Technological Threat

US (1988): Animated/Short

Here's what Bill Kroyer said about Technological Threat in an address at the Ojai Animation Conference in 1995:

"My wife Sue and I started Kroyer Films in 1986 to combine computer and hand animation. Although I enjoyed working with computers, I always missed drawing and the illusion of cartoons. I wanted to create something that would allow the computer to blend easily with the pencil, which I still believe is the animator's greatest tool, as it gives one the most freedom to create an illusion.

"We put together a software package that allowed a computer to draw out on punched animation paper using a plotter. It was unbelievably fast. Artists used to look at it and you could see them staring into the abyss of their own careers disappearing.

"The truth is that computer people like to think that and artists often fear that. So we made Technological Threat, which was about just that. It showed organic cartoon characters being threatened by computer animated characters. We did the former by hand and the latter, of course, with computers. There was this heavy philosophical depth to the movie, which the French really appreciated. No one here did.

"Technological Threat spoke to the question of: What is this technological revolution doing to the artist and to art? Well, animation as we know it, is both gaining and losing, but it's losing less than it's gaining." (Animation World News)

1 nomination