Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney

[DisneyJedi]

Wow. Aren't you just a ray of sunshine,Cluck.

[Disney's Divinity]

I don't expect hand-drawn animation to come back either, except maybe as smaller films that rarely get mainstream attention. I'm not as happy about it though. But I can still enjoy the characters/stories/music of new Disney movies, even if their medium will always keep me from seeing them the same way as their older films.

[Sotiris]

Young animators open a studio in Glasgow to produce 2D animated projects.

The art of hand-drawn animation has a new band of champions - and they are based in Glasgow city centre. Mark Flood Animations is leading the fight to preserve skills in danger of disappearing completely thanks to the rise of computer-generated drawing. Founder Mark and his colleagues Jack Morrison, Imraan Ali and Amy Gregson are already attracting global attention, and plan to release a 30-minute cartoon. Their dream is to create a full-length hand-drawn feature film.

Mark, Jack, Imraan and Amy set up their own artists' group while still at school, after attending a painting and drawing class at Glasgow School of Art. "I had always loved drawing and used to drive my teachers mad by drawing over everything," says Mark, who is 18 and lives in Paisley. "I watched old cartoons and I loved Don Bluth films, like An American Tail and Anastasia. Don was one of the big Hollywood animators and he did a series of online tutorials, which is really how I started."

He adds: "I also have two older cousins, who lent me Disney classics like The Fox and the Hound and Peter Pan and I watched all the 'behind-the-scenes' footage of the professionals drawing. I was fascinated by how it was done, but I never really thought of doing it as a career."

A spell of work experience at Glasgow animation company Once Were Farmers changed all that. "I think everyone in the class thought I was going to milk cows for a week," says Mark. "It was an amazing experience and it inspired me to set up my own company." Two short films - The Freak Next Door and Two Women, One Heart - brought Mark Flood Animations out of the tiny artists group and into the spotlight. Awards and acclaim, including a spot at several festivals in the UK and America, followed and Mark gained the support of Business Gateway, The Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust and Young Enterprise Scotland.

In the little Waterloo Street office he shares with Jack, Imraan and Amy, Mark is full of enthusiasm for the future of hand-drawn animation, even though he realises its revival will not happen overnight. "There is a certain feeling captured by hand-drawn animation that you just don't get with computers," he says. "I always assumed the reasons the big movie companies didn't go for it was down to pace but hand-drawn animation isn't slower than digital. They are both slow at different parts of the process. It is a beautiful art form and I want to bring it back. You know when you are watching a hand-drawn cartoon there is a real person behind it. I think the characters take on that human soul in the process, while in computer generated films, to me the characters always behave a little like puppets."

The team is working on Operation Alleycat, a 30-minute cartoon that features the voice talents of London West End actor Martin Quinn, local actress Charly Stakim and Paisley's panto comedy duo Alan Orr and David Wallace. It has also attracted the interest of animators who have worked with some of the industry's biggest studios, including Walt Disney, Dreamworks, Sullivan Bluth and Amblimation. It is the story of a mouse, who has inherited a mysterious diamond, getting caught in a conflict between a brutal gang of lizard thugs and a group of homeless animals. There are wise-cracking cats, a hypochondriac rat and a charming mosquito. "It's like an animal version of A Clockwork Orange," says Mark. "There is a real buzz building now, and we can't wait to get it finished. We are looking for financial support, hoping to attract investment from companies and crowdfunding campaigns." "And after that, we would like to do a full-length film next, or a TV series."

Source: http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/mark ... n.25776141

Mark was overwhelmed by the response he got when he put out a call for animators.

"We sort of put the word out - we were a new company looking for hand-drawing animators - just to see who was out there. We were looking to expand once we had secured funding. And we just got hit with all these CVs - they were flying in. And they were all saying 'I've worked on Beauty and the Beast' or 'I've done Who Framed Roger Rabbit' and we couldn't believe it.

