Disney Abandons hand drawn animation

[cokebabies]

In the end if you don't mind the finished product I don't see the problem really, ther then wanting things to be dne the way they were before.

I agree with a lot of what you both are saying.

If it has to be a completely black and white issue, the end result is what matters. If I love Beauty and the Beast, and it's hand drawn? Awesome. If I love Up and it's CG? Awesome. What matters most is the overall experience.

That said, even if I love the story and everything about the next dozen Disney and / or Pixar movies, and they are all CG... I'll feel like I'm missing something. It's a matter of looking back while looking forward. Is CG a logical progression? Sure. But that doesn't mean I want traditional animation to go away. Because I have such an attachment to it, from spending so much of my life with it.

 

[Spidey976]

I agree with a lot of what you both are saying.

If it has to be a completely black and white issue, the end result is what matters. If I love Beauty and the Beast, and it's hand drawn? Awesome. If I love Up and it's CG? Awesome. What matters most is the overall experience.

That said, even if I love the story and everything about the next dozen Disney and / or Pixar movies, and they are all CG... I'll feel like I'm missing something. It's a matter of looking back while looking forward. Is CG a logical progression? Sure. But that doesn't mean I want traditional animation to go away. Because I have such an attachment to it, from spending so much of my life with it.

I totally agree, but the problem is we have the attachment to the older ways, and the young kids don't, and while I love Disney animation I do realize it is aimed primarily at kids. To our kids computers, Igadgets, he'll even just how they bring the movies home is SO interconnected with technology that to them I am sure it just seems logical that computers help make their movies. My youngest could draw his name on my iPad before he could pick up a pencil.

In the end I will always have that love of classic animation from watching the Wonderful World f Disne and seeing the production tours, or from watch Glen Keane talk about animating the final transformation scene in Beauty and the Beast. However, though I will try to teach them a little, my kids won't have that same love, and that is okay because eventually like everything else the will inherit their own memories and attachments.

 

[Coheteboy]

Okay... So ... And I am not trying to be an argumentative *** here, but... If your problem isn't with the END product, but the process, then I hate to say it I am having some difficulty understanding the "problem of With CG".

Now don't get me wrong, as a pencil and paper artist for he last 30 years, I am a HUGE fan of seeing WIP pieces and seeing the whole process when it comes to making a piece of art. Whether it be Canale making a statue, Loston Wallace doing a page of work (if you don't know who Loston is you should look him up he rocks), or a CG trained artist working with a wire frame, I LOVE to see it all. Now I won't lie I LOVE those old drawing table how to videos, BUT with everything the tools change. It is foolish to thnk that just because something was ALWAYS dne me way it can't evolve. Isn't that he nature of innovation. If it want places like this wouldn't exist.

Should a drafts man have to use markers, rulers, and stickers to draw out a floor plan, or should he be able to use AutoCAD to do the same amount of work in less then a 1/4 of the time, and work that can be edited and tweaked with far more ease.

The simple thing of it is tools and technology changes and evolves, and while I miss watching animators go to town with paper and pencil, I won't be little the achievements put forth by animators trained to make computer generated images. Their ability to achieve beauty, performance, and feeling is quickly becoming a match for those who came before them. Hell, if am not mistaken many of them are being coached and trained by the guys who did the movies we loved during the Renasance. IMHO Tangled was the Disney CG animators taking up the torch of those who had come before, and they aren't the only ones who have.

In the end if you don't mind the finished product I don't see the problem really, other then wanting things to be dne the way they were before.

I don't hate CG. When I posted "the problem with CG...", it's mostly a critical rant that CG's pipeline of showing results if far more slower than traditional hand drawn animation. That was it!

There's a lot of people here who posted that they hate CG. I'm not one of them.



But in response to your comment, that if I don't mind the end result then there is no problem.. I do have a problem with that way of thinking.

The problem is that if this were true, and it's all about the end result, then hand drawn animation would still exist in its original glory at Disney! I know you love hand drawn animation. I love it too. But what's scary is for people to think that it's interchangeable with CG. It's a different style entirely just the same that stop motion is different.

It's not about "i miss the good old days". I miss seeing the progression of true talent that came out of a person who was drawing since they were a child. People with real talent won't be able to stretch their legs and "go to town", like you said.

Not to belittle all my friends who work in CG, and they do love animation, but... they can't really draw. Now it's a software program that you can learn at any school that has a digital arts department. They all go from studio to studio because that's what happens in CG.


What I'm saying is that I don't hate CG, but I hate that Disney is abandoning 2D animation for now and the foreseeable future.

 

[scorpio_2049]

I really dislike most of the CGI movies that have been made. It seems like they entered the scene with some good movies like Toy Story but in just a few years became movies made for parents to play in the car so they don't have to talk to their kids while they drive 15 minutes to buy groceries. I'm so sick of the talking-animals-run-amok-in-X-location-hijinks-ensue movies. Then there's the whole thing about the studios copying each other ie. Ants/Bugs Life, the penguin movies, etc. The character design of some of the characters look stupid in so many of the CGI movies too. There are a few gems though. Tangled was a beautiful movies but I would have liked to have seen it drawn in 2D. When I watched that Winnie the Pooh trailer it really made me miss how Disney made yearly 2D animated movies. There are a few 2D movies that are dull but the majority of them have the elements that make movies awesome and magical. For the most part 3D movies just have little soul.

