The Process Is the Art

A still from Porco Rosso (1992)Welcome! It’s a new Sunday edition of the Animation Obsessive newsletter, and here’s the agenda:1. Notes on process.2. Newsbits from the animation world.With that, let’s go!1. Figuring it outIf there was a way to make art perfectly to spec and vision with zero time or effort, would you use it?That question was put to Coleen Baik this year, in slightly different words. Baik is an animator, and her work takes time and effort. Right now, she’s animating on paper. “[I]n the era of ‘let the machine do everything,’ I’m increasingly drawn to do more of the labor myself,” she wrote in her newsletter, The Line Between.When she got that question about the no-effort, no-time alternative, she replied, “What would be the fun in that?”1In the 2020s, there’s a lot of discussion around closing the gap between first thought and completed project. Tech companies are making it possible to render a spitballed outline very quickly. Using their tools, the process of creating…