Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney

All topics relating to Disney-branded content.
TsWade2
Anniversary Edition
Posts: 1812
Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:07 pm

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by TsWade2 »

Kyle wrote:You can still be optimistic, I think most of us are to some extent, you just have to think longer term, the bigger picture. And not bring it up all the time repeatedly. Hand drawn doesn't have to be declared dead just because the conversation hits a lull.
Okay. Sorry. I'll tried not to repeat it over. If it helps to bring hand drawn back eventually.
Tristy wrote:Paramount is releasing a hand drawn animated feature?!!? Awesome!
You're right. It is. Unfortunately, it's a Spongebob Squarepants movie. And I hate Spongebob. But I'll hope it'll do well and get Disney's attention.
User avatar
thelittleursula
Anniversary Edition
Posts: 1235
Joined: Fri Jul 13, 2012 3:15 am
Location: Europe

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by thelittleursula »

TsWade2 wrote:You know what? If this is how you guys going to treat me that way, then fine.

I'm sorry, It was a joke. I actually really, really agree with you most of the time and really agree with you that 2D should return and revive.

I'm actually really sorry.
PatrickvD wrote:
Don't we all.



:milkbuds:

Bee Movie 2, the lady dumps the Bee for a Grasshopper and the bee tries to get her back. Pop culture jokes, fart jokes, and hip hop songs. Sounds beautiful.


*@ TsWade2 Psst, making fun of Bee Movie, not you c:
TsWade2
Anniversary Edition
Posts: 1812
Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:07 pm

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by TsWade2 »

thelittleursula wrote:
TsWade2 wrote:You know what? If this is how you guys going to treat me that way, then fine.

I'm sorry, It was a joke. I actually really, really agree with you most of the time and really agree with you that 2D should return and revive.

I'm actually really sorry.
PatrickvD wrote:
Don't we all.



:milkbuds:

Bee Movie 2, the lady dumps the Bee for a Grasshopper and the bee tries to get her back. Pop culture jokes, fart jokes, and hip hop songs. Sounds beautiful.


*@ TsWade2 Psst, making fun of Bee Movie, not you c:
Okay. :up:
User avatar
Warm Regards
Special Edition
Posts: 857
Joined: Wed May 22, 2013 9:09 pm

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by Warm Regards »

I posted this article in the Frozen thread, but it's semi relevant to this topic as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/busin ... oming.html
... Disney’s hand-drawn pictures suddenly seemed hopelessly outdated as Hollywood and audiences moved toward computer animation. Disney also became unsure of its storytelling, worrying that even young moviegoers had become too cynical for the company’s signature brand of upbeat fairy tales. A parade of new films, including “Meet the Robinsons,” “Home on the Range” and “Chicken Little,” failed to impress.

Anxiety inside the animation studio increased with the arrival of mighty Pixar as a corporate sibling, recalled Andrew Millstein, general manager of Walt Disney Animation, as he spoke to his 800 or so assembled workers on Monday. “There was a little fear,” he said, recalling the grim vibe that prevailed. “There was a little touch of envy.” Maybe Walt Disney Animation was too broken to fix?

...

Then came “The Princess and the Frog,” a musical without many memorable tunes that became a box-office disappointment, taking in just $267 million, less than it cost to make and market. (The well-reviewed movie did, importantly, give Disney its first black princess.) But the 2010 release of “Tangled” finally started to reveal some real creative spark; the operational changes that Mr. Lasseter and Mr. Catmull put into place were working.
Like, what is the deal with PatF being a "box office disappointment"? First of all, it made double it's budget. The production cost was ~$105,000,000, the world wide gross was $267,000,000. Even if the marketing cost an additional $100,000,000, the movie still made profit. Secondly, Tiana's Disney Princess merch surely brought in more money post movie theater showings. Unless they're jaded because Rapunzel (and soon Anna and Elsa) was more popular in that regard...? :?
User avatar
DisneyJedi
Platinum Edition
Posts: 3737
Joined: Fri Oct 17, 2008 2:53 pm
Gender: Male

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by DisneyJedi »

That's what agitates me. Compared to TPatF, Tangled got more attention. :glare:
TsWade2
Anniversary Edition
Posts: 1812
Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:07 pm

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by TsWade2 »

Ugh! I've been upset about Get A Horse didn't receive an Oscar, and we have to go through this again? They said they don't have any in the works right now. They're still doing hand drawn shorts, you know. :glare:
User avatar
unprincess
Collector's Edition
Posts: 2134
Joined: Fri Jul 26, 2013 5:00 pm

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by unprincess »

