>>122371338CG artist here, and you're not saying anything I haven't said. I often compare working in CG to handling dangerous material from behind glass with remote operated tools.
>CGI cartoons have abstract designs, those designs are placed in realistic simulations that inherently produce more information than is necessaryOne of the worst offenders here is the animation process itself. In traditional animation you have the ability (though not necessarily the time/budget) to make each frame interesting in its own right. You can pick out the best drawings, redraw some of the crummy ones, and you only need to include the frames that convey what you're going for. Sometimes that's the absence of in-betweens in the case of swift assertive motions. In CG the computer decides how/what to draw each and every frame based on a set of instructions the artist typically has little direct control over. This impacts almost every pillar of animation: weight, timing, distorting the character for artistic effect (smearing, joint breaking, etc).
