Seems I was wrong about the amount of hand time that goes into the film. Of course some wil argue that it is not really hand time because it is digital. I have to admit it is disconcerting to hit a a button and a few sliders and turn a photo into a watercolor. The issue for me is one of satisfaction in mastering the physical properties of real paint. Will I use the belly of the brush or the edge, will I load the color on the brush dry or leave only a little dry in the center and keep it wet on the edge, is the canvas too bouncy today? All these little decisions seem to be keyed into some part of the brain that allows you to put emotion on canvas. To be fair, I have not done much digital painting and don't know if a graphics tablet really allows for this without a lot of unsatifying button pressing.
Apparently there is some controversy about the software program sometimes referred to as "Rotoshop". I remember the same sort of controversy about Disney's use of computers, or the early days of photography itself.
Same sort of controversy when, I think it was Hockney, proposed that Vermeer used a Camera Obscura to paint his paintings. So the debate is whether it is animation with a capial "A". Purists against a new wave.
This seems to be the heart of the debate:
... This is not really animation.* They shot the film in live action, the processed each frame with a digital paint program.* So, it's no more animation than, say, tracing a newspaper photograph would give you a portrait.--CHARLES SOLOMON
Personally I won't go here. If it's not really animation then call it "motion graphics' or something else and continue developing it. The results, the visual beauty that this merging of techniques will win out, it always has.
There is a weblog here that goes into some of the finer points.
http://wardomatic.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_wardomatic_archive.html