Live-action cinema has a canon of directors defined by the critical community as 'Auteurs' -Across a number of films, with a recognisable signature style or preoccupying theme. Animation, especially in the context of 'alternative methods' is the most auteurist of media. Often films are made by one person alone expressly dealing with specific and complex themes; a new technique; or using an experimental approach to a dominant method or extending the parameters of fine art in animation.
Experimental animation as a term has become more associated with non-objective, non-linear works - which some claim are the purest form of animation - but in other ways it misrepresents a whole range of work that is not necessarily highly progressive in its experimentation, but merely of a different order to classical or traditional 2D cartoons or 3D animation. It is essentially developmental animation in the sense that it is often a response to and a resistance of orthodox techniques, in a spirit of creating a personal statement or vision not possible in a big studio context, or within the field of popular entertainment.
(Alternative methods, The Fundermentals of Animation, Paul Wells)
