North Texas Daily

The world of animation is a vast region of different stories and tales that have been created for our entertainment.

The art of animation takes a team of individuals a great amount of time and money to make the films and television shows that we all know and love.

If this is indeed the case, then why do we view animation as a medium made only for children?

Animation has so much potential and we are barely scratching the surface of what we are doing with it. With animation, our limit is our own mind. With animation, we are allowed to express our inner imagination and depict worlds and stories in a completely unique way. This has been shown many times in countless films and television shows.

The biggest frontrunners of this achievement would most likely have to be the Walt Disney Animation Studio.

Dating way back to 1928, Walter E. Disney began animating Mickey Mouse shorts for the amusement of individuals. He then branched out to tell the stories of old Brothers Grimm tales through various different princess films. The animation studios has taken us to outer space with “Lilo and Stitch” and “Treasure Planet,” to cities of Greece in “Hercules.”

Disney has been able to create timeless films that will bring entertainment for years to come. However, what the company failed to realize is that their creations have made a stigma against animation.

In America, a majority of animation is predominately focused on the entertainment of just children. Disney has created a huge standard for animation and other film studios and animation companies began to follow suit. Pretty soon after, society deemed that animation was only limited to telling stories for children.

To this day, we continue to have this stigma engrained in our minds that only children can enjoy animation. This has even gotten to the point where animation has been categorized in their own category at the Oscars, rather than allowing them to go up against live-action films, with the exception of “Beauty and the Beast,” “Up” and “Toy Story 3” that were all nominated for Best Picture and not just Best Animated Feature.

But, the fact of the matter is, this is far from the truth.

Animation has branched off to allow for more creativity within the medium. This is seen in their side mediums such as CGI animation and stop motion animation. Companies such as Pixar and LAIKA Studios have made tremendous success exploring the world of animation and have been able to bring unique worlds to life in their films.

That’s the beauty of the medium. You can create anything that you desire just as long as you have the imagination for it.

It is time that we respect the medium for what it is. Animators work just as hard, if not harder, than most other filmmakers.

The only difference is that they must take their ideas, envision them and then start from basically nothing to make it appear onscreen.

We have already been witness too many of the great animated films out there. I’m willing to bet that you can think of one off the top of your head while you’re reading this. So why then do we allow our minds to be so limited to the idea of greater animation?

Let’s start showing the medium more respect, open our eyes for what’s to come and start regarding past animation as more than just child entertainment.

Featured Illustration: Jae-Eun Suh