3D - 2

What advantage does a 3D animating program give for doing South Park over a 2D animation program?

South Park uses Autodesk Maya to do what is essentially 2D animation. After all this time and success, what is the advantage to using a 3D program in doing 2D animation? If you say "because it is what they are used to," don't bother answering.

Public Comments

1. the dynamics would be easier to manipulate characters and scenery, and allows any addition fx to be adding when needed, http://www.spscriptorium.com/SPinfo/MakingOfSouthPark.htm ... new elements in Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop , Alias/Wavefront's Power Animator , Composer on SGI O2 , Avid Media Composers on Mac computers, South Park is now animated with Maya,... South Park http://www.southparkstudios.com/ _________ Rainmaker / Mainframe, also uses 3d for some 2d animations, http://www.rainmaker.com/ Manga Entertainment http://manga.com/ ________ you can still use programs like flash and director to make 2d animation, http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/ http://www.adobe.com/products/director/ Anime Studio http://my.smithmicro.com/win/anime/index.html My Comic Book Creator http://www.mycomicbookcreator.com/products/detail/description.html?id=41 2D Animation | Toon Boom Animation http://www.toonboom.com/main/ Synfig Animation Studio http://synfig.org/Main_Page ..
2. I don't see how the dynamics would be easier to manipulate both characters and scenery, since a 2D program would also be digital and allow for the same kind of smooth spline motion paths. a 2D program would actually be easier since it eliminates an entire axis. South park does use Maya's particle effect for special effects like smoke, and it must be nice to be able to build and preview everything in one program. But since they try to make other effects like fire look like construction paper cut-outs, I really have no idea why they have to use the most powerful 3D tool out there. My guess is because Matt Stone and Trey Parker aren't animators, they weren't even aware that 2D digital animation software exists.