Source: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/award-season ... 07466.html“Hollywood executives don’t really care about hand-drawn animation, and don’t really care about animation that’s not for kiddies, so there is very little opportunity for me to make the films that I want to make,” Plympton said.[...] He continued, “My hope is that America is ready for something different, because I think people are starting to get tired of the same old thing from Pixar, Dreamworks and Disney. I think viewers are ready to see hand-drawn animation with its own ideas. Why should kids be the only ones who get pleasure out of animation, when it is such a great art form? It offends me that American animation is stereotyped this way, so I’m hoping Cheatin’ will help break down that wall.” [...] Although Plympton argues that “computer animation is made by machines, which to me doesn't feel warm and cuddly,” he is the first to admit that digital technology has forever changed his career, for the better.
Source: http://blogs.indiewire.com/sydneylevine ... m-20150402Q: In the U.S. 2D animation is scarce. For many years now CG has become the norm, but there is still something incredibly special about hand-drawn projects. Why do you prefer this technique in particular?
Bill Plympton: That’s one of the reasons I couldn’t get distribution, of course one was that it wasn’t a kiddy film, and the other was that it wasn’t computer animation. I like the idea of seeing a film that has the artist’s hand in there,a film where you can see his strokes, you can see his working patterns. It's like going to a museum and seeing a Renoir drawing. You want to see their work and you want to see how they put it together. For me to see that in animation is really fresh, it’s really exciting, it’s really original. That’s why I hope people will come see the film, because it’s a very unique film and it has a very special style and look.
Source: http://popculturehound.net/pch-the-movi ... -plympton/Bill Plympton wrote:A lot of my friends say I'm crazy, I should go into digital animation but quite frankly I don't like the look of computer animation. It's too clean, it's too perfect, it's too nice and neat. I want mistakes, I want raw, I want edgy, I want crazy. I compare my animation like garage band music compared to symphonic orchestra. I'm not a symphonic orchestra; I do low-cost animation.
Source: http://endcredits.podbean.com/e/episode ... -plympton/Q: I've always loved your style because you can see every pencil stroke that's in there.
Bill Plympton: Also, you can see all the mistakes and I like mistakes because it makes it more human; it makes it something like you can see in an art museum, a Renoir drawing. These are really reflections of the artists that made the films whereas in a Pixar film, you don't really see the artist's hand at all; it's all machinery that's doing this. So, I think the public is missing something.
You were talking earlier about 3D animation vs 2D animation. I think the public doesn't care what technique is, they just like good stories and interesting characters. The problem is that Pixar has been so successful that the powers that be in Hollywood in general said: "Well, that it. They all want computer animation. Pixar has been successful. That's all they want". It's really too bad because there are some gorgeous 2D films out there.
Source: https://beta.prx.org/stories/147564Q: Talk about the pleasures and perils of continuing to do hand-drawn animation.
Bill Plympton: A lot of people in my shows tell me that I should get into computer animation because it’s cheaper, it’s faster, it’s easier when in fact it’s quite the opposite. It’s very expensive; you have to hire a lot of people who know the computer, who know all the programs, riggers and lighters and I don’t know all the names but it’s a whole team of people to do something. And I did it in one film called “Shuteye Hotel” and I thought ‘Well, let’s give it a shot’. So, I did this one building, this one little building digitally, and while it usually takes me 1-2 months to make a short film, this one took 6 months because of that one building and it put me way over budget and also it didn’t look good. It didn’t look like one of my drawings. So, I felt like I wasn’t being true to my self. I love to draw. For me, it’s a passion, it’s a pleasure, it’s a vacation. I can draw from 6 in the morning ‘till 10 at night and feel great. So, that’s why I really don’t want to deal with computer animation.
I like computer animation. I think it’s wonderful that Pixar’s such a success, and DreamWorks, and Disney. It’s great for all animation. However, I like animation that shows the hand of the artist. I think in a lot of computer animation all the lines are perfectly straight, the circles are perfectly circular, the colors are perfect and you don’t see the mistakes, you don’t see the errors. And to me [the mistakes] make animation really compelling. It’s really attractive to see a film and see all the mistakes that are made. And when you see a Bill Plymton film, you’ll see a lot of mistakes. I like to compare it to music. A Disney film is like a symphony orchestra. It’s huge with all these super professional musicians playing music perfectly and I’m the garage band. I’m out of key, I missed the tempo, and there’s lot of mistakes but it’s raw, it’s got energy, it’s got edge, it’s something you haven’t seen before. It’s unique. I like all kinds of different animation. I think it’s great that we can see stop-motion from Tim Burton and claymation from Nick Park and traditionally drawn animation from Japan and the more variety, the better. I think that’s what the audience wants. They want to see something they haven’t seen before.
