Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney

[JeanGreyForever]

Funny because I think Meet the Robinsons is a masterpiece, and it’s CGI and critics hated it. Yet audiences are still discovering it and loving it. That movie didn’t make a fortune, and it was CG. It’s all about story. CG films can and will flop. 2D films can and will flop. Princess and the Frong had so much potential but all the meddling by Lassiter can be felt in every scene. The magic went out the door.

I'm very glad to hear that I'm not the only one that loved Meet the Robinsons. It was actually one of my favorite Disney films when it first came out and I still love it whenever I rewatch it. I think Netflix has helped to raise its exposure as well. I think had this been Disney's first CGI film than Chicken Little, things would have fared slightly better. But I also agree that TPATF was meddled with so much that the final product had little magic and creativity left in it. You can see glimmers of a great movie in it though which makes it so much the worse.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Another reason for why CGI is harder and takes more time and effort, is because of the animation approach. When everything was done by hand, animation was a form of minimalism. The animators were bringing characters to life with simple drawings. It just couldn't be done any simpler than that. And the pencil tests still looks amazing. There is a reason why Glen Keane is referring to it as a seismograph of the soul in almost every interview he does.

Not that it wasn't a lot of hard work the way they did it on the old days. You had to add color, paint backgrounds and do effects animation. I saw a documentary once about how Roger Rabbit was made, and it was fascinating to see how they created the scene where we first see Jessica Rabbit. But you could only go so far. Before the computer, hand drawn animation was practically perfected.

The computers did make a lot of things easier when CAPS and similar technologies were introduced, but it was still done by hand. (Then again, the ballroom scene in Beauty and the Beast, and the deep canvas effects in Tarzan, Atlantis and Treasure Planet fused traditional with CGI more and more.)

Computer animation on the other hand, does not have the same limitations as the minimalistic hand-drawn animation has. With more computer power, you can add more and more details to a character and the backgrounds. The pores of the skin, they way light is reflected from the eyes and the lips, how muscles works, the texture of clothes and how it moves, snowfall and rain with countless individual snowflakes and raindrops, how mud behaves, buildings with every single brick and crack visible, and so on.
To quote Glen Keane again (and I think I have already mentioned it elsewhere); he said the old animated movies looked the way they did because of their limitations, and that computers can liberate the old art form. But how far can you take hand-drawn without making it look like CGI? In computer animation, the line is gone. The backgrounds often looks almost photorealistic. I remember as a kid watching drawings and paintings, and they often looked a lot more magical than photographs, and still does.

To perfect hand-drawn animation in the computer age, you need to decide what you want to keep from the old look, and what you don't want to include from computer animation.

[nomad2010]

Another reason for why CGI is harder and takes more time and effort, is because of the animation approach. When everything was done by hand, animation was a form of minimalism. The animators were bringing characters to life with simple drawings. It just couldn't be done any simpler than that. And the pencil tests still looks amazing. There is a reason why Glen Keane is referring to it as a seismograph of the soul in almost every interview he does.

Not that it wasn't a lot of hard work the way they did it on the old days. You had to add color, paint backgrounds and do effects animation. I saw a documentary once about how Roger Rabbit was made, and it was fascinating to see how they created the scene where we first see Jessica Rabbit. But you could only go so far. Before the computer, hand drawn animation was practically perfected.

The computers did make a lot of things easier when CAPS and similar technologies were introduced, but it was still done by hand. (Then again, the ballroom scene in Beauty and the Beast, and the deep canvas effects in Tarzan, Atlantis and Treasure Planet fused traditional with CGI more and more.)

Computer animation on the other hand, does not have the same limitations as the minimalistic hand-drawn animation has. With more computer power, you can add more and more details to a character and the backgrounds. The pores of the skin, they way light is reflected from the eyes and the lips, how muscles works, the texture of clothes and how it moves, snowfall and rain with countless individual snowflakes and raindrops, how mud behaves, buildings with every single brick and crack visible, and so on.
To quote Glen Keane again (and I think I have already mentioned it elsewhere); he said the old animated movies looked the way they did because of their limitations, and that computers can liberate the old art form. But how far can you take hand-drawn without making it look like CGI? In computer animation, the line is gone. The backgrounds often looks almost photorealistic. I remember as a kid watching drawings and paintings, and they often looked a lot more magical than photographs, and still does.

To perfect hand-drawn animation in the computer age, you need to decide what you want to keep from the old look, and what you don't want to include from computer animation.

I truly think that’s why Paperman became the cultural phenomenon it did. Never has a short captivated a modern audience so much. I still hear people bringing it up every so often. They managed to makes hand drawn modernized but kept the line. The line is what gives it some humanity. These overly perfected CG movies just do not have that same quality to them. They don’t feel like there’s heart in them visually. I’d love to see them go back to this process and perfect it with color. I know that was the big issue why it never was reproduced, but they got so close, and people responded so well to it BECAUSE of the way that it looked, that I’d love to see Disney move forward with projects in that style.

