A Short Story of the Brief Obsession with 3D Animation

It’s the noughties, a time where fast food corps were allowed to advertise to kids in the morning (fun fact: KFC sponsored SMTV Live) and big brands could only muscle their way into our households through letterboxes, TV screens and radio speakers.

It was also a time of tech advancements. The first Star Wars prequel hit (1999-2005), demonstrating how far special effects had come, Super Mario had made the leap from flat pixels to pointy polygonal perfection, and Disney, along with Pixar, were showing us what was capable in 3D animation which led to the rush to secure a Buzz Lightyear toy for Christmas more many years after. The internet was becoming more accessible, and with it better web design, and computers where being used as legitimate tools in making art as processing power became more powerful.

By the turn of the millennium, 3D animation was a common sight and one that big brands wanted to jump on the back of. What was simmering in the 90s had reached boiling point in the early noughties; 3D graphic art styles were welcomed (or inflicted, depending on your taste) across all forms of media.

Make it 3D! L-R; Kelloggs commercial, Nickelodeon ident, Fruit Winders product launch campaign

Just like how art nouveau fell out of favour for art deco graphic styles a century before, defining the decades in which they transcended, the early 2000’s style can be pretty much encapsulated as the 3D period.

What influenced the fixation?

The trend can be attributed to the rise of 3D animation within video games and animated films. 2000 brought the most successful home console ever, the PlayStation 2. The sixth generation of home consoles brought us better 3D characters and ushered in the Xbox – Microsoft’s stab at the home console market.

Much like video games, film animation was making the leap from 2D to 3D animation. Since 1996’s Toy Story became the first fully computer-animated film, traditional 2D animation was out, and 3D rendered graphics was the new norm for children box office smashes. Pixar’s fable about toys coming to life was quickly followed by talking ants in Pixar’s follow up A Bug’s Life, something that was echoed by Dreamworks with Antz. 3D animation was becoming Hollywood’s biggest cash cow, something that didn’t go unnoticed by brands.

By 2002, the Academy Awards introduced the Best Animated Feature Film category, with the first round of nominees capturing the spirit of the time - Disney’s Monsters Inc, Nickelodeon's Jimmy Neutron and the eventual winner, Dreamworks’ Shrek. Since then, the awards have included more traditional animation styles, but the first nomination list reveals the mood and trend that defined that early to mid-noughties time.

3D graphics were becoming slicker, more realistic and processes to create 3D pieces of art were more accessible to creatives out with video games and Hollywood.

By the mid-2000s, we were flooded with computer-animated media in TV shows, video games, and even on transition screens for the likes of ITV and title credits for popular shows of the time, such as Pop Idol.

Polygon imperfection

It wasn’t long before brands cottoned on to the trend and it seemed like a prerequisite to have a computer-animated character featured in adverts. Unfortunately, a lot of brands didn’t have the budget to develop a character with the same kind of movement and emotion of Nemo – and it showed.

Early adopters, such as Woolworths, gave us the questionable brand and design choice of Keith the Alien. Brands took their traditional mascots and characters and gave them makeovers, with everyone from Kellogg's Tony the Tiger to the Michelin Man.

The impact and decline

The hasty adoption of 3D characters seemingly unrelated to a brand’s ethos was reflective of the manic retail marketing approach of the time.

In a world where we all now have the same style of smartphone, it’s easy to forget that about the sheer variety we had in the noughties. Sticking with the mobile theme, when you walked into a phone shop back in the day (RIP Phones 4U), you were met with all manner of devices. Different sizes, shapes, slide, swivel, flip, clam - what did you choose? Each brand had to do more to stand out - be bigger, brasher, more colourful, more ridiculous. And the assortment of 3D branding very much reflected the mood.

However, the streamlining of ‘stuff’ (mobiles are now our laptops, mp3 players, banking devices, food ordering systems as well as being all rectangle screens) has reflected in modern branding. Logos have been stripped back, and 3D elements well and truly ditched.

The future is flatter…

Uniformity has become de rigueur, with even fashion brands adopting similar simplistic branding and logos. The likes of Balenciaga, Balmain and YSL demonstrate that familiarity is more important than variety.

The end of the 3D craze across brands marketing efforts had all but vanished towards the end of the noughties, with most quietly retiring peculiar 3D design choices. Better technology has meant that 3D animation is less obvious to the eye, just look at the likes of Disney’s Lion King remake, however it might be sometime before we get a hyper realistic Christmas ad of the same calibre.

Better art style choices available coupled with the rise of social media created a lightning rod for brands rethink their content. Does it make sense to produce a fully animated clip brand video for social media where a 180 character Tweet, that takes a tenth of the time can receive a bigger reaction?

You’ll still see cartoon-like 3D animated ads yet they seem to adopt a more cinematic feel and are much more effective at replicating those feature films they long to emulate…

However, with big brands going through somewhat of a nostalgic phase, perhaps we’ll see a return of poorly rendered 3D characters in the near future. We’re ruling nothing out!