Darlings of the picture show page, lend an ear to a proper bit of art sorcery, the sort that makes your eyeliner prickle & your heart go all skippy. There’s a certain two-dimensional lilt, a hand wrought glamour, that refuses to go quietly, even with the telly world forever flogging glossy, plasticine depth. Look toward ‘Gorillaz’ & their visual ringmaster Jamie Hewlett, that comic book swashbuckler who also dreamt up ‘Tank Girl’, & you’ll spot it at once, the ink to paper electricity, the human pulse hiding in every contour.
Because when an animator draws by hand, every line arrives with fingerprints, every smudge & hatchmark carries a wee biography, a private history of wrist, elbow, breath. That’s the secret sauce, love. You can almost hear the pencil whispering, the nib scratching, the brush dragging pigment like velvet over toothy paper. The newest Hewlett-led ‘Gorillaz’ short, an eight minute jaunt titled “The Mountain, The Moon Cave & The Sad God”, wears that craft like a sharp new suit, a deliberate valentine to Disney’s “The Jungle Book”, yet still very much its own groovy beast. 
Now, don’t get it twisted, three-dimensional animation can be a right marvel, all liquid motion & shiny physics, the characters gliding about as if they’ve borrowed Newton’s notebook. Yet it so often feels like a showroom mannequin, impeccable, expensive, & somehow distant, the warmth filed away. The machine can simulate muscle, but it struggles with the tiny hesitations, the delightful wonk, the minute tremor that tells you a living mind stood behind the image & chose, deliberately, to leave a quirk intact. With hand drawn work, you sense the weight of each footfall, the tension inside an eyebrow, the microscopic shiver at the corner of a mouth, & your own imagination shakes hands with the artist across time.
Ever stared at an illustration & clocked the crayon burr, the ink bleed, the pencil groove pressed into the sheet, & felt as though you’d bumped into a stranger from another decade, still breathing through graphite? That’s communion. That’s the sort of connection a slick digital puppet, churned out for networks who’d rather have speed than spirit, can’t quite fake. Those rudimentary, budgety computer cut outs may jiggle along, but they don’t sing, not in the marrow.
And speaking of marrow, let’s talk Russell, my absolute favourite of the ‘Gorillaz’ crew, big as a wardrobe, tender as a lullaby, with that endearing, off kilter grin like a charming signature. He outclasses 2D’s lanky melancholy, sidesteps Murdoc’s devilish cult leader swagger, & even steals a march on Noodle’s ferocious cuteness, no sass accepted, cheers. I’ve always fancied the notion of clambering up onto Russell’s shoulders, hanging on like a kid at the park’s climbing frame, exactly the sort of thing Noodle’s been pulling since she was knee-high, only now with the confidence of a grown-up. That’s what hand drawn animation gifts you, not merely characters, but companions you want to follow into the painted jungle. Proper magic, that, & I’m chuffed senselessly!