My biggest fear with CG animation is that it’s either going to stay exactly the same in what I consider to be a very generic style, or the photorealistic backgrounds and eventually characters are going to lead to people asking why these movies simply weren’t made in live action at that point. Which is sort of where we’re finding ourselves with these remakes. There’s a lot at play obviously, but I think what made Disney so special animation wise was the fact that it had a distinct style from other studios. Now it’s hard to tell, and it’s time Disney steppes up and embraced some chances and it’s heritage and forged a path that sets it apart.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Apparently the technology to make a whole movie that way is "not yet there". At least that's what was said some years ago. Just curious if someone at Disney has continued to experiment and improve the process in the meantime. Either way, there is one thing computers should never do; inbetweens. If it isn't done by human hands, it feels too smooth.

When we look at the remake of for instance Lion King, it's the kind of computer animation that attempts to be as photorealistic and live action looking as possible. What the future for that style of computer animation will bring remains to be seen, but the typical Pixar and Disney style will not go away. The Junge Book remake (which has a tiny amount of live action) and Coco had more or less the same budget, so one style doesn't appear to be more expansive than the other.
To make a movie with a hand-drawn look, would be cheaper. And seeing how well studios like Ghibli has done, should be able to make a profit if done right.

[disneyprincess11]

The new Spongebob movie will be CGI for the same reasons.

“The big tentpole movies are our meat and potatoes,” she said. “Those have to reach a broad audience. I don’t think we can do 2d movies, to be honest. I think that’s hard.” However, Soria said that she could envision movies in different techniques that don’t have the same budget as a tentpole-cg feature and don’t have to appeal to the four-quadrant demographic. Acknowledging her openness to different possibilities, she said, “There’s nothing I wouldn’t say no to.”

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-fil ... 65568.html

[REINIER]

The new Spongebob movie will be CGI for the same reasons.

“The big tentpole movies are our meat and potatoes,” she said. “Those have to reach a broad audience. I don’t think we can do 2d movies, to be honest. I think that’s hard.” However, Soria said that she could envision movies in different techniques that don’t have the same budget as a tentpole-cg feature and don’t have to appeal to the four-quadrant demographic. Acknowledging her openness to different possibilities, she said, “There’s nothing I wouldn’t say no to.”

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-fil ... 65568.html

Which is ignorant at best seeing as the source material that made it this lucrative was 2D. Like most of us here state, and I fully concur...it is all down to good story telling...and appealing design. 2D on tv today, in general, looks positively ghastly

[estefan]

Apparently the technology to make a whole movie that way is "not yet there". At least that's what was said some years ago. Just curious if someone at Disney has continued to experiment and improve the process in the meantime

Sony Animation certainly has, if Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is anything to go by. They're really going for a comic book-like aesthetic with that movie and there's definitely a hand-drawn sensibility to every computer animated frame in all of the trailers I've seen.

For the record, Spider-Verse has been the movie I've been most anticipating this year. It looks like no other computer animated movie I've seen. Sony Pictures Animation doesn't get nearly enough credit for their designs and animation. Hotel Transylvania 3 is honestly one of the most beautiful movies I've seen this year, animated or otherwise and you can see Genndy Tartakovsky's touch in every character movement and pose.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Into the Spider-Verse seems to og for a mix of more than one style (Spider-Pig). Judging by the number of visitors to see the trailers on youtube, it could be a hit.

The best test to see if CGI looks like hand-drawn is probably to show the animation as silhouettes or lines, and see if you can tell the difference (then facial animation would be next).

[Disney's Divinity]

The only reason the technology isn't "there yet" to make an entire film in the same vein as Paperman is because Disney doesn't want it to be.

[nomad2010]

The only reason the technology isn't "there yet" to make an entire film in the same vein as Paperman is because Disney doesn't want it to be.

Exactly. After all this time, they could’ve had it down. I’m sure Lasseter squashed it along with all the other organic creativity happening at the studio. It’s no wonder the man who created Paperman left, along with so many other directors and animators. If it didn’t stick to the stock-CG buddy road trip comedy formula, it was too big of a risk and not worth pursuing.

[Sotiris]

• Pandora commercial featuring a hand-drawn Mickey Mouse.

• Japanese commercial featuring a 1930s Mickey Mouse for the "Mickey: The True Original" campaign.

[Sotiris]

James Baxter is working on Klaus.

Though Baxter is now technically in an executive position, he still jumps in to animate himself, usually producing character tests in the early stages of production. “I can’t really help myself sometimes,” Baxter says. “I would have a hard time doing a job where I never got to animate anything.” For Klaus, Baxter has already traveled to Madrid to spend a week working with the film’s animation team and he also expects to animate some of the film’s shots himself.

Source: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/animators/n ... 66183.html

[Sotiris]

Two feature-length documentaries are in production. The one's called Hand Drawn and the other is titled Pencil Test. Both of them will feature new interviews with veterans of 2D animation such as Floyd Norman, James Baxter, James Lopez, Tony Bancroft, John Musker etc. who will share anecdotes from the industry as well as talk about the future of hand-drawn animation.

