Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney

[DisneyJedi]

After reading the article about Mark Henn, I can’t help but believe if the OG 9 Old Men got the same level of disrespect he’s been getting from the big wigs…

Well…

I don’t know if the animation studio would still be standing.

[Jules]

Sorry but I don't believe that. I don't at all. I just don't. Because people like Grace Randolph, iCritic, Skyler Shuler, etc, they've all heard, from friends they know, that Tiana IS HAND-DRAWN ANIMATED, even Grace when she said she heard 2025 for Tiana's release because they want more time on getting its hand-drawn animated style right.

So, it doesn't sound that ambiguous to me, when someone like me has looked more into this than you have.

Do you even realise how ridiculous your hard-headedness is!?

Why do you give so much importance to gossipers like Grance Randolph or Skyler Shuler, whoever the f*ck they are!? Why would they be so important as to know every little detail that goes on an WDAS? Do they transfigure into flies and cockroaches and roam the halls of the animation studio during the day? Are they really more dependable sources of information to you than FUCKING MARK HENN!?

Oh wait ... Grace and Skyler heard it from their friends?

So you're believing second-hand information peddled to you by third-rate entertainment reporters who probably only care for how many clicks their videos get?

But you won't believe Mark Henn? Because to believe Mark Henn may cause your entire world to crumble, no?

Get real, man. Your naivete may be cute at first, but now it is starting to get on everybody's nerves. I am not joking.

[Mooky]

Thanks for a hearty laugh Jules, I needed it!

Live footage of Grace Randolph on a lunch break in the WDAS cafeteria after collecting top secret info all morning:

[Farerb]

Skyler Shuler said this shot from Aliens was a leak from The Little Mermaid:



It's time people stopped believing him, I honestly don't remember when was the last time he was right about anything (unless he took it from another source).

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

Skyler Shuler said this shot from Aliens was a leak from The Little Mermaid:



It's time people stopped believing him, I honestly don't remember when was the last time he was right about anything (unless he took it from another source).

Dude. It was a joke post.

Sorry but I don't believe that. I don't at all. I just don't. Because people like Grace Randolph, iCritic, Skyler Shuler, etc, they've all heard, from friends they know, that Tiana IS HAND-DRAWN ANIMATED, even Grace when she said she heard 2025 for Tiana's release because they want more time on getting its hand-drawn animated style right.

So, it doesn't sound that ambiguous to me, when someone like me has looked more into this than you have.

Do you even realise how ridiculous your hard-headedness is!?

Why do you give so much importance to gossipers like Grance Randolph or Skyler Shuler, whoever the f*ck they are!? Why would they be so important as to know every little detail that goes on an WDAS? Do they transfigure into flies and cockroaches and roam the halls of the animation studio during the day? Are they really more dependable sources of information to you than FUCKING MARK HENN!?

Oh wait ... Grace and Skyler heard it from their friends?

So you're believing second-hand information peddled to you by third-rate entertainment reporters who probably only care for how many clicks their videos get?

But you won't believe Mark Henn? Because to believe Mark Henn may cause your entire world to crumble, no?

Get real, man. Your naivete may be cute at first, but now it is starting to get on everybody's nerves. I am not joking.

Ok. First of all, despite what you think about Grace Randolph and her opinions, she was correct in hearing that Moana, Zootopia, Tiana, and Zootopia would get Disney+ series and that Chris Pine would voice the villain of Wish. So, that's why I would give HER the benefit of the doubt that what she said about Tiana MIGHT be true.

Second, if you wanna doubt Skyler Shuler, fine, but at least when it comes to iCritic, I believe at least HE might be on the nose with what he's heard about Tiana really being hand-drawn, if he claimed to me in his DMs that he knows that because he has heard from friends working on it.

And third, with all due respect to Mark Henn, while he might be right that there are no 2D projects in the pipeline, I feel he's saying that more in line with no hand-drawn movies coming, more than like shorts or DIsney+ series, since there are maybe only enough for one series, and to me, despite what he's saying, if the rumors JTurner heard were true that Mark Henn at least coached animators at WDAS Vancouver (who also worked on Once Upon A Studio) to get the hand-drawn animation on Tiana right (which might be why it was delayed not one, not two, but three times already), maybe while he liked doing that, he didn't find it meaningful enough to continue because it may have been, to him, a waste of time to coach animators of a Disney+ series who's viewership may be up in the air, compared to a film that could be made for the big screen.

So, with all due respect, Jules that's why I'm not giving up on the reports, rumors, belief, hope, and possibility that it is indeed true that Tiana will be hand-drawn animated. I can't, for the sake of my sanity and my unrelenting endgame to bring back that style at Disney on a bigger scale down the line, no matter how long it may take,

And until I see evidence, physical, on-screen evidence with my own two eyes that it won't be that way, for now, I'll continue to believe it will be that way.

