Oh i agree, but the problem is that looks alone is something that could carry your movie 50 years ago, not today.
Today its hard to find a high budget movie or animation that isnt just beautiful to look at, with great cinematography in everything, with even superheroes movies like Thor having beautiful costumes and sets, and any high budget blockbuster like pirates 3 or transformers 3 having state of the art cgi.
Problem is that today those products are worked on by hundreds of best in their fields, so its hard for it to look bad. And sure, some movie try to look more stylized, like Life of Pi, but its hard to say it makes them a better movie.
As for paperman, it was not better looking than your usual pixar/disney movie or short, it had a different style, but it was not a "better" style.
Whos to say that it looked better than any student made short that comes out every year, just because it had an army of animators paint over each 3d rendered frame by hand. It didnt look better to me, even as someone who knows a lot about 3d, i was not impressed.
The thing we can always rate easily is plot and acting, since those are 2 common elements for every movie, from the first black and white silent movies to cgi animations.
And while the character animation was good if not generic, the shoots did they work and didnt look especially amazing, the narrative was flat uninspired and full of cliched solutions.
And as someone who does know 3d animation i know they they didnt work any harder than countless other artists, they didnt try anything risky or innovative ( hand painting over 3d animation, i mean really ? do we really need someone to paint over 3d to make it look more like 2d, but still you can tell its 3d ? ), they didnt try to tackle any controversial or iportant subject and so they didnt end up with anything really impressive.
Its won only because of its producer name, nothing more, nothing less. There are few dozen amazing amateur 3d shorts coming out every year, but since they are created by some no names starting of in this industry with no connections they have no chance for nomination.
So we are left with anything with a big name behind it getting praised and awarded, and honestly, it is insulting to me as an artists, and i have no problems with criticizing it.
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