Source: http://www.zippyframes.com/index.php?op ... mid=100010Q: What about the debate about the 'old' 2D vs. 3D computer animation? Do you think it's a matter of the storytelling, and how did you and your collaborators go about to create the enchanting feel of Coda in terms of technique?
Alan Holly: As far as 2D and 3D go, I really just think its a matter of taste. There are probably some stories that are better suited to one or the other, but for the most part I think it that almost any story can be told in just about any medium. My interest has always been mainly in drawn and painted art. I love sculpture too but my heart's always been with the drawn image and colour. Coda was made pretty traditionally. The idea started on paper, sketches on paper, drawn designs, we storyboarded it on paper but from there we moved into the computer and just about all the finished images on screen were created digitally but with a traditional look in mind.
Source: http://www.zippyframes.com/index.php?op ... mid=100010Q: Do you think that 2D computer animation is the best means to convey what you feel in these kinds of animated shorts? How long did it take you? Would you do a 3D computer animated short or a mixed-technique film?
Réka Bucsi: I always thought classical 2D is the technique that is as nice as it gets. For me it is the most beautiful and free form of animation. In the same time I am very much excited to try new techniques, I am not sticking to anything, as that could lead to narrowing down your ideas about narrative and picture as well. I tasted 3D for about 2 weeks in my school years, and I would very much like to learn more about it, as it seems like a nice playground.
Source: http://en.animationmagazine.eu/marcus-a ... -identity/Q: What do you think is the future of hand-drawn/handmade animation, since mainstream animation is nowadays entirely CGI?
Marcus Armitage: It’s very hard to say! Mainstream feature animation is CGI, yes, but that is not the case in commercial animation. There is a lot of hand drawn and handmade animation being made for TV and online, and the more CGI gets made, the more different hand drawn becomes. I think it is something that will keep changing over time. We will get bored of watching CGI films, a hand-drawn one will come along and we will all love hand-drawn again. I don’t have any authority on the subject, all I know is there aren’t many hand drawn animators out there, which makes it a much more specialist and in demand skill.
Source: http://totallydublin.ie/film/film-featu ... an-lawton/Ian Lawton wrote:I have decided that the epic scope of this story would lend itself perfectly to animation. I am a former animator myself and very much remain in love with the art form. Traditional hand-drawn animation is slowly dying out as computer generated films become more popular, but I feel audiences still engage with the human touch of hand drawn animation. But the choice is not simply because, animation will be ‘cool’, but it’s a great device to help engage the audience with the story.
Source: http://3blmedia.com/News/HP-Living-Prog ... tin-GrellaEarly in his career, Dustin aspired to be a Pixar film animator. “It was the only thing I could comprehend as far as animation went,” Dustin explained. So building on his love of drawing and his early infatuation with computer programming, he learned to do computer-generated animation. He recalls building the animation frames—“Key frame A, Key frame B”—and then hitting the “render” key and going home for the night. When he returned in the morning, his renderings would be done—just like magic. But Dustin longed to understand animation better. He says he wanted to know what was happening during that mysterious overnight process.
So in 2005 he left computer animation behind and became what he calls a hand-drawn animation “purist.” He bought a camera with a timer, a chalkboard and chalk, and he started drawing. Every 60 seconds, he would pause while the camera captured an image of his artwork. Dustin could see his animation progress piece by piece. “I loved what I was getting. It was very organic. Very much an element of the hand. It was beautiful,” he said.
Source: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film ... 09009.htmlQ: What influenced your decision to use a 2D design that emphasizes the sketchiness of hand-drawn lines.
Paco Vink: We have great affection for traditional craftsmanship. Disney’s Jungle Book has always been one of our favorites thanks to the Xerox machine. You can still see the animator’s hand; it makes the characters come to life. Clean-up can kill a line. And with CGI, you spend much more time (which we didn’t have) trying to make it not look cheap. The closer you get to realism, the more can go wrong.