[disneyprincess11]

For Wreck-It Ralph 2, some of you asked why some of the Disney characters aren't hand-drawn in the movie. I'm happy to report I saw two completely hand drawn characters in the Oh my Disney scene. And to my shock, they were Humphery the Bear and the Scoutmaster.

There are so many characters hidden in the Disney scene you gotta find them everyone. There could be more 2D characters, but I only saw those two.

[JTurner]

It’s sad to me that they’re going such great lengths to claim that the medium is the problem, when it’s always the story.

Bingo! We have a winner. It was never about the medium. It was always the story. I personally think the argument that the medium is the reason for its decline is pure nonsense. The reason why it declined is because the stories they told weren't great. Period. That's the real reason I became an Anime fan recently. Even a movie can be CG and still bomb. Not all CG movies are success stories, and not all hand drawn movies are failure stories. It's time to get a major shakeup at Disney to find a way to balance the two mediums instead of trading one for the other.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

One of the differences between the two types:

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/interviews/ ... 68009.html

Before, if you could draw it, it could be onscreen. Now, you have to build it, and you have to build it in a way that you can either re-purpose it — and we’re speaking about budget issues, but that it’s going to be used enough that it’s worth the time to build. So one-off set-ups are super expensive and [the lack of that option] becomes limiting for you. That’s part of the difference between 2d and 3d is that strangely enough 3d put handcuffs on you.

Cg has created this really efficient pipeline that allows people to be super expressive and fluid with their performances, but in the same way that you have to build the city, you now have to live within the character. That character is that character, and as soon as you start to play and pull with it, it looks off-model. And it needs to still move in this fluid way because we need all those frames to do all these other things that the computer desires, for lighting and cloth and fx. So it started to feel homogenized.

[unprincess]

so if Im getting this right, they will design characters only in a way that they know the model can then be reused later on for other characters? that explains the "same-iness" of a lot of the human characters and why Musker(or Clements?) said they are very reluctant to do characters who can shapeshift(b/c each new form is a new model to build.) That's really creatively limiting...but who cares when its making them bank right?

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Probably. For Maui that shouldn't be a problem as long as we don't see the actual transformation; one second he looks like himmself, the next second he is a bird, fish or a goat. But these animal designs can be reused in future animated features, and may have been borrowed from previous ones already. The little girl in Wreck-it Ralph 2 playing the game is the same girl we saw in Moana. If she was reused just for fun or for some other reason, one can only guess.
A morphing character where you actually see the transformation process will most likely require a new kind of software. Another example is Aladdin, where Robin Williams' Genie often transform into a character that is used only once, and then never again. In hand-drawn animation that is not a problem, but in computer animation it would require a lot of time and money to make characters we only see for a couple of seconds. And can you imagine segments like Heffalumps and Woozles or Pink Elephants on Parade in a CGI movie? It is possible of course, but it would be very expensive with today's technology.
In many ways computer animation can be compared with stop-motion where you need to create the characters and buildings by hand. In hand-drawn animation, you need to draw a character for each new frame anyway.

[JTurner]

Probably. For Maui that shouldn't be a problem as long as we don't see the actual transformation; one second he looks like himmself, the next second he is a bird, fish or a goat. But these animal designs can be reused in future animated features, and may have been borrowed from previous ones already. The little girl in Wreck-it Ralph 2 playing the game is the same girl we saw in Moana. If she was reused just for fun or for some other reason, one can only guess.
A morphing character where you actually see the transformation process will most likely require a new kind of software. Another example is Aladdin, where Robin Williams' Genie often transform into a character that is used only once, and then never again. In hand-drawn animation that is not a problem, but in computer animation it would require a lot of time and money to make characters we only see for a couple of seconds. And can you imagine segments like Heffalumps and Woozles or Pink Elephants on Parade in a CGI movie? It is possible of course, but it would be very expensive with today's technology.

Chalk more points up for Handdrawn.

[Sotiris]

Teen Titan Go! To the Movies features a Lion King parody sequence which was animated in a Disney-esque style and was of higher quality than the rest of the animation in the film.

Now that the Teen Titans Go movie is out I can finally share my work on the movie. I got to design & animate this entire Lion King sequence (minus 3 shots). I put my name in the corner of all shots I animated. The 3 without my name were done by Disney vets Bruce Smith & Chris Wahl. Chris Wahl was actually an animator on the original Lion King (Mufasa). It was an honor getting to meet them both and work with them. I animated this sequence in Toonboom Harmony. I had zero experience with the program up until the Teen Titans Movie, but it was a great opportunity to learn.

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

This is a compilation of the animation I did on the Teen Titans Go movie in different stages. From rough animation to clean up and color. Some shots even include me acting out the scene so that I can use it as reference.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ3YP2hT-nk

Here is the rough animation of the Lion King parody sequence I animated for the Teen Titans Go! movie. I designed and animated the entire sequence minus 3 shots.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/haykm/videos/1 ... 782051620/