"We didn't place a big ad or anything. We surfed IMDB and found a few names, added them on LinkedIn and Facebook and sent out a few messages. We never expected such a positive response. It was amazing. These guys have essentially been out of work for about 10 years because Disney abandoned the art form and Dreamworks did too. Everyone let it go in favour of computer animation. So all these guys who didn't move across into that style found themselves redundant. Their skills are almost lost or obsolete. It's funny when it comes to technology ... I still read a newspaper, I still buy books. I don't have a Kindle or whatever." [...]

Mark insists he will not give up the traditional hand-drawn animation in favour of the digital style preferred by the likes of Pixar.

He finishes with a rallying cry to other potential Glaswegian animators: "Do something different. Do something unique. Do something that people can immediately recognise is your work. Don't follow - be the shepherd, not the sheep. I think the only reason we've got as far as we have as a company is because we haven't shut up. We're challenging these people. We haven't sat back. When they've told us to change, we've said no. Stick to your principles and values. And make the best film you can."

Source: http://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasg ... s-11471247

Q: Why are you an advocate of hand-drawn animation? What makes it a better medium than CGI?

Mark Flood: To me, hand-drawn animation has a charm that CGI will never achieve or replicate, no matter how far the technology advances. Just because computer animation is accelerating so fast does not mean we should forget animation’s roots. People want hand-drawn animation so why aren’t they being given it?

It’s a beautiful art form and it doesn’t deserve to be forgotten. There is no reason why the two art forms can’t co-exist. That’s what I’m fighting for – a world where hand-drawn animated films and computer animated films can be produced at the same time, and where people can choose between hand-drawn animated films or computer generated ones when they go to the cinema.

Q: What are you currently working on? What are your future goals?

Mark Flood: My next animated film is a 30-minute cartoon called “Operation Alley Cat,” which we aim to complete for either Christmas 2014 or early 2015. After that, I will begin work full-time on my first feature film. I also have an Internet series in the early stages, called “World Wide Web” fittingly enough.

The long-term plan is to begin producing at least a couple of feature films at a time. We have a couple of properties we think would make very fun franchises. We have lots of great ideas that I can’t wait to share with the world. My team and I would love to keep working with the same people, voice actors and crew members from “Operation Alley Cat,” on future projects if they’re all up for working with us again. They’ve all been fantastic and a pleasure to work with.

Source: http://www.voiceovertimes.com/2014/03/0 ... -a-stroke/

[Warm Regards]

Mark, Jack, Imraan and Amy set up their own artists' group while still at school, after attending a painting and drawing class at Glasgow School of Art. "I had always loved drawing and used to drive my teachers mad by drawing over everything," says Mark, who is 18 and lives in Paisley.

Oh, wow, he's only slightly younger than me.

Go for it, Mark. We need more people like you.

[unprincess]

more hope for the future of 2d. It wont die, too many talented creative individuals who love it.

[Sotiris]

Veteran animator James Baxter talks about the industry and hand-drawn animation.

Q: Dear Mr. Baxter, I've seen your work from Gravity Falls and so I looked into this blog! Your work is truly inspiring to me. I've wanted to animate 2-D characters my whole life but sadly, I get really discouraged because whenever I talk about becoming an animator to someone they scoff and say it's pointless or a dying business. Is there really any chance someone could get into cool projects like that? Could you give me some tips or pointers on how to maybe make that aspiration a reality?

James Baxter: Don’t get discouraged! This could be a very exciting time in animation. Even the people in charge of the largest movie studios and TV networks don’t really know how things are going to change, and they are changing. There are new venues and platforms opening up for animation all the time, and some of those things require hand-drawn technique. Gravity Falls follows the default workflow of having the story and layout handled in the US and outsourcing the actual animation to Asia. The reasons for doing it that way are economic, but I’m not sure that’s an idea that has been re-examined lately. I feel that it doesn't have to be done that way. Like I said, things are changing really fast so there’s every reason to be hopeful. In answer to your question, of course there is a chance of getting to work on cool projects. My friend Alex Hirsch studied animation at CalArts and after working for a couple of years in the industry, created Gravity Falls and pitched it to Disney TV. He made his own future. If you keep at it and the work is good, there will be an audience.

