Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney

[Sotiris]

A couple of interesting articles about 2D animation.

Tainted love: software transforms the painstaking art of colouring old cartoons
http://www.euronews.com/2015/03/09/tain ... -cartoons/

Do you know: Is there a future for 2D animation?
http://www.euronews.com/2015/03/09/do-y ... animation/

[unprincess]

In other news, both The Secret of NIMH and Watership Down willl be getting new CGI/live-action and CGI adaptations, respectively.

its bad enough we no longer get new 2d hand-drawn films made in the US anymore but now we also have to put up with the older 2d films being turned into possibly horrendous CGI-fests. (Im lookin at you too Burton-Dumbo.)

[Disney's Divinity]

“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.”

Yes, because it's not story that's important but realistic rabbit fur.

That quote is bizarre. I mean, there's nothing wrong about more adaptations of Nimh, but comparing it off-the-bat to the Bluth film seems like a bad sign.

[Sotiris]

Zach Parrish, the head of animation for Big Hero 6, talks about the future of 2D animation at Disney. Well, he's just regurgitating the same transparent lies we've heard so many times before. The studio has sure instructed its staff well on what to say on the matter. No one deviates from the official studio line.

Q: Do you think 2D animation is gone forever at Disney?

Zach Parrish: I don't think anyone at Disney believes that. It's up to the directors, the whole process is director-run. So it's up to them how the whole thing is done and recently that's been CG. The next two projects will be CG as well but 2D has been used in our shorts, it's used in developments and we've had traditional 2D artists working on Frozen and Big Hero 6 giving advice and feedback on traditional animation. It's still very much alive and it's very much an option for any director in the future.

Source: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/201 ... -interview

[Jules]

I would really hate to be one of these guys having the repeat the same bullcrap over and over. Surely even they would rather just tell the truth.

[unprincess]

come on Disney, its just 6 simple words: "no, it doesnt make enough money". That's all we need to hear.

[sunhuntin]

i love both NIMH and watership down, but not at all excited by that news. will likely go and watership down. i wonder if "bright eyes" and the other soundtrack songs will be used or new songs. also interested to see how they animate the black rabbit of inle

[unprincess]

I knew the new NIMH is in trouble when they described it as an adventure about comical lab rats. Comical.

[DisneyJedi]

I knew the new NIMH is in trouble when they described it as an adventure about comical lab rats. Comical.

Comical?

Oh, God. No.

[estefan]

Isn't there a giant comic relief talking crow in the Don Bluth movie who gets into all sorts of hijinks?

It also appears from MGM's press release that this movie is more of a new adaptation of the book and will have nothing to do with the Don Bluth movie. So, yeah, nobody's remaking anything. I think this has the potential to be something akin to Stuart Little (another hybrid movie with CG rodents), which I personally find to be that rare adaptation that's superior to the book.

[DisneyEra]

Isn't there a giant comic relief talking crow in the Don Bluth movie who gets into all sorts of hijinks?

It also appears from MGM's press release that this movie is more of a new adaptation of the book and will have nothing to do with the Don Bluth movie. So, yeah, nobody's remaking anything. I think this has the potential to be something akin to Stuart Little (another hybrid movie with CG rodents), which I personally find to be that rare adaptation that's superior to the book.

Yep, Jeremy the crow. Very similar to The Little Mermaid's Scuttle.

[Sotiris]

Veteran Disney animator James Lopez talks in a new interview about Hullabaloo and how it started as an effort to prove to the studio that 2D animation can be produced much cheaper. But they didn't care. Evidently, production budget was not a big concern for Disney. Yet another myth debunked.

The difficult thing was that I was doing this all by myself, with a few of my friends that helped out generate some elements, but for the most part this was my thing. I think a lot of it was also to prove a point. I really wanted to demystify the process [of producing 2D animation]. I think there was an issue of how much [it costs to make these movies]. I remember hearing something like how much Princess and the Frog cost and I was like: “How is it that it cost that much? Does it really cost that much to make?” I had to prove it otherwise, to demystify it: “I don’t think it really costs that much. I have to see for myself”. So, Hullabaloo was really a test to see what it really takes to produce animation of this quality. So, I did just that. I animated a scene, I cleaned-up my own scene, I did my own digital ink and paint, and then composited it with a background. So, I’m pricing all these stuff down in my head like: “OK, it takes this long to animate, this long to clean-up, this long to color, this long to paint backgrounds, this long to composite”. A scene would take about two weeks. [A movie like that] can’t cost 80 million dollars. That’s what really convinced me.

I was trying to pitch to the studio that we can do this for less, hoping this would be enticing to the studio. If money is such a big concern, what if we produced these movies for a lot less than our profit margin? The chance would be greater to turn a profit because our profit margin would be higher. But I don’t know where that went. It wasn't really in their interest. It wasn't an issue. But I always thought it was. Money always seemed to be an issue. But it’s not really a concern for Disney.

Source: http://www.themousecastle.com/2015/03/m ... baloo.html

[unprincess]

^interesting. I think its more this fear that by producing 2d films again theyll be seen as that old fogey studio that still does animation that old way, and it negatively affecting the view of their future films/brand to the general public.

