(Witfield, 2006: 3-4). In this sense, the rotoscope technique aims to merge
the qualities of perception of cartoons with the authenticity of real footage.
In recent years we have experienced a fast assimilation of the digital
image in animation, where there is no direct and necessary relationship with
the image and reality. Films such as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
(Sakaguchi, 2001) signal an increasing interest in an alternative to Disney
cartoons. This film was the first serious attempt to produce photorealistic CGI
(Computer Generated Image) humans. The pleasure and fascination in
observing how real we look in our technological creations has become
symptomatic of the time of reproduction in which we are living. The
influence of technology on the image and its perception is usefully illustrated
if we consider the radical difference between computer generated images
and lens generated images. The computer generated images are synthetic, as
opposed to the analytical nature of lens generated images. Therefore the lens
generated images are, in some sense, reflective of the reality they represent
while computer generated images are always ‘medium-generated’. Another
opposed characteristic is that the lens generated images are deductive
because what we see is a portion of the landscape, whereas the computer
generated images are inductive, a large combination of numbers being
translated into pixels. Therefore, while lens generated images have instant
access to the world, the computer generated images have to create the world
and objects with the ‘atemporal’ sequence of 0s and 1s. Paradoxically, as
Herbert Zettl (1996: 83-91) points out, the final goal of the computer
generated image is not to recreate the world but to recreate the lens
generated image. Ironically, and as Lash notes, ‘cinematic signification in the
age of hi-technology and the 30 million dollar film, comes closer than other
forms of signification to resemblance of reality’ (Lash, 1990: 186).
The perfect coexistence and harmony of lens generated and computer
generated images come together in films such as Toy Story (Lasseter, 1995),
an interesting hybrid of the two. Toy Story demonstrates unprecedented
imaging in which the light, colour and movement have the most extraordinary
detail, although they have no direct correlation with real life, creating a
‘moving photographic image of the impossible’ (Darley, 2000: 110). Toy Story
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