I actually have to do hand-drawn animation. I can’t help it. It’s just who I am. So, if someone wants to pay me for it, yay! But if not, I’ll do it anyway. It’s my art, and nobody can stop you doing your art! It’s true, hand-drawn is not the default technique for most animation in the US anymore, especially in feature films, but there is still hand-drawn work out there, in commercials and television, and yes, the occasional theatrical project. They are important skills to learn for any animator. Right now I make a living doing CG animation, which is fine, and I definitely recommend acquiring those CG skills as an animator (which is really just learning a couple of software packages) to make you more employable. [...]

Hand-drawn animation will always be my art. I find the experience of creating it and watching it magical, when compared with a digitally simulated world where there is no surprise that everything moves. But a drawing that springs to life? That’s magic!

Source: http://jbaxteranimator.tumblr.com/post/ ... om-gravity

Transitioning from 2D to CG animation was tricky for Baxter, feeling as though the animator is at the mercy of the computer system or “Rig”. If the rig is not capable of accomplishing a certain movement or expression, the rig is sent back to the developers to be updated and fixed. Overall, Baxter likes where animation has evolved to but does not necessarily agree with how some techniques have been discarded.

Source: http://www.laughingplace.com/w/articles ... es-baxter/

[Sotiris]

Part 1 of a new Glen Keane interview.
http://www.skwigly.co.uk/glen-keane-interview/

Part 2 of the Glen Keane interview has been released.

Q: You've been pushing boundaries quite a lot – you worked on Paperman and now this, so you’re very much getting computers and 2D to work together harmoniously. Is that what you’d like to continue doing?

Glen Keane: I've always found that any time technology crosses my path, it forces me to be a better artist and I've always seen myself as an artist first and animator second. What I didn't want to do was just give up my pencil. That’s like saying to a violinist ‘you know, playing on the strings – you don’t need that now, we've got synthesizers’. The world was a better place for a Stradivarius and the world is a better place for a pencil – graphite on paper. But, is there a new way that you can express yourself as an artist with a pencil – how can a computer, how can technology come in. I feel like we are still just exploring where that’s going to go. I don’t at all believe that hand drawn animation is over. I feel like it is now liberated to become something much more expressive. If you think of a Disney animation, the style of it, the look of Bambi for example. It’s beautiful. But it’s design looks that way because of a technical limitation – they had to paint on cells or draw on cells – because you had to be able to see through the paper – well now on a computer you can animate in a style like Degas. Everything is possible and I love that. I love the personal expressive medium that artists today can be really pushing forward into moving animation from a big studio realm into much more personal artistic expression.

Source: http://www.skwigly.co.uk/glen-keane-part-2/


Another interview with Glen Keane where he talks about the future of 2D animation.

Q: Computer animation has come a long way since Ariel ran down the staircase in The Little Mermaid and the ballroom scene in Beauty and the Beast, and of course you've been involved with 3D work since the early ’80s. But given the ubiquity of computer-generated animation today, what do you anticipate for the future of hand-drawn animation?

Glen Keane: The look of traditional hand-drawn animated movies is a look that was developed in the technical limitations of needing to paint on cells and clean up the original animation drawings — this no longer applies. The future of hand-drawn is wide open thanks to computer technology. Ironically, it is the computer that will set hand-drawn free to become its purest self.

I imagine an artist like Degas alive today. If you did not show him any traditional hand-drawn animated movies but instead showed him what is possible with moving pastel drawing in space and keeping the integrity of texture and color . . . what would he come up with? I feel we are at the beginning of something new in hand-drawn, similar to CG in the late ’80s.

Source: http://filmmakermagazine.com/88591-i-se ... film-duet/


Glen Keane talks about his next project and the new path he wants to take 2D animation.

Q: I’d read you were on the road to directing before you had to take a break—in your dream scenario, what’s your next move?

Glen Keane: I want to use all my skill sets. Drawing for me is essential, it’s my joy, it’s the way I express myself. I see drawing the lines you make as sort of a seismograph of your soul. I can express myself with that. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be CG. Tangled was all about trying to bring the warmth of drawing into CG. So that whole film had a hand drawn feeling to it. I think we just scratched the service, there’s a lot further you can go with that. So I’ve got an idea for a film that would do that. Potentially in CG, it could be done in hand drawn, but hand drawn needs to go in a new path.

