Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney

[unprincess]

as for Gendy and TH 2. I saw the first film recently and the best thing about it was the animation. That was some really lively expressive CGI! They are getting better at mimicking the 2d style. Gendy gets it. It doesnt have to all be hyperrealism. Too bad the movie was so mediocre.

This is what bothers me about the reviews towards this movie. Most movie critics only see "another corny movie from Adam Sandler", and that's all they ever WANT to see from anything with his name on it.

The truth about Hotel Transylvania is that both films are NOT just the same ol', same ol' from Adam Sandler. On his part, it shows that he CAN make a dent in animation, long after Eight Crazy Nights suggested otherwise. But it also shows that 2D-trained artists do not have to be slaves to CGI, where in this case, Genndy has conquered the medium in a way where it instead conforms to HIS sensibilities. To that regard, Sandler's marquee value is secondary to Genndy Tartakovsky's art.

yeah, when I mean CGI is getting closer to hand drawn, Im talking about in terms of movement. Those characters moved very much like 2d characters, especially Drac who was just so wonderfully animated I could easily ignore Sandler voice coming out of him. Ive seen similar impressive CGI from Rio and Wreck it Ralph. The bigger problem with CGI animated films right now is the awful trite stories and cookie cutter design and aesthetic.

[Sotiris]

Former Disney animator Tom Sito ponders whether 2D animation will make a comeback in the future.

Q: Will 2D animation ever make a resurgence?

Tom Sito: Well, it’s interesting. I think it’s gone underground for a little while. I always tell students that again in the mid-seventies, we were underground for a while. 2D was on the outs for a bit. If you told me in 1975, 15 years in the future we’d have giant movies like The Little Mermaid and TV shows like The Simpsons, I’d say that’s crazy, that’s never going to happen. Glen [Keane] always liked to say “Photography didn’t wipe out painting; people still make paintings”. So, I think there’s going to be a place for it. I think it’s going to be modified, sort of a technique of choice, kind of like going black-and-white, more monochromatic. But at the same time, a lot of Japanese animate. The people there still love 2D and there are a lot of TV shows.

One of the things I’m fascinated by, again being a teacher and working with young people is that a lot of students are fascinated by 2D. When students come in, we give them a choice. We say “we’re going to teach you 3D, we’re going to teach you stop motion, we’re going to teach you 2D, we’re going to teach you all the different techniques”. And a lot of them just gravitate towards 2D, anyway. I was talking with a European recruiter who works with the Gobelins School in Paris and he says their students are all into 2D. So, it’s interesting.

Source: http://www.themousecastle.com/2015/10/m ... yland.html

[Tristy]

Former Disney animator Tom Sito ponders whether 2D animation will make a comeback in the future.

That's somewhat encouraging.

[DancingCrab]

That's somewhat encouraging.

I don't know. I don't think there was ever a lack of interest in animators creating 2D, the decision to shelf the format is 100% to blame on the big suits. If the animators had their way, it never would have left in the first place.

[Sotiris]

It's sad that young 2D animators have to move to Japan to find work.

And although a lot of emphasis is put on 3-D animation in the computer graphics industry, some of the students — including senior Nikki Tatsumi — still have a soft spot for classic 2-D animation, the technique Disney used for “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

Tatsumi says that after graduation, she’d like to eventually move to Japan, where she has family and where 2-D animation is more popular than it is in the United States.

“I really enjoy the more traditional aspect of 2-D animation, even if it’s more labor intensive,” said Tatsumi. “You have to do each and every frame, without filling anything in automatically with digital tools. It really gives you a bond with your work.”

Source: http://news.psu.edu/story/373068/2015/1 ... ital-world


A Koren 2D-animated feature titled "Hello, Woochi" is being released this year. The director talks about the reasons he chose 2D animation and how this medium is more suitable for comic book adaptations than CG.

