Potential and Limitations: The Success and Sustainability of CG

CG is the most prominent commercial form of mainstream animation. A quick look at the highest grossing animated films of any given year after 1995 and you'll more than likely see that they are primarily CG animated, family friendly affairs produced by large studios such as Disney, Pixar or Dreamworks.

The demand for family friendly never slowed down, evidenced by the popularity of late 2D animated features such as The Lion King, but with advent of CG in the mid 90s, animators were granted a new set of tools to better express their ideas. While CG is considered a large financial and technological investment, on large scale productions it's workflow generally allows for projects to be churned out faster than their traditional 2D contemporaries and is thus the less risky option. In much the same way tools such as DUIK save time on 2D animated projects by allowing animators to animate pre-existing assets, CG cuts down on asset creation and grants the animator more flexible control of elements such as lighting and camera in a scene. 2D animation, while still popular in parts of Europe and Japan, seems unviable in the current Hollywood, profit-oriented landscape.

CG's proven formula generates profit precisely because it is so deeply entrenched in the hollywood system of profit-oriented, family-friendly feature films. Smaller scale CG productions are a lot less common because audiences expect a certain level of technicality, and due to the monopolisation of the medium by Disney and Dreamworks, a particular, family-friendly style.