Q: What path do you see hand drawn taking?

Glen Keane: When I see hand drawn I’m not thinking of it like 101 Dalmatians or The Little Mermaid, that’s a look that was created because of a technical limitation, having to paint on cells, and it’s beautiful, but we’re free to let hand drawn, thanks to the computer, become something much more personal and expressive, as if Degas was going to be animating, what would he do with this art form? Because now you no longer need the cells, you can texture pastel onto a CG dimension form, there’s a lot you can do and that’s fascinating to me. I want to take some of the ideas that we learned in Duet, this idea of visual poetry. I feel like Duet was a fresh new way of expressing story for an artist that was not linear, it was a double helix story. Instead of a straight line you had two spiral staircases and you could hop from one to the other. It was like a poem. And there was such freedom, there was no cuts, and I just felt freed from film language that was so structured, but can you speak without that kind of vocabulary? Yes. You can.

Source: http://www.thecredits.org/2015/04/legen ... gital-age/


Glen Keane also talks about how new technologies like VR can revolutionize 2D animation.

What's especially notable about Keane, whose videos showing him draw in VR have attracted huge viral audiences, is that he's an old-school artist who prefers the handmade over the computer-enhanced. Keane doesn't even especially like conventional CG animation -- he compared its appeal Saturday to that of a used-car salesman's pitch--and wants to continue producing the kind of rough-around-the-edges human animation that Disney once traded in regularly. Yet even this old-fashioned form, he believes, lends itself to VR.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/mo ... story.html

[Sotiris]

Here are some interesting hand-drawn features that need your help!

• The Dharma Bum (24 days left)
• The Tale of the Seas
• Window Horses
• Yellow Brick Road

[DancingCrab]

Song of the Sea is starting to get some love from critics. Hardcore animation fans are not the only ones missing hand drawn.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/song_of_the_sea_2014/

[Sotiris]

There's a new anime named Shirobako which is about the Japanese animation industry. In episode 6, the topic of 2D vs CG is taken on. It's understood that CG animation is growing rapidly and gaining ground in the industry. Here's an excerpt from a review.

The show enters a slightly more contemplative state when at the office Aoi has a little chat with Yano, the more senior production assistant. It’s a very important conversation, one where the real world show’s team slip in some important observations about the current state of anime. The amount of animation is increasing and with limited manpower and the ability to maintain quality control, along with the greater speed and efficiency of 3D animation... Yano basically says that the writing is on the wall. There will be more 3D. That does not mean traditional hand drawn animation will disappear, but it may be that “only people with talent and passion can survive.”

Source: http://www.fandompost.com/2014/11/14/sh ... me-review/


Director Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) maintains that 2D animation is much more suitable for human characters than CG animation.

While Hollywood commercial 3DCG animation tends to treat its anthropomorphic protagonists as digitally-rendered marionettes in virtual worlds, one of the most fascinating aspects of the photorealistic approach of Oshii’s anime is that while the characters are far richer in actual detail, they are still drawn and animated by traditional techniques. On the issue of realism and characterization, Oshii claims:

“If you want to pursue realism with 3D, you’ll soon bump against a wall. 3D may be suitable for puppet-like characters like Shrek, but if you try to render realistic characters with 3D, you inevitably step into an eerie territory, because the more the characters become real, the more they end up looking like corpses. No matter how many details you add, the final result will appear to you as a moving corpse, and nobody has so far succeeded in creating realistic 3D characters and getting rid of that peculiar, creepy feeling. It’s not a technical problem, it’s merely psychological. It could be a matter of personal aesthetics or cultural training, but as far as I’m concerned I don’t fancy the idea of converting characters into 3D, as long as 2D animation is clearly handier on an expressive level.”

Source: http://www.mangauk.com/post.php?p=mamor ... -interview


Director Isao Takahata talks about why he went with 2D animation for his latest film.