Children in the 1980s and '90s used to watch hand-drawn animations at theaters and on television. But nothing is permanent. Due to advanced techniques, computer graphic animations have become more dominant in entertainment, starting with the Pixar's "Toy Story" in 1995. While the so-called 2D animations have lost much of their appeal, a new hand-drawn animated feature, "Hello, Woochi," is ready to hit the big screen this week and possibly change that. [...]

Kim Dae-chang, director of the feature and CEO of Earlybird Pictures, said he decided to work on making an animation version of "Hello, Woochi" to stimulate the imagination of children. "When I was young, I developed my imagination through hand-drawn animations," Kim said in an interview with The Korea Times at a cafe in Hapjeong, western Seoul, on Sept. 23. "They had a big influence in making me a more optimistic person. Not only those animations, but also I was greatly affected by comic books, and I would like to let children these days get the chance to feel as I did." [...]

Kim said he made his animated feature using hand-drawn techniques as they can meet the purposes of his intentions. "I believe that 2D or hand-drawn animated features are more suitable when recreating the original comics into animation than using 3D techniques," he said. [...]

"I don't have too much expectation on ‘Woochi' in terms of making a profit," he said. "As ‘Woochi' is planned to be screened at local theaters only and we already knew the 3D animated feature is a course of nature that no one can defy. Right now, what we are doing is investing. With the creative system we have developed, our studio has accumulated know-how in creating hand-drawn animated features with relatively low production costs. As we have plans to make sequels of ‘Woochi' and other 2D features based on different comics, I am pretty sure that we can find our own profitable niche market soon."

Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/cu ... 88204.html

[Sotiris]

Eric Goldberg's awkward and evasive answer about the future of 2D animation at Disney reeks of fear and anxiety. What are they doing to them at Disney?

Q: You’ve worked with Disney on and off over the years, and you’ve works on a variety of 2D animated films from Aladdin and Princess and the Frog, to shorts like Get A Horse!, where do you see the future of 2D animation for the studio?

Eric Goldberg: I don’t have a crystal ball. I wish I had a crystal ball. But I will say is that I think we’re very fortunate to really understand and appreciate our legacy at Disney and, the artists who are working there, all of them understand it and know how important it is to uphold that. Whether we do it with new media, or whether we do it with hand-drawn, or whether we blend the two or whether we do it with matchsticks.

There are certain tenets of Disney films that we have to maintain. Two of them are great stories and great characters. And I think the third one really is themes that resonate with people. You can take a lot of the Disney films and boil them down to the soundbite theme, but the soundbite theme is often pretty profound. And then everything from the movie can kind of cleave to it. And so for Aladdin, it’s “Be Yourself. Everything kind of cleaves to that: Aladdin is trying to be a phony, but it doesn’t work, the Genie is turning into a million different things, but it’s all about “be yourself.” In Dumbo, it’s like, “The little guy does good.” You see it with Dumbo and you see it with Timothy scaring the elephants to defend Dumbo. You see that theme reflected through the entire movie. And I think that’s something that Disney really excels at is finding those universal themes that everybody can relate to.

Q: If you had a magic lamp for your career for the next 5-10 years, what is one wish you could have?

Eric Goldberg: To keep doing what I’m doing and loving it. And hopefully I will have another 5 years to do that.

Source: http://www.rotoscopers.com/2015/10/09/e ... y-release/

Q: Speaking of hand-drawn animation, you’re still working at Disney, working in hand-drawn animation, on Get A Horse! and Paperman. Do you see that as the future of hand-drawn animation, as a kind of foundation for experimenting with computer animation, a la Glen Keane’s Duet?

Eric Goldberg: I can’t predict the future. I have no idea what the future is. The best thing I can say is: the Disney studio knows its legacy…and they know what outrageously wonderful resources they have. I’ll give you an example. We have at the studio what we call SDLs: studio department leaders. So they elect a group of four people to be the SDLs for animation, four people to be the SDLs for layouts, so on and so forth. So after Frozen came out, the SDLs got together with me. And this is to their great credit: They said, “Look, we know Frozen’s a great hit. But we know we can do better. What is it we can do to make our CG animation more Disney?” And I gave them a 12-part lecture, where I was using clips from the Animation Research Library, where they have all the original scenes, all the pencil drawings. And we made QuickTime movies out of them, and we could examine them frame by frame. And I could show people what some of the things that our forebears did in order to make the animation more Disney-esque.