Another thing that needs to br proven/disproven is that with cgi its easier to make last minute changes or tweak character designs, camera angles etc.... I do think thats an area where cgi has the upper hand unfortunatley. Also the fact that cgi allows for easier faster creation of stuff like promo animations and shorts.

regarding Jeremy the crow/NIMH, look I know Jeremy was a comedy relief character but there's a big difference b/w the gentle character building comedy of the 80's films and the bottom of the barrel obnoxious cheap humor we get today. I just watched Rio for the first time last week and for every "wow thats some nice parrot animation" or "thats a nice scene or cool vista", I also had to sit through some very unfunny celebrity voiced character spouting bad jokes and slapstick Ive seen 100 times b4 in other CGI movies. I dont have a problem with comedy in a movie like NIHM but its the style of comedy we're forced fed today that annoys me and makes these movies far less watchable.

[estefan]

I personally found Jeremy a very annoying character who detracted from the story more than he actually added to it and I will gladly take the birds of Rio over him (but I know that's all personal opinion talking here). But I feel comedic sidekicks was never Don Bluth's strong suit. Even Tiger, I found much more funny and better utilised in the sequel than in the first American Tail. And don't get me started on Bartok. If they can make Jeremy a funnier, more useful character in this new adaptation, that's already an improvement in my book.

[Disney's Divinity]

regarding Jeremy the crow/NIMH, look I know Jeremy was a comedy relief character but there's a big difference b/w the gentle character building comedy of the 80's films and the bottom of the barrel obnoxious cheap humor we get today. I just watched Rio for the first time last week and for every "wow thats some nice parrot animation" or "thats a nice scene or cool vista", I also had to sit through some very unfunny celebrity voiced character spouting bad jokes and slapstick Ive seen 100 times b4 in other CGI movies. I dont have a problem with comedy in a movie like NIHM but its the style of comedy we're forced fed today that annoys me and makes these movies far less watchable.

I agree, the little comedy in Don Bluth's film doesn't really compare with what comic relief looks like today; the Ice Age connection doesn't get me a reason to have the benefit of the doubt in that regard.

I believe there was another quote from a while back about how TP&TF was much cheaper to make than Disney made out, so knowing hand-drawn could be lucrative with smaller budgets isn't a surprise. I suspect there is some superiority coming from 3D animators (both new artists and those coming over from PIXAR) that may be part of the reason hand-drawn isn't wanted at Disney anymore.

[Elladorine]

It also appears from MGM's press release that this movie is more of a new adaptation of the book and will have nothing to do with the Don Bluth movie. So, yeah, nobody's remaking anything. I think this has the potential to be something akin to Stuart Little (another hybrid movie with CG rodents), which I personally find to be that rare adaptation that's superior to the book.

I do love Secret of NIMH, but I love Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH more. The addition of the red stone was confusing and unnecessary. The sword and sorcery were at odds with the concept of science creating the super intelligence in a lab. Nicodemus has a completely different fate, and Jenner isn't a stereotypically murderous, power-hungry villain.

However, I'm having trouble seeing comical rats with this . . .

[Kyle]

Here's something you guys should enjoy, a hand-drawn short from Aaron Blaise (co director of brother bear) about and elephant and his trunk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i9jJsPH-L0

[Sotiris]

Animator Steve Cunningham talks about his transition from 2D to CG animation and the strengths of each medium.

The transition to CG on Shark Tale was hard for me and I think it was hard for a lot of the 2D guys because DreamWorks had trained us. They had a few people that knew CG but for the most part they trained us all. When you’re used to drawing, you’re not handicapped by what a model can do or a rig can do. Surely, you can cheat a lot more in drawing. You can make a nice drawing to camera and it doesn't look good at any other angle but in CG I found out that if you did that too much it would break lighting and you would cast shadows, and you really had to work more three-dimensionally. The hardest part for me was making friends with the curve editor. Once I got an understanding of that, a lot of pieces fell into place.

At that point, it was very clear that traditional animation - the way we knew it anyway - was evolving. I've never been an adventurous person in the sense that I wanted to backpack over Europe and follow the work. I thought “Well, this is the future” and what do they say? “Evolve or fade away”. And I didn't want to fade away. I still loved animation. I didn't get into animation to work on computers but I figured working on computers was better than not working at all. It was hard to swallow and it was mixed with a lot of frustration because the things I could do in 2D, I couldn't do anymore. But it offered different challenges in different ways.

I really miss traditional animation in a lot of ways but in some other ways I think about things like paper cuts you get between your fingers, and having to animate little one-inch-tall characters by the pegs. You forget all that stuff, it’s a bit more romantic now. But there are things about CG animation that I really love as well. You have so much more control over the subtleties, expressions and things like that, and you’re not as restricted by draftsmanship. One of the things I look at it, in terms CG vs 2D, is that in 2D when your animation leaves your desk, it goes through other iterations. It goes through a clean-up artist who interprets your drawings. Their drawings end-up on screen, not mine. In some ways, how true it is degrades from between that point until it hits the screen. Whereas in CG, I find a lot of times it gets better. Also, my own performance and my poses are closer to what ends up on screen in CG than they are in 2D. I like that my performance gets more on screen now than in 2D but I do miss the smell of that paper and pencil. CG frees you up to really focus more on the performance. You can go off-model in CG characters, for sure but I think being in CG has allowed me to focus more on the performance.

Source: http://www.ianimate.net/podcasts/item/i ... ngham.html

[disneyprincess11]

Off-topic, but I wonder if Disney pushed the PG rating for Tangled and Frozen because PG sounds more appealing to kids than G.

[DisneyFan09]

Off-topic, but I wonder if Disney pushed the PG rating for Tangled and Frozen because PG sounds more appealing to kids than G.

It's not implausible. It could be a reason.