Disney’s hand-drawn pictures suddenly seemed hopelessly outdated as Hollywood and audiences moved toward computer animation. Disney also became unsure of its storytelling, worrying that even young moviegoers had become too cynical for the company’s signature brand of upbeat fairy tales. A parade of new films, including “Meet the Robinsons,” “Home on the Range” and “Chicken Little,” failed to impress.
and yet neither of those were upbeat fairytales, & 2 are CGI. But keep placing the blame on 2d. It makes for great publicity stories like these, right? :roll:
TsWade2
Anniversary Edition
Posts: 1812
Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:07 pm

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by TsWade2 »

unprincess wrote:
Disney’s hand-drawn pictures suddenly seemed hopelessly outdated as Hollywood and audiences moved toward computer animation. Disney also became unsure of its storytelling, worrying that even young moviegoers had become too cynical for the company’s signature brand of upbeat fairy tales. A parade of new films, including “Meet the Robinsons,” “Home on the Range” and “Chicken Little,” failed to impress.
and yet neither of those were upbeat fairytales, & 2 are CGI. But keep placing the blame on 2d. It makes for great publicity stories like these, right? :roll:
I have a bad feeling about this. :huh:
User avatar
DisneyJedi
Platinum Edition
Posts: 3737
Joined: Fri Oct 17, 2008 2:53 pm
Gender: Male

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by DisneyJedi »

TsWade2 wrote:Ugh! I've been upset about Get A Horse didn't receive an Oscar, and we have to go through this again? They said they don't have any in the works right now. They're still doing hand drawn shorts, you know. :glare:
I think what makes Get a Horse's loss unfair (even my mom thought it was a little unjust because we never saw the winning film) is that we haven't even seen most of the nominees in the Animated Short category. Even I haven't. I've seen every animated film in the Best Animated Film category and I know Frozen was definitely deserving. Then again, everyone and their mother knows that.

Oh, wait. Never mind.
User avatar
estefan
Platinum Edition
Posts: 3195
Joined: Tue Sep 22, 2009 1:27 pm

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by estefan »

DisneyJedi wrote:I think what makes Get a Horse's loss unfair (even my mom thought it was a little unjust because we never saw the winning film) is that we haven't even seen most of the nominees in the Animated Short category.
Well, you haven't, but Academy voters are sent a DVD containing all of the Animated Short nominees. Those who voted, likely did watch all of the nominees in that category. So I don't see how that's unfair. Also, in recent years, certain movie theatres play a special program with all of the Animated Short nominees. Check your listings, because they might still be playing. They're also available to rent on iTunes. So they're not that hard to get a hold of.

Here is the winning short, for those interested in giving it a look:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYPPb7fbinU[/youtube]
"There are two wolves and they are always fighting. One is darkness and despair. The other is light and hope. Which wolf wins? Whichever one you feed." - Casey Newton, Tomorrowland
TsWade2
Anniversary Edition
Posts: 1812
Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:07 pm

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by TsWade2 »

DisneyJedi wrote:
TsWade2 wrote:Ugh! I've been upset about Get A Horse didn't receive an Oscar, and we have to go through this again? They said they don't have any in the works right now. They're still doing hand drawn shorts, you know. :glare:
I think what makes Get a Horse's loss unfair (even my mom thought it was a little unjust because we never saw the winning film) is that we haven't even seen most of the nominees in the Animated Short category. Even I haven't. I've seen every animated film in the Best Animated Film category and I know Frozen was definitely deserving. Then again, everyone and their mother knows that.

Oh, wait. Never mind.
I think that's what I said days ago during the Oscars. :P
User avatar
Sotiris
Ultimate Collector's Edition
Posts: 21069
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:06 am
Gender: Male
Location: Fantasyland

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by Sotiris »

Q: What are your opinions on making the film in the traditional 2D hand-drawn artistic style as opposed to 3D? The 3D in Frozen was amazing, but I always find myself missing the Disney of the 90s.

Chris Buck: I love hand drawn animation, it's where I started. We brought hand drawn sensibility to Frozen, we had Mark Henn one of our premiere hand drawn animators working with us in the animation dailies room to achieve the appeal of hand drawn. We also have some hand drawn effects in the movie.

Peter Del Vecho: I love the fact that at the Studio we have the rich hand drawn that we can draw on and the CG and we can draw on the two. We're one of the only studios that can do that.
Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1 ... g/#cfbsdlg
Q: Why was this style of animation chosen?

