Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney

[Musical Master]

Why??

[TsWade2]

Why??

Because I've been obsessing about the future of Hand Drawn too much. ANd it's killing me.

[Musical Master]

Why??

Because I've been obsessing about the future of Hand Drawn too much. ANd it's killing me.

Oh... I guess that can be really stressful to know that Disney won't do any sort of hand-drawn projects in the near future, but I could be optimistic that Disney still cares.

[TsWade2]

Because I've been obsessing about the future of Hand Drawn too much. ANd it's killing me.

Oh... I guess that can be really stressful to know that Disney won't do any sort of hand-drawn projects in the near future, but I could be optimistic that Disney still cares.

I hope so.

[Sotiris]

This is hilarious!


Source: https://twitter.com/LinoD/status/415556236122144768

[sunhuntin]

Well, Goldberg did get recruited to Disney based on his own studio which produced commercials for quite a number of years. So, he's gone full-circle. However, I do think he will work on another feature again, just give it time.

Of course, there's no shame in doing commercials. Richard Williams worked on so many commercials, all of them quite impressive. Williams' studio made a Care Bears commercial that was better animated than the Nelvana series. Seriously.

do you have a link to the care bears commercial please?

[TsWade2]

This is hilarious!


Source: https://twitter.com/LinoD/status/415556236122144768

Wow! That was a big confrontation! Bravo!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV5CoVTBBWQ

[Elladorine]

do you have a link to the care bears commercial please?

Here ya go.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp8vIXkGR_8[/youtube]

[sunhuntin]

holy cow, that was impressive!! thanks heaps, enigma!!

[Sotiris]

Veteran Disney animator Brian Ferguson who was let go during the recent layoffs gave this interview where he talked about his work at Disney. Here are some extracts relevant to the topic at hand.

Q: In regard to the feature length movies, even starting with Beauty and the Beast, that movie still had some pretty strong elements of CGI in it, especially that ballroom scene that had hand-drawn characters on a CG background. That was a watershed moment for the future of animation. Did you know from the beginning that you were involved in an art form on the way out?

Brian Ferguson: I wouldn't say that I knew that I was. I was interested in an art that could have any number of media to deliver it, hand-drawn being one way and various technical ways of putting it out going from pencil and paper to actually drawing on tablets and screen, that kind of thing, to actual computer animation which I had a taste of in New York. I was always interested in getting involved in computer animation but wanted to do hand-drawn first to get the foundations of the whole performance down. Whenever people would say that computer animation is going to take over, ‘do you worry that hand-drawn is going to be gone?’ my answer was always, ‘I don’t see why it couldn’t just be two different media that necessarily have to compete with each other.’ Little did I know… [...]

Source: http://www.stalbertgazette.com/article/ ... -his-craft

Brian Ferguson: The whole idea of being at Disney as long as I have been, it’s an anomaly. There aren't that many people that stay there that long. I went through so many bloodbaths and saw so many really excellent artists being let go. By the end of it, I started feeling that I've been in all these battles … I’m the soldier who just had all these bullets whipping by him. It wasn't that I was a better soldier. It’s just that I wasn't hit. Until June and then they let me go.

[...] Then going from that to Princess and the Frog, which was all these veterans. It was half the crew but it was all people who had been in the business many productions. The supervisors were all veterans and all masters. All the animators that were working on it were very good, very experienced. They were able to do it under time, before the deadline and under budget, and still came out with this work that was, I think, really good. [...]

Q: Is all of your work CGI or do you still have traditional animation work on your desk?

Brian Ferguson: The last bits of work that I have been doing were all traditional. My last couple of years at the company were doing visual development type work. They would have me animate certain characters in the way that I would animate them hand-drawn, so that the riggers and the modelers could see what I’d done with them and adjust the rigs accordingly. When the CG animators got on, they could move the rigs to do what I was able to do when I was drawing it. That’s how I ended up with a credit on Frozen. [...]

Q: How would you characterize the state of animated movies today? Is traditional animation at this point now a lost art?

Brian Ferguson: It’s feeling like a lost art form as far as the Disney movies go. To be fair to the company, they made a special effort to hang onto us for a lot longer than they really needed to. It just reached a point where it became clear that they were not going to be making hand-drawn movies. It’s hard for me to argue the money on it. The big thing is that the producers are going to make movies where they think the money is going to be the biggest. The whole impression is that everybody wants to see CG movies. The hand-drawn movies just aren't the box office draw.