For... now. At least.

[Kyle]

I have a feeling it'll be hand drawn...ish. But it might not be the real deal. Like, if you saw the lion guard you could be fooled into thinking it was hand drawn, but I think they use a fancy rig or something, right? Maybe its something like that?

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

I have a feeling it'll be hand drawn...ish. But it might not be the real deal. Like, if you saw the lion guard you could be fooled into thinking it was hand drawn, but I think they use a fancy rig or something, right? Maybe its something like that?

Well, this summer, we’ll hopefully find out, either at Annecy in June or D23 in August.

I hope to god it’s hand-drawn like the OG film was and I’ll be expecting Iger, Jennifer Lee, and Joyce Sherri to announce that in front of 18,000 people at D23 in August.

If not, the disappointment they’ll face from me and many others will be most immeasurable.

So, don’t disappoint me, Iger, as this is my last vacation I plan to take EVER, given the expenses and everything.

If you do, if I happen to bump into you at Disneyland randomly, you and I are gonna have a real awkward talk (on your part), and I can’t envy you being please to be put in this position if you disappoint many folks

[Jules]

Live footage of Grace Randolph on a lunch break in the WDAS cafeteria after collecting top secret info all morning:

I'm impressed the WDAS cafeteria caters to cockroaches!

So, don’t disappoint me, Iger, as this is my last vacation I plan to take EVER, given the expenses and everything.

If you do, if I happen to bump into you at Disneyland randomly, you and I are gonna have a real awkward talk (on your part), and I can’t envy you being please to be put in this position if you disappoint many folks

OK, now I'm getting visions of Iger strolling around DisneyLand, exchanging congenial remarks with the "plebs" who visit. This follows his confirmation a week earlier that the Tiana animated series will be executed in cel-shaded CG.

Suddenly he spots D23ExpoVisitor25 in the crowd.

Iger's blood runs cold. "Shit! It's that insufferably-demanding squirt from DVDizzy! I cannot show my face to that guy. He'll corner me and make me apologise for failing to nurture the hand-drawn animated tradition at WDAS. My God it will be awkward."

Iger slinks away, but D23ExpoVisitor25 spots him in the nick of time. And so begins the Great DisneyLand CEO Chase of 2025, in which Bob Iger spends the next five hours playing cat-and-mouse with D23EV25. He is routinely followed by screams of "You and your lackeys gave clearly cryptic hints that Tiana would be hand-drawn. But you lied, you BASTARD!" as well as "You betrayed Grace Randolph, Skyler Shuler and iCritic with your lies! Now they are no longer credible and only accumulate 20,000 views per YouTube video! You ruined their careers you asshole!" Not to mention the final, blood-curdling remark of "I don't know who you think you are, but I will find you. I will find you, and I will force-feed you every vintage Disney animation cel I procure from the Animation Research Library. How will I get them? I've got people on the inside to do my bidding. I can't wait to shove the Sleeping Beauty cels down your throat! Those beasts were made for 70mm, you know!." (To be fair, it dawns on D23EV25 that the forced ingestion of cellulose acetate sheets is not the most practical means of protest, so he shouts at Iger that, alternatively, he may simply ask someone to "throw the multi-plane camera at the CEO.")

For the record, this time I am joking D23ExpoVisitor25.

But you need to do something about your damn username! From this point on I am either calling you Fluffy, Horny or Pesky. All are easier to type. Choose the one you like best.

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

Live footage of Grace Randolph on a lunch break in the WDAS cafeteria after collecting top secret info all morning:

I'm impressed the WDAS cafeteria caters to cockroaches!

So, don’t disappoint me, Iger, as this is my last vacation I plan to take EVER, given the expenses and everything.

If you do, if I happen to bump into you at Disneyland randomly, you and I are gonna have a real awkward talk (on your part), and I can’t envy you being please to be put in this position if you disappoint many folks

OK, now I'm getting visions of Iger strolling around DisneyLand, exchanging congenial remarks with the "plebs" who visit. This follows his confirmation a week earlier that the Tiana animated series will be executed in cel-shaded CG.

Suddenly he spots D23ExpoVisitor25 in the crowd.

Iger's blood runs cold. "Shit! It's that insufferably-demanding squirt from DVDizzy! I cannot show my face to that guy. He'll corner me and make me apologise for failing to nurture the hand-drawn animated tradition at WDAS. My God it will be awkward."

