Donald Duck in D.I.Y. Duck

[Jules]

Oh God.

I just rewatched the short on my laptop in 1080p.

There are some backgrounds that are clearly low-res. You can make out the pixelation despite the low bit-rate YouTube video stream. Other backgrounds seem to have been badly photoshopped - you can tell certain elements were deleted after completion by the soft and indistinct (sometimes rough) boundaries between a painted foreground object and the background.

How on earth does this happen at WDAS in 2024? We are living in a world where independent YouTube animation by Harry Partridge and others looks slicker and more professionally-produced than the output of the world's oldest and most storied animation studio. What a disgrace.

[Farerb]

What was the last decent hand drawn short from Disney Animation?

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

What was the last decent hand drawn short from Disney Animation?

There’s How To Hook Up Your Home Theater and The Ballad of Nessie.

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

Short seemed fine on my 4K TV.

[Jules]

Short seemed fine on my 4K TV.

Generally speaking, it looks fine. You need to get up close and personal to notice the defects I mentioned.

They will definitely be noticeable if you are watching the short projected onto a large screen.

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

We got a featurette on the making of DIY Duck: https://youtu.be/ncEza6z_SwE?si=4yjG4fKUFNxlUDCo.

[Sotiris]

I echo others' feelings of disappointment. The character animation was serviceable, albeit off-model sometimes, but the layout and backgrounds as well as the digital ink and paint were dreadful. It was also very slight in terms of storytelling. All in all, I was left unsatisfied. That was not a real short, in my book. How to Hook Up Your Home Theater was vastly superior to this and the last real short by WDAS involving a character from the Fab Five. Frankly, even Mickey Mouse Works/House of Mouse had better shorts that what current WDAS is giving us.

What was the last decent hand drawn short from Disney Animation?

If I'm being generous The Ballad of Nessie; if I raise my standards The Little Matchgirl.

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

I echo others' feelings of disappointment. The character animation was serviceable, albeit off-model sometimes, but the layout and backgrounds as well as the digital ink and paint were dreadful. It was also very slight in terms of storytelling. All in all, I was left unsatisfied. That was not a real short, in my book. How to Hook Up Your Home Theater was vastly superior to this and the last real short by WDAS involving a character from the Fab Five. Frankly, even Mickey Mouse Works/House of Mouse had better shorts that what current WDAS is giving us.

What was the last decent hand drawn short from Disney Animation?

If I'm being generous The Ballad of Nessie; if I raise my standards The Little Matchgirl.

Once Upon A Studio is an example of showing otherwise.

[VanessaFan]

Like others have said, I'm also thrilled to have a new hand-drawn animated Donald Duck Short. But, 3 minutes ain't a long time.
I loved how the intro is just like the classics shorts intro. But yes, the animation itself lacks something. The same with the backgronds. Also, whatever happend to Donald's old 313 Red Car?

About the score/music in this short:
At 0:35, when Donald gets up to go to the closet, we hear the musicla score from Alice in Wonderland where Alice is about to hit the hedgehog and the flamingo goes limp on her. When I first watched the short this morning, I was like "I've heard this score before" but I couldn't place it then.
1:40 uses the score from Lady and the Tramp as little Lady goes up the stairs to Jim Dear and Darling's bedroom.

It's a nice-looking short at first, but the more times I watch it' the less thrilled I am about it At least, we got two new classic Donald shorts, restored in 4K Ultra HD as well.

[DisneyFan09]

I just saw it and I didn`t care much for it. Mainly because it felt cheap. From it`s animated style, which looked too Saturday Cartoon-esque and from it`s recycled musical cues from old Disney movies (and certainly Lady and the Tramp). If you`re going to pay homage to an iconic character, fine, but why doing so in a way that`s derivative and cheap?

if I raise my standards The Little Matchgirl.

Agreed. The animation in that short is beautiful and probably the last time where Disney truly made an effort to a Hand Drawn property.

Once Upon A Studio is an example of showing otherwise.

Fair enough, but even Studio had parts of animation which looked uneven.

[Kyle]

When animating that many characters, of course you're gonna run into some unevenness.

But you can't really compare something like Donald to the little matchgirl or even once upon a studio. Completely different goals at play here.
when it comes to slapstick, I would go back to How to Hook Up Your Home Theater as the last solid attempt at animating any of their main stable of mickey characters.

[MoonMarc21]

It might be my attention span failing me but the moment I saw Donald open the closet and all the clutered stuff fall on him, I got turned off a bit because of how oddly colored the stuff are and went to watch another video on Youtube Eventually, I went back to watch it since it's just three minutes and I guess it was fine, serviceable for Donald Duck's birthday.

Other things that turned me off are how the backgrounds look so devoid of detail. I'm not asking for it to be overly detailed but like, they look like they were made in MS Paint or something idk...Anyways, animation was fine, too fine if I say so myself, looks a bit too clean for my eyes and mind that is used to how 2d animation should look like in "my terms." ehh...it's okay

Also, I recently watched some of the Mickey Mouse shorts made for Disney Channel and visually, they looked waaaay better than this. Shame that this had to be Mark Henn's last short film made for this studio, I thought it would be an original.

[robster16]

It's somehow weird how they tout this hand drawn animated short, yet fail to commit to the artwork in every other medium. The animation is fun although I was shocked how off model he is for the majority of the short and the background design is... not my favorite aspect of the short and that is putting it VERY mildly!

[Sotiris]

The animation is fun although I was shocked how off model he is for the majority of the short.

A lot of people noticed the off-model aspect. It was very egregious in some instances. Here's a frame that has been redrawn by another artist.


Source: https://x.com/DAlvarezStudio/status/1800288791195758933

[Sotiris]

How Disney Legend Mark Henn Created the First Donald Duck Short in 63 Years
https://www.thewrap.com/donald-duck-sho ... making-of/

[Sotiris]

Henn said production on “D.I.Y. Duck” took longer than expected because they had to pause to work on another recent animated Disney short, “Once Upon a Studio.”

Source: https://www.laughingplace.com/w/disney- ... nel-recap/