There are two major trends in animation going into
the 21st century, and no one can be certain which trend will have the greatest
impact. If you're reading this site you're an active participant in the
first trend, the rising influence of the anime design and cinematography
style. The second trend is computer animation and the three-dimensional
look. 3d animation had its greatest technical achievement in the Final
Fantasy movie, and has been commercially successful with the Toy Story
films. Part of the link between the trends could be seen at Project: A-Kon
when the producers of one of 2001's top animated films, a company from
Texas, made a presentation on their work.
This site first paid attention to Jimmy Neutron:
Boy Genius when Debi Derryberry, the female voice of the show's male lead
character, appeared in 2001 at the Middle Tennessee Anime Convention. A
few weeks after that convention, the film got an Oscar nomination for Best
Animated Feature. It was clear from the A-Kon presentation by John Davis
of DNA Studios, Neutron's creators, that they're very proud of their accomplishments,
and they're even prouder of the effort they've made to have the TV version
of Neutron, to be shown on Nickelodeon, look just like the movie version.
"There have been other 3D shows on television before, some of which I liked,
but none looked like this," said Davis.
Neutron is made from commercially available software,
said Davis, starting with the Lightwave modeling and texture program that
this site first mentioned in 1998 as a possible path to desktop animation.
Other packages are used to animate the figures created in Lightwave. Since
those programs create a camera angle in a virtual world, computer animators
can test their camera moves in a simplified environment before completing
a scene with fully rendered objects. While Final Fantasy set new standards
for photorealistic 3D, DNA decided to keep the cartoony look for Jimmy
Neutron, said Davis. He also had an anecdote on what might have been for
the series: Walt Disney Co. wanted Neutron as a 2D series but DNA wanted
3D and held back the series until they got their successful movie and TV
deal with Nickelodeon.