Iger slinks away, but D23ExpoVisitor25 spots him in the nick of time. And so begins the Great DisneyLand CEO Chase of 2025, in which Bob Iger spends the next five hours playing cat-and-mouse with D23EV25. He is routinely followed by screams of "You and your lackeys gave clearly cryptic hints that Tiana would be hand-drawn. But you lied, you BASTARD!" as well as "You betrayed Grace Randolph, Skyler Shuler and iCritic with your lies! Now they are no longer credible and only accumulate 20,000 views per YouTube video! You ruined their careers you asshole!" Not to mention the final, blood-curdling remark of "I don't know who you think you are, but I will find you. I will find you, and I will force-feed you every vintage Disney animation cel I procure from the Animation Research Library. How will I get them? I've got people on the inside to do my bidding. I can't wait to shove the Sleeping Beauty cels down your throat! Those beasts were made for 70mm, you know!." (To be fair, it dawns on D23EV25 that the forced ingestion of cellulose acetate sheets is not the most practical means of protest, so he shouts at Iger that, alternatively, he may simply ask someone to "throw the multi-plane camera at the CEO.")

For the record, this time I am joking D23ExpoVisitor25.

But you need to do something about your damn username! From this point on I am either calling you Fluffy, Horny or Pesky. All are easier to type. Choose the one you like best.

I'll go with Fluffy.

[Jules]

I'll go with Fluffy.

Aw, I was hoping you'd go for 'Horny.'

'Fluffy' it is!

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

https://comicbook.com/movies/news/disne ... kVkwCcrkkE

[Kyle]

Anyone want a Disney animation desk, only 8k. lol

https://www.ebay.com/itm/176183387218?h ... SwIgNla4kW
I wish I could afford it. I technically could, although its local pickup only so I couldn't even if I could justify it.

Wouldn't that be crazy though if this was mark henn's though?

[Sotiris]

2D commercial for the Disney Treasure cruise ship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3CurQ2altA

[friendoftheotherside]

Even though this news is about Inside Out 2, I think it’s better suited in this thread, since the sequel will feature a hand-drawn character called Bloofy.



Source: https://pixarpost.com/2024/04/inside-ou ... -film.html

Although Pixar has periodically dabbled in 2D (most recently with its first original series, “Win or Lose”), this marks the first time that 2D characters have appeared in a CG feature. Inside Riley’s vault of secrets, Joy and the other emotions encounter Bloofy and Pouchy from the pre-school show “Bloofy’s House.” Bloofy is a “Blue’s Clues”-like dog and Pouchy is the pouch he wears with a personality all of his own and contains items (such as dynamite) to help the emotions get out of tough situations.

Fortunately, Pixar was able to utilize its “Win or Lose” 2D pipeline to make modest-looking hand-drawn characters with simple poses. “We thought it would be awesome to do a 2D character and we have a lot of really great 2D animators,” Mann said. “So we learned a lot from the shows that have actually been doing that. Coming up with a look of how does that character fit into the 3D world was really fun.”

Source: https://www.indiewire.com/features/anim ... 234974045/

Also, in the trailer, there is a shot of the brain workers (I don’t know what they’re really called) drawing in a desk like the one Kyle shared.

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

So, Bloofy is basically Blue from Blue’s Clues and the Disney character Goofy combined…

Cool.

[friendoftheotherside]

Not to be all doom and gloom, but were they just lying about bringing back (or interest in bringing back) hand-drawn as more full-scale or whatever and training new animators on the medium?

In all honesty, I don’t believe they were lying about resurrecting hand drawn animation at WDAS. I truly believe that the trainee program was supposed to lead to bigger projects with the medium, including Tiana. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. But so many things have changed in the company in the last couple of years. Bob Chapek was fired in the blink of an eye. And Bob Iger came back with a bulldozer, firing thousands of people, shutting down studios (like the one Lucasfilm had in Singapore), purging a lot of titles from streaming, cancelling a bunch of tv shows, shelving projects, changing release strategies…

Going on a little tangent here, what happened to Suzi Yoonessi’s movie? Until late last year, the movie was coming this November. And suddenly, Moana: The Series became Moana 2 and is being released in its place. I’m pretty sure Iger cancelled that movie over the holidays. If there isn't an announcement in the next D23, it’s probably more than dead

Anyhow, in my opinion, Mark Henn was being very honest in that interview. And I think that people working at WDAS really want to make bigger projects with hand drawn animation. They’ve been wanting for a long time, and there’s always a lame executive to stop them. So within the currently state of the Disney Co. and how the last 2D movies have performed in the 2000s, I don’t believe Iger would let WDAS expand to work with hand drawn animation any time soon.

For me, executives like John Lasseter and Bob Iger transformed WDAS from a groundbreaking studio into a “go with the flow” kind of studio. If it wasn’t for Lasseter, WDAS would’ve started playing with stylized CG many years ago and delivered more visually appealing movies than we had in the last decade. And hand-drawn animation probably wouldn’t be dead in the studio. So many talented artists left because of his regime.

Well that's depressing.

