I think people get the gist of Animation from one medium to the next. There's really no "mystery" to CG animation at all. You move it a little, take a photograph, move it a little, take a photograph. The photograph part is slightly more automated (I'm sure render specialists would chuck a tomato or two at me here) but the idea is the same.

I don't think the tangibility comes from the medium at all. Yes, the puppets in stop-motion exist in a real dimensional space, but when we're at the movies we can't actually reach out and touch them. I think what gives any animated character it's tangibility is if it's animation is believable. Animation drives the character, character drives the story, and story drives our emotional response.

- I'll admit I'm a bit biased... I'm a cg animator ;)

Great discussion!

As far as more mature subject matter, I think stop motion would be a great choice. There is a long history of it, from King Kong to incredible Czech and Russian films, Svankmajer and Brothers Quay to name a few. Coraline has some very creepy sequences and could easily be ramped up to be an out and out horror film, which would be exciting to see. It seems that only in the US, animation of all kinds are put into the kid friendly box. Hopefully this will change.

Having worked on stop mo, traditional and cg films, I think your view of the process is a little off. Cg is by far the most micro managed of mediums, since every frame can be gone over ad infinitum. Stop mo allows animators to put more of themselves in the work, since the animation is done straight ahead. It's actually faster to do than cg, with all of the dissecting of frames. Traditional is somewhere between the two.

Anyway, it was great to hear such an in depth discussion on this subject. Keep it up!

Certainly stop motion have something special, something more human about animation.

By the way, have you heard about this spanish film?

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118006681.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

Wonderful discussion. I grew up watching any animation I could find. Having been exposed to so many different approaches to animation, I think that the "2D vs. 3D" debate is one of the most downright stupid arguments in all the film world. (Hell, the very fact that it's *called* the "2D vs. 3D" debate shows how little the argument makes sense.) Honestly, I really don't care what kind of animation is used in a film *as long as* the story is good and the characters are interesting. I couldn't be happier that we're seeing a new wave of animated features that were clearly made out of sheer love and not because they wanted to sell lots and lots of Happy Meal toys or something.

That said, and I can't think of a more succinct way to word this, Robert Zemeckis needs somebody to tell him, "No."

Love the podcast and I have a couple comments on previous episodes. There actually was a feature-length film based upon the same source material as the "Twilight Zone" episode, "I Sing the Body Electric". I think it aired on the Disney Channel enough times to mess with my mind as a child, and I'm pretty sure it had the title, "Electric Grandma" or something equally ludicrous. I am also very surprised that there was no mention at all of the infamous film "Up Close and Personal" during the discussion a few weeks ago, "Let's Turn a Biography Into a Sappy Romance Movie!"