I chose the hand-drawing style because I want to give the drawings a life rather than just a mimetic style. Viewers actively take part in the movie through discovering the various drawings and find echoes.

Source: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=70687

The improvement of computer graphics over the past decade has changed the world of animation, helping to breathe new life into fantasy. [...] The real-life images, however, leave little room for imagination, Takahata says. “(Before computer graphics), animation was only flat and two-dimensional. It could never be truly real,” Takahata says. “But that was the point: By keeping everything flat, animation allows viewers to imagine what is behind the images.”

Source: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/201 ... d-reality/

Q: What changes in animation have you seen that most delight you? What has distressed you?

Isao Takahata: What has both delighted and distressed me has been the advance in computers. With advances in computers it has become possible to do things that we couldn’t do before. And this will no doubt continue in the future. Without computers, we could not have depicted the kind of expressions we were able to in “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.” This is a wonderful advance and, for me, something to delight in.

And yet, due to the advance in computers, there is a tendency to overly rely on them. This has led to diminishment in various modes of expression. This is most distressing for me.

Source: http://variety.com/2016/film/awards/stu ... 201696320/


Director Koji Yamamura prefers using 2D animation for his projects.

Q: Do you prefer the hand-drawn technique or the claymation?

Koji Yamamura: I started doing claymation and I really liked it at the moment but as doing them both I have come to realize that I prefer the hand-drawn technique more. I like the old traditional method and I am trying as much as I can not to involve the computer when animating.

Source: http://www.animationmagazine.eu/koji-ya ... own-style/

[Sotiris]

Michael Berardini, a 2D-turned-CG animator, recalls how he was forced to abandon his passion for 2D animation and venture into CG because of the lack of job opportunities in the industry.

When he just 13 years old, Michael Berardini saw a movie that would decide his career aspirations. It was Princess Mononoke, the 1997 Japanese animated feature film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, who is considered one of most groundbreaking and influential animators in history.

Watching the "fantastical" imagery, the Colorado teenager became inspired by what he saw, especially by the two-dimensional storytelling style. In high school, he would go on to write a 20-page thesis in which he boldly argued that 3-D animation was "just a fad" and that 2-D would make a comeback that would revitalize the movie business.

"It was 2-D animation forever," the now 27-year-old said recently, recalling his youthful conviction with a sly grin. He would, of course, prove to be very wrong. In 2009, after graduating from Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design with a bachelor's degree in 2-D animation, he found himself without any job opportunities. He eventually caved in to the marketplace and took a course in 3-D animation. In 2011, within three months of completing his studies, he received a job offer to work at Blue Sky Studios.

Source: http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/a ... 933473.php


Animator Emily Brooke-Davies shares her views on why children respond well to CG animation.

Q: It’s unusual that one-side of the animation world is engaging with this natural style of animation whereas a lot of animations that used to have these kind of feel when we were children have now transformed themselves into blocky, 3D, CGI style cartoons. What do you think of this style of animation?

Emily Brooke-Davies: It’s a weird one! They even seem to be doing that with very recent animations. For example, it wasn’t long ago that Bob the Builder was presented with stop-motion animation, but now he’s being given an incredibly smooth face! It’s very bizarre. I actually focused my dissertation on this topic and recent research claims that this generation of children respond to this style of animation well because they play a lot of video games, they use a lot more technology and are exposed to a lot more CG-created things. But I don’t necessarily buy that!

Source: http://blog.getawriggleon.com/2014/12/0 ... ke-davies/


Former President of Disney Feature Animation, Thomas Schumacher, admits that 2D animation is disappearing in the U.S.

Disney is also famous for those early animated movies, hand-drawn frame by frame. "That meant 24 drawings a second, if the camera was moving," Schumacher says. "The artists could spend eight hours on 1/24th of a second, then hand it to someone else, who went over the drawings again. Then on to someone else to paint it and someone else to photograph it. Snow White, for example, was so hand-drawn that her rouge was actually real rouge that artists dipped their finger in and put on her cheeks. For the most part, hand-drawn has now disappeared."