Chris Buck: I first pitched the film a little over five years ago, about five and a half, But then there was a little time off where I went and did other things for about a year. It switched when it got put on the shelf, and then when it came back off, it became more CG, Mulling it over, I'd grown up on hand-drawn, and then thinking a world of ice and snow what they can do with CG now is so incredible, that, for me anyway, made me want to go over to that world to see what we could do. The great thing about this studio, more than most, is that our legacy is hand-drawn, and we still have some of the best hand-drawn animators in the world, here. They helped work on our movie by doing early character design, and doing hand-drawn effects…..So it has that feeling of classic hand-drawn, but it's CG.… For us this was the best of both worlds.
Source: http://www.susansdisneyfamily.com/2014/ ... -with.html
"I first pitched the film a little over five years ago, about five and a half," says Buck. "But then there was a little time off where I went and did other things for about a year." After working on variations of the project, Producer Del Vecho joined the production about two and a half years ago, followed by the addition of Lee just eighteen months out from release. Originally planned to be a hand-drawn film, I'd asked the filmmakers at what point those plans changed.

"It switched when it got put on the shelf, and then when it came back off, it became more CG," Buck explains. "Mulling it over, I'd grown up on hand-drawn, and then thinking 'a world of ice and snow' - what they can do with CG now is so incredible, that, for me anyway, made me want to go over to that world to see what we could do. The great thing about this studio, more than most, is that our legacy is hand-drawn, and we still have some of the best hand-drawn animators in the world, here. They helped work on our movie by doing early character design, and doing hand-drawn effects. Mark Henn, who's one of our premiere animators, was in our animation dailies room every day, and as the guys would show their work, we'd stop on a frame or something, and Mark would draw over it on a screen and give it that hand-drawn appeal with silhouette shapes and everything. So it has that feeling of classic hand-drawn, but it's CG."

"Our Art Director, Mike Giaimo, came from hand-drawn, and this was his first CG," adds Lee. "What I liked, is the way he used color, and that everything was stylized - it wasn't about reality, but it was about emotion. He was excited about being able to do things with cloth and such that we couldn't do [in hand-drawn], and detailing like to put rose mulling on a dress in hand-drawn is so complicated and expensive, and nearly impossible, but this was limitless, yet he could still do things stylistically. For us this was the best of both worlds."
Source: http://www.therockfather.com/news-and-r ... -del-vecho
Despite being computer generated Frozen remains grounded in the tradition of hand-draw animation. “It’s Disney’s legacy,” observes Chris Buck. “We still have quite a few of our hand-drawn animators there and CG guys. I come from hand-drawn too. In the animation dailies room we would stop on a frame when a CG animator was showing his scene and Mark [Henn] would go over it and give a wonderful hand-drawn appeal to the poses. There’s the combination of that in all of the animation where you get that feeling of the hand-drawn and then we do have some hand-drawn effects that are in the movie too. It’s a nice blend in the whole thing.”
Source: http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2014/03/s ... about.html
They also tried to incorporate the traditional 2-D animation elements into the process as well, by recruiting famed 2-D animator Mark Henn of Aladdin, The Lion King and Mulan to do draw-overs of certain frames to give pointers to the animators. "We really wanted that caricatured appeal that we have in 2-D," Lee explained. "So not only did Giaimo art direct it that way with all the color, the vignettes, the design and shapes, but we had Mark Henn come in, and every day, he'd work with the CG animators and help them understand how to bring the classic Disney expressions and silhouettes." "It had to be done hand drawn first," Del Vecho noted, "because the computer is good at calculating things like they look in nature, but it lacked the whimsy. It lacked the design."
Source: http://www.craveonline.com/film/intervi ... eys-frozen
Q: Did you ever think about hand drawing parts of the movie?

Peter Del Vecho: There are actually a lot of hand drawing influences in the film. In term so of affects certainly heavenly influence, design heavily influence and even animation. We got initially the look from hand drawing and then we pushed it through technology.

Michael Giaimo: But it had to be done hand drawn because the computer is good at calculating things to look in nature but lack whimsy. So the look in “Let it Go” where Elsa is gesturing and cerating snow flurries and magic is all really hand drawn-inspired.
Source: http://www.kidzworld.com/article/28843- ... ts-success
Chris also talks about the relationship between modern and traditional animation techniques in relation to this film but also to future projects: "The decision to make this film in computer graphics is due to its ambitious nature, especially in terms of the effects of the snow and the overall dynamism of the scenes, shots and camera movements. Traditional animation on the other hand has always played a special role in creating that unique bond between the characters and the audience: as evidenced by the short "Paperman", you can find a middle ground between CGI and traditional animation. This is definitely a mixture that will explore with caution but great interest, the potential is amazing."
Source: http://www.badtaste.it/articoli/frozen- ... on-studios
When asked about Disney gaining ground in the CG animated feature film genre, Buck said the storytelling history and emphasis on acting has helped to itself apart. “We want to embrace the legacy of what we’ve done and what ‘Frozen’ is, embrace that past, but also move forward and show what we can do,” Buck said.
Source: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/buck ... -film.html
ImageImageImageImageImageImageImage
User avatar
Sotiris
Ultimate Collector's Edition
Posts: 21069
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:06 am
Gender: Male
Location: Fantasyland