The thing I do know is that they were able to make Princess and the Frog a lot cheaper. The budget for that was quite a bit lower than it was for Tangled. They were able to do it with half the animators and do it in less time. Had Tangled been managed as more of a teamwork then it might have cost quite a bit less. It’s a really hard thing to judge. Is it really what the public wants or is what the producers think that the public wants?

Q: Is it a natural progression toward computers being the wave of the future or is tradition being pushed out?

Brian Ferguson: I draw the parallel like in the relationship between photography and painting. There’s a place for both. There definitely aren't as many people painting per capita as there were before photography. It’s a tough call. It feels like [hand-drawn animation] is on its way out. My inclination is that it is, at least at the Disney level. [...]

Source: http://www.stalbertgazette.com/article/ ... a-lost-art

[TsWade2]

Never mind.

[estefan]

I do think, regardless of Ferguson's comments, hand-drawn animation will make a comeback. I may have said this before, but I'm sure plenty of animators felt the same way where Disney sold the desks following Home on the Range and then they opened up shop again. I can actually see the massive success of Frozen leading to more creative freedom for Walt Disney Animation to experiment and try different things.

I think hand-drawn animation is in the same position now as stop-motion animation was in the 1980s. At the moment, it may be seem like it's relegated to short films, commercials and film festivals. However, look at stop-motion now. Laika is making stop-motion films as is Aardman and I think Tim Burton will make some more in his career. Do you think anybody would have predicted one year that three major stop-motion movies would have been released, all to great acclaim and Academy Award nominations?

I foresee a similar case happening with hand-drawn animation, if we're patient enough.

[TsWade2]

I do think, regardless of Ferguson's comments, hand-drawn animation will make a comeback. I may have said this before, but I'm sure plenty of animators felt the same way where Disney sold the desks following Home on the Range and then they opened up shop again. I can actually see the massive success of Frozen leading to more creative freedom for Walt Disney Animation to experiment and try different things.

I think hand-drawn animation is in the same position now as stop-motion animation was in the 1980s. At the moment, it may be seem like it's relegated to short films, commercials and film festivals. However, look at stop-motion now. Laika is making stop-motion films as is Aardman and I think Tim Burton will make some more in his career. Do you think anybody would have predicted one year that three major stop-motion movies would have been released, all to great acclaim and Academy Award nominations?

I foresee a similar case happening with hand-drawn animation, if we're patient enough.

Well, if they still have hand drawn animation, then why can't disney make a statement about it after those over dramatic animation blogs think hand drawn is dead? John Lasseter's statement for hand drawn while he was interviewed by the insidemovies.com reporter was in my opinion, crappy. I'm not saying it's his fault or being a coward, I just don't think he's being honest about it.

[DisneyEra]

The kind of domestic boxoffice Frozen is doing "soon at $300mil" we won't be seeing a 2D animated film from WDAS for quite sometime now. But at least they're giving us original films yearly. While the other studios keep pumping out meaningless sequeals/spin-offs HttyD 2-3, Kung-Fu Panda 3, Penguins of Madagascar, Finding Dory, Rio 2 & Ice Age 5, WDAS is only releasing original films BH6, Zootopia, Giants & Moana. They are making a whole new era of films & charaters in CGI that is a hell of an improvment over the Chicken Little years of the mid-late 2000s. WDAS is basically doing what Pixar & Dreamworks did during the early 2000s.

Also, Get a Horse could be only the 2nd Mickey Mouse short to win an Oscar this March joining Lend a Paw.
Still pissed Runaway Brain didn't win back in '95

[DisneyJedi]

Well, Era, Frozen's success might actually encourage Disney to not limit the animation department's creativity.

[qindarka]

The kind of domestic boxoffice Frozen is doing "soon at $300mil" we won't be seeing a 2D animated film from WDAS for quite sometime now. But at least they're giving us original films yearly. While the other studios keep pumping out meaningless sequeals/spin-offs HttyD 2-3, Kung-Fu Panda 3, Penguins of Madagascar, Finding Dory, Rio 2 & Ice Age 5, WDAS is only releasing original films BH6, Zootopia, Giants & Moana. They are making a whole new era of films & charaters in CGI that is a hell of an improvment over the Chicken Little years of the mid-late 2000s. WDAS is basically doing what Pixar & Dreamworks did during the early 2000s.

