Pictures that do not really exist: Mitigating the digital crisis in traditional animation production

The period between 1994 and 2004 was a unique moment in time for the TV animation community. It was a time of transition, when the introduction of digital tools caused irreversible changes to long-established 2D animation production pipelines. These new digital pipelines altered the time-honoured traditional roles of ‘old timers’ (senior artists) and ‘new comers’ (junior artists) and caused unparalleled revisions to conven¬tional production models. This article uses Lave and Wenger’s concept of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ and Basil Bernstein’s ideas on ‘trainability’ and ‘recontextualization’ to discuss the changes brought on by the introduction of digital applications to a community of practice in flux. It focuses on the Toronto animation community as a microcosm of a global experience and uses Nelvana – one of Canada’s most influential and successful animation production companies – as a case study. By means of an interpretive phenomenological approach it analyses and evaluates the crisis during this period of time and describes the animation artists passage from resenting change to directing change within their industry and community.