Animation in movies
When it comes to animation for movies, the animator is only responsible for animating whatever is in the view of the shot camera. In other words they only have to worry about one camera angle at a time. If you're watching a movie, you hit the "Play" button on a movie you can't rotate around to look at the whole set. So you're stuck looking at whatever the camera is viewing. It allows an animator working on a movie to cheat in many ways, because they know that the shot will only be seen from one angle. So if it looks great from that angle, that's ultimately all that matters. This isn't to say animating for movies is easy. Quite the contrary. But there are certain difficulties that arise with video game animation that can be very different than the difficulties that arise with animating for movies. As previously mentioned, in movies the audience has no control over what's happening. In a sense they're just along for the ride. If you were to get a behind the scenes look at a movie you'd see a whole set, with the director, lights and many other things sitting right behind the camera. As long as they're out of the shot of the camera, the audience is never going to see the whole production crew.
audience:
Animation films are usually considered to be children's films and can be watched by the whole family. This is because animation has a visual appeal for kids with basic characters and a simple plot that children can follow along with and enjoy. Allot of these films do cater for adults and parents as well because sometimes the stories can have a serious meaning under all the visuals and humor. For example Disney UP had humor with simple character exteriors but the story was a upsetting story of a mans journey after losing his wife which children may not fully understand the plot. Animations try to please all audiences but target children and make a film the parents can enjoy to.
genre:
for example of animations relying on genre to attract an audience would be WALL-E, at first glance it is appealing to kids because the movie uses a very bright palette to attract the kids attention as well as giving the characters big eyes so the younger audience finds them appealing. WALL-E also appeals to an older audience as the kids usually get their parents to watch it with them because there are a lot of inter-textual references to other films like Space Odyssey when the space ship is flying through space. If the kids didn’t find WALL-E appealing the parents would of never took them to watch the film which would mean Disney would not only loose their younger audiences but also their older audiences. All animations and films rely on the genre to attract and audience apart from star appeal, but they also rely on the audience to attract another range of audiences, like WALL-E using kids to attract the older audiences. WALL-E also appealed to the Sci-Fi audience because it is set in space also involving space ships and robots, like Kung Fu panda appealing to the chinese audience and kung-fu 'goers'.
Animation in games
Games, however, are meant to be interactive. When you play a game, you'll have complete control of the character and the camera. You're the one driving the story forward and making the character move. So not only does the animation need to look good, it needs to look good from every possible angle. For instance, if the game is third person, and the player rotates the camera around they'll see the walk or run cycle from a completely new angle. This new angle can revealing things like knee pops that may not have been visible in the normal camera view. These are things that a game animator needs to take into account to ensure their animation holds up to whatever the player may throw at it. Unlike animation in a movie where the animator doesn't need to worry about how it will look from a side view or from behind, creating animations for games need to look good from any angle. For instance, when implementing the principle of arcs into an animation, the animator needs to ensure the character is following nice smooth arcing motions from any camera angle.
audience:
Gender is an important axis that shapes media participation starting from an early age. This has recently been noticed in several studies concerning young people and media. The early traits may have implications later in the life-paths of the young – not only as audiences of media, but through gendered interests for creative participatory inputs in media and, even choice of careers.
Media educators can help children develop a positive sense of their own gender. In media productions, a positive learning environment could be created for young children offering an anti-bias worldview. Identifying differences in gender-like uses of media is the base for adults in equipping children with positive learning of media skills regardless of gender.
Personally, I don't think it's a bad thing that video games reach an older audience. I think that video games can target kids AND adults. Some games can target kids. That's fine. Some games can target adults. That's fine, too. And I think we're going to lose a lot of potentially good stories if we forget games aimed at adults. I'm not just talking about games aimed at men, either. I think if the whole "kids should be the primary target" mindset comes up, we'll lose games that touch on mature themes, such as Life is Strange, That Dragon Cancer and even the schlocky, pandering stuff like God of War or Gears of War.
genre:
purpose of animation across media sectors