Albert ‘t Hooft: Our studio’s 2D style that shows the sketchiness of the hand-drawn lines fits the story well. It gives the movie a more nostalgic flavor, which works well with a kids’ tradition like Sinterklaas. Having less clean-up to do also made the producer very happy.
Source: http://zippyframes.com/index.php?option ... mid=100010Q: In the last 5 years, you can see animation going back and merging with live-action (collage, photos, cut-out), and this comes in contrast with the studio practice of clean-cut, CGI movies. Is this a trend?
Theodore Ushev: I think it is mostly a reaction to 3D animation, and a nostalgic look to the age with no computers and imperfection. Big blockbusters polish every sentence, background, lighting and they leave nothing to chance. Artistic animation is imperfection that works. Don Hertzfeld's World of Tomorrow is imperfect in every sense: stick figures that barely move, text recorded by non-professional actors, but it still works. What these films bring back is the soul of animation, just like cooking: when you cook at home, it does not smell so good as high-clientele restaurants, but still it is your own food.
This is why I hate any PR talk about "the right story." It's nonsense.Sotiris wrote:Alan Holly: As far as 2D and 3D go, I really just think its a matter of taste. There are probably some stories that are better suited to one or the other, but for the most part I think it that almost any story can be told in just about any medium.
Frozen looks like Cinderella? What is this guy smoking? 
Source: http://comicbook.com/2015/02/05/the-spo ... ringing-s/Q: The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water makes a jump from traditional 2D animation to a live-action and CGI animation hybrid. Why did you decided to steer the franchise in that direction?
Paul Tibbitt: Steve Hillenburg and I both studied animation at the California Institute of Arts, so we’re very traditional. We’ve been doing this show in the traditional form for a very long time now, so when the opportunity to do another movie came up, we just felt like, "well, it’s 2015 and computers have come a long way." I’ve recently watched films that have really impressed me with the CGI. I was impressed with films like Frozen, where a lot of the scenes almost looked like Cinderella. It almost looked like cel animation, and I was blown away by that.
I'm usually not juvenile in my expressions, but now I'm tempted to say this; LOL!Sotiris wrote:What the...?
http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/ ... ation.htmlSteve Hulett wrote:I keep reading articles saying how hand-drawn cartoons are on the cusp of a comeback. Maybe in Europe, where hand-drawn features continue to be produced, but not in Southern California. A Disney animation veteran recently clued me in as to why:
"I've worked on CG features and I've worked on hand-drawn features. And hand-drawn features are harder to make. Hand-drawn cartoons take a year to produce. Once you've produced sequences, it's hard to change the work. You have to go back and do everything over. But with CG, you can animate the movie in three or four months, change things close to the release date. You can't do that in hand-drawn animation. If you find out the story doesn't work when you're two-thirds done, you're stuck. With CG, we change the story and rework sequences until late in the process. It's close to live-action in that way. You can rework until late in the production. With hand-drawn animation, the plot, action and dialogue has to be locked down way earlier, or the picture won't get done in time for its release."
From a production standpoint, hand-drawn animated features are clunkier and take more production tie. But from the executive suite, the superiority of CG animation over hand-drawn is glaringly obvious. It makes a hell of a more money than traditional animation. The faster production time for CG long-forms is simply icing on the cake. Hand-drawn features will have corporate disciples in Europe and elsewhere, but the big entertainment conglomerates are done with the old style. Sad, but the way it is.
They announced a big-screen hand-drawn Adventure Time movie yesterday, so it seems to slowly be making a comeback via these adaptations of popular animated shows (Sponge Out of Water was also mostly hand-drawn despite the marketing emphasis on the last twenty minutes).DisneyJedi wrote:So that's it then? The folks here in the States are done with hand drawn forever?
... What?estefan wrote: They announced a big-screen hand-drawn Adventure Time movie yesterday...
Source: http://endcredits.podbean.com/e/aaronblaise/Q: I just want to see a nice resurgence of 2D to come back.