One of the toughest things in CG is that you can’t actually do everything all at once, and often it’s departmentalized. So, often things like hair and cloth are handled by the tech-animator department rather than the character animators. Then I would run a piece of Marc Davis’ Princess Aurora [from Sleeping Beauty] dancing in the forest. And of course, she’s got this beautiful hair design and beautiful dress, and it’s animated beautifully. But it’s also graphic as all get-out, and yet retains its weight and its form, and still remains graphic. And you cannot imagine Marc animating that without doing it all at once. You know, in the CG world, you could conceivably animate Briar Rose bald and without a dress [laughs] and then have another department [animate the hair and cloth]! And it’s not the same. Conceiving it all as something organic is something that we’re still striving for in the CG. And we’re getting closer and closer and closer.

But it’s something where there’s stuff that those guys did that we can still aspire to, no matter whether we’re drawing or whether we’re doing it with pixels or what. One of the things that was great about Get A Horse! was that the CG animators had to do the same cheats as Disney animators. You know, the famous Mickey Mouse cheat would be the ears, which is that they’re always facing front even when his head is on a profile. So basically, they had to do that to mimic what we were doing in hand-drawn. It otherwise wouldn’t be Mickey.

Source: http://moviemezzanine.com/interview-eri ... f-aladdin/

I think working at Walt Disney Animation Studios is very very special. Working there is like no other place on Earth. Even though we do computer animation, we also do hand-drawn animation and they inform each other all the time. I think there's no other place that has that kind of animation DNA.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxMthlqiikM

[Sotiris]

We may get another 2D-animated feature from Don Bluth soon!

The 1990s saw the decline of Don Bluth Productions with decreasingly marketable films and a growing reliance on computer animation, which Bluth describes as “often closer to being a puppeteer than an animator.” [...]

Still, something resides within Bluth that cannot be extinguished — the desire to direct. Bluth has announced that he is currently in talks with an unnamed studio with plans to reenter the field that he helped transform so many years ago.

“What is happening with me is I have the possibility of going back into animation and doing traditional animation again, as a director, and that is looming on the horizon right now,” Bluth said. “If that happens I will pick up my pencil and go back in.”

Should Bluth have the chance to direct his 13th animated film, he will be reentering a field that has changed immensely since he left. With today’s increasing reliance on sequels and heavy-handed computer animation some might say Don Bluth has a lot left to teach us about what, to him, will forever be art and not industry.

Source: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/get_ou ... cb734.html


He also talks about why 2D animation has fallen from the audience's grace as well as what makes 2D animation special to him.

Q: What do you think of animated films today?

Don Bluth: Most of the films that are animated today come through the computer, they’re CGI and I think the CGI look is really, really different. It doesn’t look like the traditional animation. It’s different but it has opened up a huge, huge commercial market where I think the young men in their adolescence are now feeling that they can be comfortable watching a film that’s CG. Whereas, maybe traditional, they might feel put back into the nursery, so they don’t like that. It’s too bad because I think there’s room for both in the world. Certainly, watercolor and oils can exist in the same museum and it seems like these two can exist side by side too. But everything has to do with the money and how much profit a picture will make will determine whether it has longevity.

Q: What is it about traditional animation that is special to you?

Don Bluth: I don’t know… It’s all tied-in with my own early years where I was working at Walt Disney Studio and but only that but watching all of his films when I was just a child. To me, they had a sort of enchantment about them. Maybe it’s the color, the rich colors; maybe it’s the lyrical movement that’s there. Certainly, it’s the voices and the stories that he told. I think he told the best stories and after Walt was gone it seemed like the stories became repetitive. [...] I like both of them but the one I’d prefer if I had to be committed to a room and just animate would be traditional.