Also, Get a Horse could be only the 2nd Mickey Mouse short to win an Oscar this March joining Lend a Paw.
Still pissed Runaway Brain didn't win back in '95

I do wonder if it is only a matter of time before WDAS starts pumping out sequels as well. Lasseter seems to have no problem green lighting sequels over at Pixar and it may only have been WDAS's lack of financial success that has spared them so far. Now that has changed, surely there would be an enormous temptation to make a sequel for Frozen, for instance. Hope it doesn't happen but I fear that it may be inevitable.

[DisneyEra]

Well, Era, Frozen's success might actually encourage Disney to not limit the animation department's creativity.

For that, look at their animated shorts. Over the last 2 years, Get a Horse was just amazing, merging black & white 2D with modern CGI & Paperman, that won the studio's first Oscar in 40+ years! I wonder what new animated short will be infront of BH6? Odds are it will have 2D animation. This is actually the best place for 2D to make a comeback to feature animation. They keep getting great reviews & racking up Oscars, Disney will take notice eventually.

[TsWade2]

Well, Era, Frozen's success might actually encourage Disney to not limit the animation department's creativity.

For that, look at their animated shorts. Over the last 2 years, Get a Horse was just amazing, merging black & white 2D with modern CGI & Paperman, that won the studio's first Oscar in 40+ years! I wonder what new animated short will be infront of BH6? Odds are it will have 2D animation. This is actually the best place for 2D to make a comeback to feature animation. They keep getting great reviews & racking up Oscars, Disney will take notice eventually.

We can only hope, my friend. Of course, despite of them doing CGI as animated films, I think their storytelling is in step in the right direction.

By the way, I agree with you that Runaway Brain should of won an Oscar back in 1995.

[DisneyEra]

The kind of domestic boxoffice Frozen is doing "soon at $300mil" we won't be seeing a 2D animated film from WDAS for quite sometime now. But at least they're giving us original films yearly. While the other studios keep pumping out meaningless sequeals/spin-offs HttyD 2-3, Kung-Fu Panda 3, Penguins of Madagascar, Finding Dory, Rio 2 & Ice Age 5, WDAS is only releasing original films BH6, Zootopia, Giants & Moana. They are making a whole new era of films & charaters in CGI that is a hell of an improvment over the Chicken Little years of the mid-late 2000s. WDAS is basically doing what Pixar & Dreamworks did during the early 2000s.

Also, Get a Horse could be only the 2nd Mickey Mouse short to win an Oscar this March joining Lend a Paw.
Still pissed Runaway Brain didn't win back in '95

I do wonder if it is only a matter of time before WDAS starts pumping out sequels as well. Lasseter seems to have no problem green lighting sequels over at Pixar and it may only have been WDAS's lack of financial success that has spared them so far. Now that has changed, surely there would be an enormous temptation to make a sequel for Frozen, for instance. Hope it doesn't happen but I fear that it may be inevitable.

I can see this happening if BH6 & Zootopia under preform at the boxoffice. But I just don't see that happening. This is happening at Dreamworks, as 2 of their last 3 originals films flopped. Also, this happened with the Renaissance films. TLM, Aladdin & TLK & Tarzan ALL got TV series & multiple sequeals! The only Disney CGI film to get a follow-up was this:

[DisneyEra]

For that, look at their animated shorts. Over the last 2 years, Get a Horse was just amazing, merging black & white 2D with modern CGI & Paperman, that won the studio's first Oscar in 40+ years! I wonder what new animated short will be infront of BH6? Odds are it will have 2D animation. This is actually the best place for 2D to make a comeback to feature animation. They keep getting great reviews & racking up Oscars, Disney will take notice eventually.

We can only hope, my friend. Of course, despite of them doing CGI as animated films, I think their storytelling is in step in the right direction.

By the way, I agree with you that Runaway Brain should of won an Oscar back in 1995.

They give Oscars to Pohcahontos & Toy Story but they don't give one to fricken Mickey Mouse