ANIMATING
GOD’S WAY

Topics: Arts; Beauty; Creation; Creativity; God; Limitations; Movies; Nature; Perfection; Power

References: Genesis 1:1; Nehemiah 9:6; Psalm 19:1; 104:24; Romans 1:20; Colossians 1:16

John Lasseter, Pixar Animation Studios’ genius and director of the hit film Cars, was talking to Michele Norris on National Public Radio. She commented on the amazing photo-realism of the film, which was entirely created by computers. “The cars glisten,” she said. “It looks like we’re seeing photography.”

But she had a question for the moviemaker. “With everything you can do with computer-generated animation, are there still limitations?” Norris asked.

“Absolutely,” Lasseter replied. “The more organic something is in the way it looks or the way it moves, the harder it is to create it with a computer.” This was after he mentioned that every frame of the feature-length film required an average of seventeen hours to create. According to the Los Angeles Times, production costs for Pixar films average about $140 million.

However, no costs were mentioned in a Wall Street Journal review that appeared two weeks later describing a summer exhibit at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The medium here was photography, not computer-generated anything, and the subject was totally organic. Here is a brief description from the review: “One canvas in magenta red has curling squares of what looked like skin or material; another has furry brown hairs sprouting on green and orange stripes; and on a third, lip-like shapes float on a gray-white background.”

The subject of these abstract photos? Magnified close-ups of tree bark.

“The closer one gets to something man has made, the more its imperfections are obvious,” said Dr. Lewis Foster many years ago. “The more we magnify something God has created, the more we see its perfection.”

—Mark A. Taylor, “From the Editor,” Christian Standard (August 6, 2006)