EVERYONE KNOWS that hands are easily the hardest part of the anatomy to draw - they're usually what sets apart those who can draw and those who can't. Michelangelo and Da Vinci made countless sketches of hands, starting with the skeleton, then the muscles, followed by the skin over the muscles, and then the clothes over the skin. Their understanding was scientific; their ability otherworldly.
And yet, just because you're capable of making photo-realistic drawings, doesn't necessarily mean that you have to. The Simpsons may be the most telling definition of our age, despite the fact that most people in it are custard yellow, bug-eyed - and have four fingers on each hand. It doesn't necessarily have to look real to be true.
Draw or animate something with a computer, however, and expectations go through the roof. When a reporter once asked Randy Nelson, a senior Pixar executive, about the sort of processing power needed to create one of the studio's typical 3D movies, his response was telling.
'I don't think anybody ever asked Michelangelo this type of question,' said Nelson. 'Great ceiling, Mike - how many brushstrokes?'
It's a question that Pixar - founded in 1986 by Apple impresario Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull - has had to field repeatedly. Such is the price of being at the pinnacle of commercial clout and critical respect. And still the studio keeps churning out classics. The Incredibles has already surpassed US$576 million and swept the 32nd annual Annie Awards on Sunday, winning top honours for best animated feature, best directing and best voice acting for Brad Bird, who voiced the diminutive costume designer Edna Mode, as well as directing the film.
With its somewhat elitist rationale that if everybody is special, then nobody is, the film becomes a metaphor of sorts for the studio that created it. Or rather, a metaphor for everyone else who finds themselves looking up at another benchmark being set.