Aaron Blaise: You know, I think we all do. I get this question a lot. As a matter of fact, this past week I was just at the Ringling College of Art & Design lecturing and I was lecturing on story creation for an animated feature and that question comes up every time I lecture which is: “Do you think 2D will come back?” And I do think it’s going to come back but stepping back from that opinion real quick, the thing that people need to remember is that filmmaking, especially big-budget filmmaking, is a business. And as much as we want to create beautiful images and stories, which is what we want to do, at the end of the day they have to sell and they got to make money against the cost of making them. And so, in the eyes of the executives that make the decisions to make these films, until we can make a 2D, hand-drawn animated film for a much less price point than what we’ve been making them for and still get a broad audience appeal, it’s not going to happen. But I think the way technology is happening that we’re going to where we can get them down to in the 20 to 30 million. Already over in Europe they’re doing them for 8 and 10 million. But to do something that has a big, broad appeal on a massive scale, I think if we can get them down to the 30-40 million dollar range, it might get done.
Q: I also think it’s going to take people like you and Jamie Lopez with these Kickstarters that prove that people still want it.
Aaron Blaise: So, there’s definitely a hunger out there [for 2D animation]. For me, it’s hard to gauge because my circle are colleagues. That’s my circle of friends and of course, pretty much everybody wants to see 2D come back within my circle. So, for me it’s hard to gauge whether [2D animation] is even on the radar in the general public. But I think it is.
Q: I feel bad for all the people who got scattered to the wind when Disney did eventually shut down their 2D animation studios. As we see now with DreamWorks, it can also happen in the 3D world.
Aaron Blaise: Exactly; which also proves that it’s not the medium but you can saturate the market, that’s one thing, the quality of storytelling goes down, that’s another. It’s a sea of different factors that factor into it. You just can’t say that no one wants to see 2D 'cause that’s just not true.
Source: http://endcredits.podbean.com/e/ep130-l ... on-blaise/Q: What advice can you give to somebody who wants to work [at Disney]?
Aaron Blaise: Focus on becoming a great artist and pull from life. Don't go out and do lots of drawings in the Disney style. That's not going to get you there. Just go out and just create great art. And learn the software too because Disney's not doing 2D anymore, unfortunately. So, if that's where you want to go, you got to know digital. So, really know the software in and out and be a generalist. That really helps as well.
sigh... personally I dont...I just dont think the average person cares really...So, for me it’s hard to gauge whether [2D animation] is even on the radar in the general public. But I think it is.
Source: http://www.toontalkspodcast.com/?p=356Eric Goldberg wrote:One thing that I think 2D has the advantage of in many cases to be freer than CG. You’re often limited by what the model and the rig can do in CG whereas you’re really only limited by the wits of your pencil in hand-drawn so it’s often easier to do things that might be a little more unusual. You have to work for unusual in CG. Doesn't mean it can’t be done, but it means it’s harder to get to. I think that accounts for certain amount of reason why it isn't attempted as much because it’s harder to do in CG. And I’m talking about things like animation cheats or slight distortions or things like that that help make the animation fluid but in the “brain” of a computer doesn't work because it isn't real and so you have to break some of those rules to get some of the same things that you can get in hand-drawn. But I think an awareness of all of that kind of stuff, an understanding of how and why it works in the 2D world is 100% valuable in the 3D world, even if it takes a little more effort to get there or even if you can only get there 50% of the way, at least you know what you’re aiming for, you know the principle you’re trying to do.
What Goldberg says makes perfect sense, and while he does not mention Genndy Tartakovsky, I think the latter is the only animation director pursuing a more abstract, distorted look to his CG animation - the same "harder-to-get" distortions that Goldberg mentions.Sotiris wrote:Eric Goldberg explains the advantages 2D animation has over CG.
Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/danmeth/this-am ... dwyJNz5R79After graduating from Pratt Institute, Thurlow spent a few years working in New York City’s unstable animation scene on web games, kids shows, music videos, and Adult Swim’s Superjail. But he found it mostly unfulfilling.
“With the exception of Superjail, I felt like I was wasting my talents/life on crap instead of ‘true art.’ Where are the 2D feature films? Particularly high-quality boundary-pushing TV shows? Where is any 2D animation being produced in America that takes the art form to its limits? Nowhere.”
Source: http://wccftech.com/jotun-school-gamepl ... drawn-art/Jotun though, stands out greatly because of its unique art style. The game is entirely hand-drawn, reminiscent of animated movies from the 80s, and looks absolutely incredible. “It’s something that really unique,” he adds after a chuckle. “Frame-by-frame animation; not even Disney does it anymore. At the same time it has a very human quality; you can see every stroke. Some games do it well, but it’s not super-explored in the games medium. So we thought it was a cool place to take the game.”