And I dont get the whole "too expensive to have a studio within a studio" thing. Disney is like, the biggest company in the world, I dont buy that they cant afford it. Also, couldn't the majority of the pipeline just be done by their 3d team anyway? so really you just need to add animation desks for those who still use paper, and the rest probably already use cintiqs.

I also don’t get that excuse. It’s very lame. But in the end, all comes down to money. If Disney Co. has money to pay bonuses to Iger (to buy bigger yachts), they have money for a small studio within a studio! Why would he spend money investing in a hand drawn studio and growing or maintaining talent, when he can buy another company for his collection? Alas, which hand drawn animated movies crossed 1 billion at the box office in the 2000s and 2010s? None. And how many have underperformed? Basically all of them! (Who would thought that releasing Winnie the Pooh against one of the biggest sagas was a bad idea, huh?)

Bob Iger would rather keep making sequels to infinity and beyond than to take a creative risk. To me, he’s an enemy of the arts (and everyone saw his true colors at the strikes last year) and an enemy of Walt’s legacy. It would really be so bad to produce and release smaller hand drawn movies every couple of years? Instead, we’ll get Moana 2, Zootopia 2, Frozen 3 & 4 and who knows what else with 200 million budgets and putting even more pressure on its crews to delivery more than 1 billion at the box office.

Lately, one of my biggest concerns about the company is how long WDAS Vancouver is going to last. Pixar Canada didn’t last very long, and I suspect that Iger may be coming for that studio soon. If Disney+ isn’t a priority anymore and producing Disney+ Originals is now frowned upon, why would they keep that studio, which was solely created for that reason?

Sorry for replying to old comments, but I was reading this thread and needed to vent lol

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

If Disney+ is so frowned upon, how come there are still projects in the works being made for Disney+, even unannounced ones like Wonder-Man and Vision Quest over at Marvel Studios, that Inside Out series at Pixar, etc.?

Also, if WDAS Vancouver was in danger of shutting down, they wouldn’t have gone from 90 employees to 400 employees, some of which might be hand-drawn artists who are still working on Tiana after their work with Once Upon A Studio was training for it. So hand-drawn animation is NOT dead, more like… in a coma or zombified until it is able to make a breakthrough in coming back on a bigger scale.

And if Bob Iger was afraid of taking creative risks, over at Pixar at least, he wouldn’t have let them greenlight that alleged film musical about ducks called “Ducks.”

Also, I doubt Suzi Yoonessi’s movie is cancelled since she’s still part of Disney Animation’s creativity team. More like it’s been delayed for a few years until they feel comfortable making original movies over at WDAS again if people begin wanting more of them.

And you may not like Iger, but he’s all that the company has to get themselves out of the rut that he and Chapek left them in, no matter how you feel about him and his true colors that came out of the strikes. So, you might as well have to stomach and get used to him until they find a more competent leader until the end of his term in 2026. That leader could be an ex-leader of Nintendo, but even that’s easier said than done unless you actually make effort to make it happen.

[reee9948]

Disney has an open animator position for their Vancouver studio and they are looking for all kind of animator including hand drawns animators. Maybe there is a possibility that this studio was created to make 2d project, but that may be a stretch because they've always had a few 2d animators at their disposal for commercial and shorts so I don't know.

https://jobs.disneycareers.com/job/vanc ... 2653195632

[Kyle]

If Disney+ is so frowned upon, how come there are still projects in the works being made for Disney+, even unannounced ones like Wonder-Man and Vision Quest over at Marvel Studios, that Inside Out series at Pixar, etc.

Because they are all in on it, traditional cable is a dead end.

Lately, one of my biggest concerns about the company is how long WDAS Vancouver is going to last. Pixar Canada didn’t last very long, and I suspect that Iger may be coming for that studio soon. If Disney+ isn’t a priority anymore and producing Disney+ Originals is now frowned upon, why would they keep that studio, which was solely created for that reason

If I recall, Pixar Canada was opened solely because of tax benefits. Then that law changed, nullifying the whole thing, so they closed up shop. I have a feeling the same might happen here.

[DisneyJedi]

I think what really bugs me about them not doing more grand scale hand drawn films or anything is that the most their hand drawn animators (including veterans) have allegedly done for work was doing base animation for skeletons or whatever for their CG animated movies or just doing commercials. To me, I can't help but consider that as a waste of great talent or the big wigs not letting them stretch their wings. And to add something else, from any pencil tests I've seen of Frozen, Wreck-It Ralph, Moana and even Encanto, they could have easily been full-blown hand-drawn animated films. They just aren’t for whatever reason using the most pinheaded excuses not to. "Oh, because of the ice landscape" or "The ocean is easier to animate in CGI."

Disney, you animated the ocean in a hand-drawn movie in the 80s called The Little Mermaid. What makes you think you can't do that nearly thirty years later??