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/mus ... 22685.html


Barrett Esposito, the director of the Oscar-contending "Henry & Me", talks about why he went with 2D animation for his movie and expresses his thoughts on the medium.

Our character designer was Bill Schwab (“Frozen,” “Wreck-It Ralph,” “Tangled”), who is a real standout in the animation world. And our animation supervisor overseas was Tony Tulipano (“Monstories,” “Space Jam,” “Osmosis Jones”), who I had a tremendous relationship with. We bonded over the filmmaking process. Just working these things through from rough animation on. We wanted to create a realism to it. Part of the reason we went with hand-drawn was that there were so many iconic ballplayers in the movie and we wanted people to see these ballplayers’ likenesses and make the instant connection. We wanted it to feel nostalgic. We wanted t to feel organic and natural. And to me I think nothing does that better than hand-drawn. I had this great line producer, Gary McCarver, who was kind of my right-hand man going through all this, as well as my editor Joe Castellano, and we went through the process hand-in-hand. … There’s something about hand-drawn animation that’s just so magical. It’s so nostalgic and there are so many great people doing it. It’s a beautiful form of animation that I hope never dies.

Source: http://variety.com/2014/film/news/henry ... 201384545/


Lastly, I have a riddle for you. Can someone explain why Bob Iger feels that small movies like "Million Dollar Arm" who keep underperforming are still worth being made by Disney but doesn't feel the same way about 2D animation?

Million Dollar Arm” may have generated praise from critics, but the $25 million film, starring Jon Hamm as a baseball scout who recruits new players in India, earned just $38 million earlier this year. That film will be followed by another feel-good sports film in “McFarland, USA,” with Kevin Costner, in February.

“You can quickly lose $10 million on a $40 million movie these days,” Iger said. “We need to be even more careful about them today than a couple years ago.”

But the point of making those non-tentpoles at the studio is to produce what it calls “brand deposits.”

“We like making these kinds of movies,” Iger said. “When people think of Disney they think of a collection of experiences. We want them to have positive thoughts about (the brand),” and profitability isn’t always necessarily the end goal.

Source: http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/disney ... 201376230/

[unprincess]

^ I dont know, but Ive speculated b4 that there could have been more going on with Disney's anti 2d bias than just "2d doesnt make enough money". I think its also a combination of younger cgi animators feeling threatened by the older more experienced 2d guys as well as wanting to prove that cgi is an artform and sort of forming an "us vs them" menatlity where the CGI guys were eventually able to take control of the future of the studio(and thus providing steady future employmemt for themselves) so to speak...and this fear that Disney going back to 2d will jinx the good luck run theyve currently enjoyed, perhaps fearing audiences will again associate the studio with being that old out of touch company that makes lame kiddie films(like they were pre-Tangled)...

i too have heard about the "kids prefer cgi b/c of the video game culture they grow up in" argument. I suppose there could be some truth to that...

its interesting(though equally sad) to read how Japan is struggling with the same 2d vs CGI debate.

[Semaj]

Lastly, I have a riddle for you. Can someone explain why Bob Iger feels that small movies like "Million Dollar Arm" who keep underperforming are still worth being made by Disney but doesn't feel the same way about 2D animation?

Million Dollar Arm” may have generated praise from critics, but the $25 million film, starring Jon Hamm as a baseball scout who recruits new players in India, earned just $38 million earlier this year. That film will be followed by another feel-good sports film in “McFarland, USA,” with Kevin Costner, in February.

“You can quickly lose $10 million on a $40 million movie these days,” Iger said. “We need to be even more careful about them today than a couple years ago.”

But the point of making those non-tentpoles at the studio is to produce what it calls “brand deposits.”

“We like making these kinds of movies,” Iger said. “When people think of Disney they think of a collection of experiences. We want them to have positive thoughts about (the brand),” and profitability isn’t always necessarily the end goal.

Source: http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/disney ... 201376230/

It seemed for a while like Disney reduced their smaller-scale films for a good reason. Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day is the latest example; they utilize familiar celebs (Steve Carrell, Jennifer Garner), they launch new careers (Ed Oxenbould), they rake in a modest profit, and will likely become a regular on cable television. But it won't become one of those iconic classics that really distinguishes the studio beyond the Disney Channel demographic.

