animated films

To save space, I moved DC animated films and Scooby-Doo DTV animated films to separate sections, and I may do the same with other franchises someday.

Most of the categories in my movie reviews section are specific genres, or at least I usually try to make them so. However, I'm generally against considering animation a genre unto itself, because it just ain't so. Cartoons can be made for any age group, they can be dramatic or comical, they can fit into any live-action genre you care to name. So why put it in its own category, instead of spreading specific animated movies amongst the other categories based on genre? I dunno. Maybe just because I like them so much. Which I reckon is a good enough explanation.

Cel animation
By this I basically mean traditional animation. To be honest, I don't know much about the actual process of making animated movies, so it's possible some of the movies I list under "cel" were actually made by some other technique. So if I'm mistaken about any of this, I apologize. (And of course, many movies that are mainly made with traditional animation may incorporate a certain degree of other animation techniques.) See also Live-action films with cel animation elements.

Computer animation
CGI & motion-capture and Flash animation have been moved to their own sections.

Other animation techniques
rotoscoping: this is something I have seen very little of, and I think of it as being a little too "live-action" to really count as animation. So, the couple of rotoscoped movies I have seen, I put reviews for in other sections. But now that I'm making all these subheadings, I might as well include links to them here. It is, btw, technically a form of traditional animation... I guess. But, like motion capture, it has a distinctive look that sets it apart. (Some movies may even combine techniques like rotoscoping, motion capture, and CGI.)

stop-motion: Some of the movies I list under this heading are claymation, though not all. Another type of stop-motion is cutout (I mean real cutout, not CGI cutout). Other types can use models, puppets, or other objects (and this can be done to some extent in live-action movies, particularly fantasy or science fiction), though it shouldn't be confused with models or puppets that are filmed in a non-stop motion way (such as Muppets).

Anyway... there are some movies that may involve more than one type of animation, and when I'm aware of that, I'll list them under both headings, but I may miss some. (It's also possible I'll list some things under two headings erroneously or unnecessarily.) I should also mention that a few of the movies I list under any type of animation may also include live-action elements. The prime example of this is "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," which I sometimes think I should move out of the animation category altogether. (I did move a series of CGI-heavy movies, "Arthur and the Invisibles," from animation to fantasy.) But... I'll make such decisions on a case by case basis, since it's hard for me to come up with some absolute rule about, like, ratio of live-action to animation. (But generally speaking, if a movie is mostly animation, as with "The Phantom Tollbooth," I'll include it in the animation section. And if a significant number of characters are animated the whole time, even if other characters and even the setting of the movie are live-action the whole time, as with "Roger Rabbit," I'll likely include it here. Especially if the animation itself is integral to the plot, rather than just being the medium of the film.) And... I guess that's all I can think to say, for now.