Animation computers such as Animo may have taken the drudgery out of cartoons but

Animation computers such as Animo may have taken the drudgery out of cartoons but they have created new headaches for the world's major studios. Conventional animation generates hundreds of thousands of drawings during the two to three years it takes to make the film, and over the past few decades the studios have evolved ways of managing these physical "assets". But as animation computers become more widespread, these "assets" are increasingly being found only on the hard disk of a computer, and the old methods no longer apply. DreamWorks is using 100 Silicon Graphics workstations with Animo software to make its first feature, The Prince of Egypt, but the film will spawn a CD-Rom, an album of songs and an Internet site, all of which will use clips from the original production.Keeping track of these "digital assets" is essential for the production to run smoothly, from storyboards to spin-offs, according to Dylan Kohler, one of the studio's technology gurus. The software will produce contour lines automatically, so that they look as if they were drawn in 2D by an artist.. They are working on one themselves, although the first hybrid system is likely to come from Newtek. It is best known for its pounds 400 LightWave 3D animation system, which produced the space scenes in Babylon 5 and the latest Star Trek spin-offs.Newtek is now developing tools to allow LightWave to produce images with a 2D animation look.

Being a development of a 3D platform should also make it easier for users to change camera angles, as the camera already moves in 3D. It is better suited to computerisation because once the animator has built a model of a character in the computer, it can be moved as if it were solid. But the results in cartoons are mixed.Animators at Cambridge Animation say the future will be some sort of hybrid 2D/3D system. There are also several impressive systems produced in France, where the government has injected millions into their development.There is another option, 3D, as used in Disney's Toy Story, the first feature film completely generated using a computer. The basic Animo Studio costs pounds 10,000 for the software, plus pounds 8,000 upwards for a fully equipped PC.

Alternatives such as Animo's main rival, Toonz, from Softimage, part of the Microsoft empire, cost about the same. Most animators prefer to do the creative work by hand and leave the drudgery to the computer.Where computers score is in instantly creating special effects - usually these have to be produced in a dedicated lab - and in their ability to do incredible multi-plane shots, which even the best camera could never achieve.Because acetate, on which cartoons are traditionally drawn, has a slight green tinge, it is only possible to shoot through about seven layers before it becomes too green, whereas computers can cope with infinite layers.These systems are not cheap. But telling the computer what to do can take as long as doing it yourself. It is also being used by games software companies.Even with the help of a computer, animation requires great skill. Artists still do all the drawings on paper, then scan them in and do the animation, composition and painting in the computer.

It is possible to draw the keyframes on paper, turn them into vectorised models in the computer and have it automatically generate the in-between shots. For Michel Gagne, the highly skilled head of special effects at Warner Brothers, it is not surprising that his dazzling short film Prelude To Eden should be wonderful. What is surprising is that it was created on his home PC, a 60MHz Pentium.Others using Animo include the British Oscar-winning cartoonists Snowden Fine, Warner Brothers and the makers of many television series, such as The Animals of Farthing Wood, Mr Men and Fantom Cat. Animation is the simplest form of film-making All it takes is a pencil and paper. But with a million or more drawings in a cartoon feature film, each of which then has to be painted by hand, it is hard work. Now, however, the pencil has turned electronic and computers are beginning to take over toontown. Steven Spielberg is the latest of Hollywood's big names to move into computerised animation at his new studio, DreamWorks, which is working on its first cartoon feature, Prince of Egypt. The system he chose is British, Animo, from Cambridge Animation, and it can run on an ordinary PC.Now, if the animation skills are there, anyone can produce their own cartoon in their spare time.

Gracie Fields, George Formby, Cyril Smith, Terry Christian, etc, but I won't, because some of us Tykes are rational as well as proud.G PearsonLondon E3. I wouldn't have thought even Geoffrey Boycott would have been daft enough to go on an expedition with Ranulph Fiennes, although it would have shut him up for a while.A PembletonSheffield, South YorkshireMaybe Chris Maume also believes all Americans are brash, all Swedish girls are sexy and Germans attend evening classes relating to sunbeds and towels.For him to select a few well-known boors and misguided patriots is a poor way to sustain this museum-piece of an argument.I could just as easily bang on about his home county of Lancashire, and its less than illustrious relatives ... Like any nation state, we have our fair share of eccentrics, most of whom end up commentating on cricket for the BBC; and I must apologise for the severe public distress this particular Care in the Community project has caused.PS. As a missionary in a backward land, my beliefs are not dissipated by this constant derision.