[Disney's Divinity]

I'd think continuing their hand-drawn legacy might've been more important than their crappy live-action fodder, but I guess not. Pathetic.

And I agree with the Ghost in a Shell director that the closer human characters get to looking real in 3D films, the more they look like dead bodies.

[estefan]

And I agree with the Ghost in a Shell director that the closer human characters get to looking real in 3D films, the more they look like dead bodies.

I think CG animators feel the same way, as we're seeing more experimentation with CG characters taking more influence from hand-drawn animation. I think this trend started with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and we're also seeing this with movies like Despicable Me, Peanuts, Wreck-It Ralph and whatever project Sony Animation has up its sleeve. Genndy Tartakovsky even agreed to direct Hotel Transylvania on the condition he make the characters look more cartoony (previous versions of the film had them look more naturalistic).

[DisneyJedi]

Lastly, I have a riddle for you. Can someone explain why Bob Iger feels that small movies like "Million Dollar Arm" who keep underperforming are still worth being made by Disney but doesn't feel the same way about 2D animation?

Million Dollar Arm” may have generated praise from critics, but the $25 million film, starring Jon Hamm as a baseball scout who recruits new players in India, earned just $38 million earlier this year. That film will be followed by another feel-good sports film in “McFarland, USA,” with Kevin Costner, in February.

“You can quickly lose $10 million on a $40 million movie these days,” Iger said. “We need to be even more careful about them today than a couple years ago.”

But the point of making those non-tentpoles at the studio is to produce what it calls “brand deposits.”

“We like making these kinds of movies,” Iger said. “When people think of Disney they think of a collection of experiences. We want them to have positive thoughts about (the brand),” and profitability isn’t always necessarily the end goal.

Source: http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/disney ... 201376230/

To put it bluntly, Iger is a hypocrite.

[PatrickvD]

The Princess and the Frog was more brand value than 10 Million Dollar Arms put together. Also, these idiotic sports movies have zero overseas appeal. No one outside the US gives a rat's ass about baseball. Whereas the characters from hand drawn animated features have long lasting merchandise potential.

Frog cost $60 million to make (the $105 million budget was bogus) and made almost 5 times this from worldwide Box Office. Excluding home video and merchandise. It wasn't a smash, but Iger's reasoning for making movies like McFarland and Million Dollar Arm is just nuts.

[PatrickvD]

The Princess and the Frog was more brand value than 10 Million Dollar Arms put together. Also, these idiotic sports movies have zero overseas appeal. No one outside the US gives a rat's ass about baseball. Whereas the characters from hand drawn animated features have long lasting merchandise potential.

Frog cost $60 million to make (the $105 million budget was bogus) and made almost 5 times this from worldwide Box Office. Excluding home video and merchandise. It wasn't a smash, but Iger's reasoning for making movies like McFarland and Million Dollar Arm is just nuts.

[Lady Cluck]

Yeah, Disney is rolling in the dough more than ever with the Marvel takeover and their animated films returning to success.

Major hits from the last two years:

Iron Man 3 - $409,013,994
Frozen - $400,738,009
Guardians of the Galaxy - $332,965,525
Monsters University - $268,492,764
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - $259,766,572
Maleficent - $241,410,378
Oz: The Great and Powerful - $234,911,825
Big Hero 6 - $211,268,000 (and counting)
Thor: The Dark World - $206,362,140

That's over $2.5 billion in DOMESTIC grosses only. Add a few billion for worldwide. Next year The Avengers 2 could very well make over $700 million domestically. Do they really need to produce utter shit over investing in worthwhile passion projects?

[Super Aurora]

The Princess and the Frog was more brand value than 10 Million Dollar Arms put together. Also, these idiotic sports movies have zero overseas appeal. No one outside the US gives a rat's ass about baseball. Whereas the characters from hand drawn animated features have long lasting merchandise potential.

Japan and Latin Americans do.