Source: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/0 ... la_editionQ: Jotun has a very stylish hand-drawn art and animation style. What informed this design decision? What are the game's artistic influences?
Will Dubé: Thank you! Jotun's style is very much the result of our amazing artists (Jo-Annie Gauthier, Alexandre Boyer and others). We were very much inspired by Studio Ghibli and Disney's renaissance-era films. I think 2D art is amazing because it directly connects the artist with the player. Every brush stroke is hand-drawn!
Source: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/0 ... la_editionQ: Can you talk a little about the art style and how your team created the impressive look of Jotun?
Will Dubé: Everything is hand-drawn in the game. The animations, the backgrounds, everything is hand-drawn. It's really cool because it means that every stroke you see on screen is something that was put there by the artist and it allows for a really cool direct communication between the artist and the player. We were inspired by Disney, Studio Ghibli, all of their classic movies. We love those movies and we love the art style and we're really happy to bring that to the game as well.
Source: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/2553 ... _Jotun.phpChoosing to go with 2D animation was not as hard as one would think it was. Both Alex Boyer and I have the same traditional animation education with different strengths and experiences, and we are passionate about what we do. We had previously worked with Will at another company and knew each other's work, so when he reached out to us for the Kickstarter, it was an immediate yes on my part.
Another reason we chose 2D is that we wanted to tell a story. Many stories, many myths, and hand drawn art is reminiscent of epic storybooks. It's very nostalgic for us. We grew up watching Disney, Don Bluth as well as many 80's-90's animes and early morning cartoons.
Source: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/2553 ... _Jotun.phpAnimating Jotun was very fun and challenging. I couldn’t miss the opportunity to build something with the rest of the nice and talented folks at Thunder Lotus studio. We call our animation style ‘’hand-drawn’’ rather than traditional, since we use a lot of flash-style trickery using the Toonboom software. There’s a lot of drawing involved, but we try not to have to redraw every frame from scratch.
Source: http://www.screendaily.com/news/bondi-h ... 80.articleCompany head Bruce Kane has convinced Screen Australia to fund development of more 2D comedy, including at least one theatrical feature that he hopes will also spark series, and mentor writers and directors in the process. “2D animation works with audiences if the comedy is funny and it has great design,” he said, referring to the challenge of competing with 3D animated blockbusters from Hollywood. “You’re not seeing the film to be dazzled by the effects. We’ve got three feature concepts, all for six to 12-year-olds, where we feel there’s a gap in the market.”
Source: http://www.worldscreen.com/articles/display/50059Jyotirmoy Saha wrote:2D is still the mainstay for good animated comedy. While many Asian service studios seem to be chasing the CG train, I think there is still a lot of demand for good 2D studios. And when it comes to 2D animation, the talent pool in the Philippines has fantastic variety and size. This facility is just the first step towards what we think will end up to be a group of three such teams.
Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/cu ... 78569.htmlSince Pixar's "Toy Story" was a huge success, both commercially and creatively, in 1995, computer graphics have become a major trend in producing animated features. However, a local animation studio is persisting in creating animated features with hand drawing techniques, claiming that this is the best way to maintain indigenous characteristics.
"Hand drawing is our DNA. That is what enables us to survive in the animated feature industry even though computer graphics techniques are leading," Yoo Jae-myung, founder and executive director of Seoul-based animation company Studio Mir said in an interview with The Korea Times on April 28.
"For those who are not good at drawing, they can be a creator of computer graphic animation once they learn how to deal with graphics software. But when it comes to creating so-called 2D animation ― producing an animated feature on the basis of hand-drawn sketches ― things work much differently because it requires experienced technique," Yoo said.
Source: http://www.rotoscopers.com/2015/03/10/a ... adagascar/Q: Which one do you prefer: classic animation (like 2D, hand-drawn) or CG?
Christopher Knights: Both. I think there's a market for both of them. I think it's a shame that we have put all of our chips into the one basket and gone fully CG. I think the traditional style... Some of the stuff that guys can do with a pencil is so much more interesting and fascinating to what people can do with the computer. I think there's a marketplace for both 2D and 3D.
Yes, because it's not story that's important but realistic rabbit fur.“People love the 1978 film,” an unnamed source told Radio Times, “but with new CGI technology we can do amazing things–you can see the wind blowing the fur which you didn’t get with the cartoon film.”
