formulaic: protagonists engage with fantastical scenarios just enough to learn a singular life lesson. Complexity eludes; we may cry or laugh, but we are never truly unnerved or challenged.

The films that deviate from this standard — overwhelmingly produced by indie and international studios — prove that regarding animation as a medium, rather than a genre, expands the ways stories may be told.

Consider “Flee,” a 2021 animated documentary about a family’s escape from war-torn Afghanistan. In creating remembered landscapes lost to time and destruction, the film carries an elegiac weight interwoven with personal grief. One striking scene reduces the characters to scratchy gray outlines as they flee through Kabul, a visual that captures the stark fear of the characters as well as the obliteration of war.

Animation’s capabilities extend beyond the reproduction of live action. An animated feature plays with shape, line, color and perspective, infusing a film with a dual story: that of the world and characters, and that of the art which represents them. The Irish studio Cartoon Saloon imbues its animation with the flatness and drawn patterns of Celtic artwork, evoking the elaborate whimsy of an illuminated manuscript and underlining the legacy of human creation.

Laika studios’ “Coraline” similarly challenges the accepted formula: surreal, feral and off-putting, the Claymation acknowledges the ability of children to process and dispel darkness through their own imaginative powers. “Coraline,” writes A.O. Scott in The New York Times, depicts childhood “as an active, seething state of receptivity in which consciousness itself is a site of wondrous, at times unbearable drama.”

Animation’s artistry allows stories to bloom in dynamic ways; whatever may be dreamed, may be created. Limiting animation to formulaic boxes has turned a vibrant garden barren and hostile. But the next generation of filmmakers — those impassioned creators who spin such intricate visions within three-minute shorts — may seed new growth if only they have the room and respect to do so.

Works Cited

Aguilar, Carlos. “The Small Irish Animation Studio That Keeps Getting the Oscars’ Attention.” The New York Times, 16 Dec. 2020.

“COLZA — Animated Short Film 2020.” YouTube, uploaded by Gobelins, 1 Oct. 2020.

“How ‘Spider-Verse’ Forced Animation to Evolve.” YouTube, uploaded by Vox, 10 Sept. 2022.

“LOUISE — Animation Short Film 2021 — GOBELINS.” YouTube, uploaded by Gobelins, 17 Nov. 2021.

O’Connell, Mark. “Cartoon Saloon and the New Golden Age of Animation.” The New Yorker, 11 Dec. 2020.

Scott, A. O. “Cornered in a Parallel World.” The New York Times, 5 Feb. 2009.

Scott, A. O. “‘Flee’ Review: From Kabul to Copenhagen.” The New York Times, 2 Dec. 2021.

Vilas-Boas, Eric. “‘It’s Kind of Embarrassing’: Why Animators Are Unhappy With the Oscars.” Vulture, 9 March 2023.