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by Sotiris »

There's a campaign on Kickstarter for a hand-painted feature called Loving Vincent about Vincent Van Gogh which plans to have every frame of the film oil-painted on canvas. The director gave an interview and talked about why he chose to go with this painstakingly hand-crafted route instead of using computer animation. I find his views very applicable to hand-drawn animation as well.
Hugh Welchman wrote:I believe strongly [that] in a world where so much of what you see is generated in a computer, or touched up beyond recognition in a computer, there is a deep-felt psychological, often unarticulated, desire for things hand-crafted. I have had many people say, “I could do that in the computer” over the past three years, to which I answer, “Show me!” No one has yet been able to show me something as good. They can give me approximations, but they can’t give me something as good for the simple fact that the people have to paint it in the computer, and those people painting it in the computer aren’t as good as my painters who are painting it on canvas. But it is not just about the artist — it is also the materials. In our film, you see the paint; you see the fact it is being re-painted frame by frame; you see that concentrated artistic mind of the painter applied in paint to tell the story.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comi ... on-canvas/
ImageImageImageImageImageImageImage
User avatar
Warm Regards
Special Edition
Posts: 857
Joined: Wed May 22, 2013 9:09 pm

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by Warm Regards »

Wow, thanks for the link, Sotiris. It's always so inspiring to read about other animators and artists do individual projects. Honestly, I am overly excited, but I can imagine the possibilities of this new path to animated films.
User avatar
Sotiris
Ultimate Collector's Edition
Posts: 21069
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:06 am
Gender: Male
Location: Fantasyland

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by Sotiris »

Despite Auds’ Dedication to Hand-Drawn Animation, CG Is Slowly Making Inroads in Japan
http://variety.com/2014/film/internatio ... 201129705/

CG gains a ‘real’ foothold in anime
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/201 ... old-anime/
ImageImageImageImageImageImageImage
User avatar
Warm Regards
Special Edition
Posts: 857
Joined: Wed May 22, 2013 9:09 pm

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by Warm Regards »

(I am not stalking, I swear.)

But yes, I have noticed the slow shift to CG in Japanese animation.

For example, Pretty Cure used to have hand-drawn end credit sequences. Then when Fresh Pretty Cure came, the ending song got changed to a CG dance number. It looked quite jarring to see bug-eyed girls in short dresses in 3D. :lol: Now the CG looks much smoother. Pokemon also started using CG a while back, though I am not sure on the specifics. (All I remember was Pokemon Black and White having a CG opening.)

I guess Japan is following the leader (read: money flow), especially now that two CG films have broken the billion dollar mark.
TsWade2
Anniversary Edition
Posts: 1812
Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:07 pm

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by TsWade2 »

Why do I have a bad feeling about this lunacy? :glare:
User avatar
DisneyJedi
Platinum Edition
Posts: 3737
Joined: Fri Oct 17, 2008 2:53 pm
Gender: Male

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by DisneyJedi »

Don't tell me the Japanese will abandon 2D animation altogether?? :(
User avatar
disneyprincess11
Diamond Edition
Posts: 4363
Joined: Sat Dec 18, 2010 7:46 am
Location: Maryland, USA

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by disneyprincess11 »

http://heffydoodle.tumblr.com/post/7817 ... -animation
Just attended a presentation by Disney animation veterans Tony and Tom Bancroft here at SCAD! They had some amazing advice for any aspiring animation artists and I wanted to share my notes with you guys - they won’t fit in the scanner (and my handwriting’s shoddy anyway) so I typed ‘em out instead....


And in response to a question someone asked about the fate of traditional animation:

Traditional animation can and will make a comeback someday - but it takes US!!
TsWade2
Anniversary Edition
Posts: 1812
Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:07 pm

Re: Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney?

Post by TsWade2 »

Just to let everyone know that tomorrow that there's going to be a Disney's Shareholders meeting. And I'm betting someone will ask Bob Iger about the future of hand drawn animation. You all remember Bob's last year's answer and I quote:
To my knowledge we’re not developing a 2D or hand drawn feature animated film right now. There is a fair amount of activity going on in hand drawn animation but it’s largely for television at this point. We’re not necessarily ruling out the possibility [of] a feature but there isn’t any in development at the company at the moment.
Unquote. I wonder what's this year's answer. I hope it's not worse. :huh:
Post Reply