“I’m tired of finicky actors,” Walt Disney reputedly said to animation designer Jack Gladish in the early 1960s, “I want to develop a fully animated, articulated human being to use in place of motion picture actors.”

As summarised by producer Sue Maslin; ‘It’s information rich, you can take your users through a narrative if they choose, but they can look at primary source material any time too. It enables the user to construct their own history.

Besides being popular, it’s the only genre among the traditionally expensive fields of action or sci-fi where all you need is a recipe for blood and friends who are good screamers. Plenty of Australasian filmmakers started that way, including a certain portly, bearded kiwi who went on to win an Oscar for his Lord of the Rings films.