Hand-drawn Animation: What's its place?

Many people believe that hand-drawn, or 2D, animation is a dying art form. Hand-drawn animation takes so much more time and resources to make than CG animation does. (1) CG animation is also becoming more expressive and developed, and animators are actively seeking to push the limits to create new things.

However, maybe I'm a bit of an idealist for thinking this way but there is a certain quality to hand-drawn animation that cannot be re-created in CG animation. It has it's own language that speaks to the viewer in a specific way. I feel that CG and hand-done animation are two different ways of viewing something, and even if that thing is the same, the meaning is different for each.

I read an interview with Tomm Moore, creator of "The Secret of Kells" (an animation that has stuck in my head since I viewed it a few years ago) and "Song of the Sea." In the interview, he was talking about how CG animation tries to create something as closely to live-action as possible, whereas hand-drawn animation can be so simplified as to be not specific, allowing the viewers "to project themselves into [the film] in a more visceral way." (2) He also talked about the power that animation can have during childhood and stated that though he watches many movies as an adult, the ones that stay with him are the ones he saw as a child.

Many of the articles I read this week spoke of how hand-drawn animation now has the opportunity to evolve as an art form, to become something more than it is now. With newer technologies, the opportunities are essentially endless, all it takes is time and devotion. While it may not become mainstream or industry standard, I believe that hand-drawn animation still holds an important place in the world, and that it still has so much more to offer.

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(1) The Animation Guild
(2) Cartoon Brew