Source: http://www.traditionalanimation.com/201 ... interview/


In another interview, he laments the lacks of 2D-animated features and discusses the advantages 2D animation has over CG.

Where my tears are coming from these days is that CG – although I love the look of it – has pushed traditional animation back in the background and that’s sad for me because I think there’s still a lot of eyes that would love to see that beautiful style that Walt came forward with. […]

[With CG animation] when you build a character, you build a character in a computer and it’s wire-framed and it looks like a character, the animator doesn’t get the chance really to create that on paper. He basically becomes a puppeteer who’ll move that puppet around on the stage or in the computer but the thrill – and I learned from John Lounsbery who’s one of The Nine Old Men – the thrill of that feel of the led on the paper... You’re actually creating the look of that character which has a soul. When you look at a drawing it either thrills you or you say “erh, it’s not too good”. That thrill is not there when you’re working on the computer. I just don’t think it's there. […]

With the pencil, part of the person’s soul goes on to the paper. 2D animation, drawing on a piece of paper is the only way to get there, to that intuitive thing. How is it that you couldn’t do that with the puppet that’s in the computer? [...] What’s happening with CG for me is I find that the newest CG looks like the last one. Even the acting begins to look all the same because the faces all play like they’re mugging. They play like “What kind of facial expression can I get here that is going to make people laugh or smile or whatever?” That’s all well and good but there are different levels or harmonies to animation which aren’t just mugging. Some of the CG that’s out there right now, you look at them and say “OK but it doesn’t go anywhere”. Pixar’s the only one for me that’s been able to really capture something to hold my attention because I think they come from a background of traditional animation. You have to know the traditional principles of animation to be able to even be a puppeteer. […]

Do you know what I think is at stake here? This Kickstarter to me is an opportunity to actually put animators back on the board and to maybe to something that is 2D. I don’t think it’s right that 2D has been totally pushed back in the closet somewhere and it’s just CG that’s out there. The two can exist side by side but somebody has to make a picture in 2D that will make money. Then the studios will hear it.

Source: http://taughtbyapro.com/podcast-32-brin ... y-goldman/


He also debunks the myth that 2D animation is more expensive than CG.

Q: Since traditional animation is pretty expensive, have you been able to identify and explore any of the modern processes, techniques, and equipment that would allow you to maintain the look and feel of your incredible animation while cutting down on some of the expensive labor time?

Don Bluth: This might interest some of you to know… Traditionally, if you look at the statistics, traditional animation is less expensive than CG. Most of the budgets I’ve looked at, I go “Wow, they’re spending a lot of money on that!” But I think you can save money just because it’s so easy. You don’t have to deal with so many departments that have to get involved in the lighting, in the modeling, and then the animation, and then the rendering… The idea out there is that 2D animation is more expensive than CG. That’s not true. Don’t spread that rumor.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/donbluthfilms/ ... 114011086/

[Semaj]

I was never that much of a Bluth fan. Beyond the troubles Disney had during the early 1980s, he didn't seem to have any other objective in his films beyond becoming the next Walt Disney, which became fully evident when Disney recovered during the 1990s.

However, I may welcome his next film, as long as he doesn't succumb to the "all-animated-movies-HAVE-to-be-CGI" trap.

[Disney's Divinity]

Hopefully he'll be successful in getting another hand-drawn film off the ground and that the quality will be closer to Nimh and TLBT than Titan AE.

[estefan]

I don't care much for Don Bluth's work. Like Semaj, it felt like he tried so hard to be Disney rather than doing his own thing. And his attempts at sentimentality almost always came off as way too schmaltzy. I think he did three good films in the 80s with The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail and The Land Before Time (though I think the best thing he ever did was the animated segment in Xanadu) and then the quality dropped dramatically when he made the mistake of splitting from Spielberg.

With that said, I have always wanted to see Don Bluth return to make a new film. If he does, I welcome it with open arms with the possibility he will make something on par with or, if possible, better than An American Tail which I believe is his best feature, even if some of the film's strongest elements have Spielberg's fingerprints all over them.

[unprincess]

Id love to see Bluth come back! I dont like all his films and I think some of his character design work can be kinda ugly, but I give him props for not being scared of making darker more foreboding stories and atmosphere. I think where he would really excel is in high fantasy, something like a Lord of the Rings/ Camelot?Black Cauldron bent...didnt he want to make a film version of Dragon's Lair game? that would be perfect!

the Eric Goldberg article is just sad. Its obvious by the last line he wants to keep working in 2d but he knows that may not be possible for long. And if he wants to keep working at Disney he has to be very careful with what he says in interviews.

[DisneyFan09]

Well, it's good that at least someone will try to return to hand drawn animation. Though I've never been compelled by Don Bluth's films as a kid, though I considered his work to be tedious, juvenile and simply unappealing. "Secret from NIMH" was a fine exception, though. And the Disney knock-off "Anastasia" does have it's moments and perks, despite being quite flawed (for reasons that I've previously mentioned).

[Kyle]

I used to like Anastasia until I realized how rotoscoped it was. Kinda ruins it for me.
Most of his stuff outside of land before time were pretty unappealing to me, but still I'd welcome him coming back.

[DisneyEra]

Well, it's good that at least someone will try to return to hand drawn animation. Though I've never been compelled by Don Bluth's films as a kid, though I considered his work to be tedious, juvenile and simply unappealing. "Secret from NIMH" was a fine exception, though. And the Disney knock-off "Anastasia" does have it's moments and perks, despite being quite flawed (for reasons that I've previously mentioned).

The Disney knock-off "Anastasia"! Disney Animation would never do knock-offs!

[DancingCrab]

I have mixed feelings about Bluth as well, even his best works like NIMH, An American Tail, Land Before Time and to an extent Anastasia, all fall short of being more than just ok to me, while his other works like All Dogs Go to Heaven, Rock a Doodle, Pebble and the Penguin, Troll in Central Park, Thumbelina and Titan A.E. are unwatchable disasters IMO.

[DisneyFan09]

The Disney knock-off "Anastasia"! Disney Animation would never do knock-offs!

Were you being sarcastic right now?

[DisneyEra]

The Disney knock-off "Anastasia"! Disney Animation would never do knock-offs!
Were you being sarcastic right now?

Yep. Other than these 2, what other animation directors succeeded in animated features outside Disney Animation? No CGI please, 2D only:

[dollover]

I would love to see a new 2D animated film, but not sure if I want it from Bluth, given his track record. I feel like his animated movies are juvenile Disney wannabees. The only decent ones are Nimh and Anastasia, and even Anastasia was really annoying to me.

If he releases a 2d animated movie and it flops because it sucked, that's just more fuel to add to the 'no one wants to see 2d anymore' fire. Other studios would be like, see that movie flopped because it was 2d, not oh it flopped because it sucked.

Of course if he releases one and it turns out to be awesome and a blockbuster then that may possibly kickstart 2d again. So I hope if he makes one it will turn out to be a beloved masterpiece that makes a billion dollars.

[JeanGreyForever]

I loved Anastasia, and while it's been some time since I've seen The Land Before Time and An American Tail, I remember those fondly. He's the closest to Disney when it comes to 2D so I would welcome his return.

[unprincess]

If he releases a 2d animated movie and it flops because it sucked, that's just more fuel to add to the 'no one wants to see 2d anymore' fire. Other studios would be like, see that movie flopped because it was 2d, not oh it flopped because it sucked.

yeah youre right, if the film flopped we'd be "back to the drawing board"(or the computer screen, lol.)

speaking of successful animation directors/studios outside of Disney we now have to add Tomm Moore/Cartoon Saloon. I just saw Song of the Sea and wow what a stunning heartfelt film! if youre a traditional animation fan its a must see!