 

[Kamandi]

Disney's classic animation was special. They were one of the very few shops in the world working at that level of craftsmanship. You can't go to school for this stuff. It's decades of experiance passed from one staff of artists to another. All of that is lost.

There's been some very good CG animation, but it's a far less exclusive skill. There's no shortage of good looking CG cartoons that are unwatchable because the acting, story, and other elements didn't hold up.

 

[Coheteboy]

Disney's classic animation was special. They were one of the very few shops in the world working at that level of craftsmanship. You can't go to school for this stuff. It's decades of experiance passed from one staff of artists to another. All of that is lost.

That's the biggest reason that makes me sad. The earlier statements about "it's all about the end result" grinds my gears. When you don't have a studio like Disney leading the way, that's one career option that truly great artists can no longer strive for.

No more Glen Keane or Andreas Deja to blow us away with their craft. CG is always beautiful but it never moves me in a way that hand drawn animation could.

It's like filming practical vs CG visual effects. There's a bit of heart or something lost in the process.

 

[occulum]

same ol belly-aching due to the progress of technology.
The classic painters hated photography too and how you could capture an image with the "mere push of a button".

The biggest issue is how people hold to heart how things were done back when they seemed "magical" in their childhood. They feel like they're losing that spark now when techniques are abandoned or they progress.
Its just technology, techniques and the world around you moving forward while you're trying so hard to stand still...

 

[karamazov80]

same ol belly-aching due to the progress of technology.
The classic painters hated photography too and how you could capture an image with the "mere push of a button".

The biggest issue is how people hold to heart how things were done back when they seemed "magical" in their childhood. They feel like they're losing that spark now when techniques are abandoned or they progress.
Its just technology, techniques and the world around you moving forward while you're trying so hard to stand still...

Silence you!

 

[occulum]

... ok ....

 

[scorpio_2049]

This isn't a matter of the progress of technology. Yes it has progressed but I think the shift from 2D to CGI movies also shifted the plot, characters, attitude, etc. of the movies and it really dumbed them down. There's also some 2D animation that do the same thing though. I don't mind CGI in the style of 2D (even though there's a certain charm to actual hand drawn animation).

Thinking about this while I'm writing it, I may have a problem with the overuse of comic relief. That may be the point I'm trying to make.

 

[occulum]

This isn't a matter of the progress of technology. Yes it has progressed but I think the shift from 2D to CGI movies also shifted the plot, characters, attitude, etc. of the movies and it really dumbed them down.

this has nothing to do with animation technology itself, but rather a shift to conform to the ADD world our children are now being raised in. Most children are not given environments anymore where they can learn to focus and concentrate. Its nonstop media bombardment so to keep kid's attention they have to fill them up with short attention span content.

 

[scorpio_2049]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It isn't CGI that made movies lame but it seems like it was around the time when movies were shifting from 2D to CG that kids movies turned into a character saying "monkey butt" and the audience of kids bouncing out of their chairs laughing because he said a random phrase that had nothing to do with anything. Versus something like, "PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS! Itty bitty livingspace."

 

[Coheteboy]

same ol belly-aching due to the progress of technology.
The classic painters hated photography too and how you could capture an image with the "mere push of a button".

The biggest issue is how people hold to heart how things were done back when they seemed "magical" in their childhood. They feel like they're losing that spark now when techniques are abandoned or they progress.
Its just technology, techniques and the world around you moving forward while you're trying so hard to stand still...

No way. I'm totally fine with the advancement of technology but CG isn't originally meant to replace hand drawn. It doesn't give you the same effect. You might have the exact same story or actors or pacing... but it will have a completely different visual feel.

I'm sure one could argue that the same holds true when talking about matte painting vs CGI, but in that scenario, both are trying to achieve the same effect. The previous matte painting is actually more limiting so of course that method can go away without much of a whimper.

Hand drawn art is not the same as CG art.



It would be interesting for someone to do Toy Story completely with hand drawn techniques... or someone to do a CG Dumbo... and just see if they're that interchangeable as some as you presume.

I for one prefer my 2D flat Scooby Doo, Chipmunks, Garfield, and Smurfs over the CG garbage. And I'm not even talking about the quality of those films... just the charm of it.

 

[Coheteboy]

p.s. Painters did hate photography because they lost jobs. But painters were basically trying to do what photography was able to do but way slower and less accurate.

But even still... painting isn't obsolete because of photography. It's still a viable art form that is used in all forms of animated filmmaking, now mostly for conceptual and previsualization.


If CG was to replace anything, it would be claymation because the methods are so similar and they can create the same look and feel.

Hand drawn art is just so different. I couldn't imagine all my Sunday comic strips replaced with CG models neither. Nor would I want CG renderings in all of my Marvel comic books. There's something beautifully amazing about what pure God-given talent can achieve. This isn't nostalgia. It's art. It's timeless. On that note, I'm not opposed to digital colors because it is indeed better.


But back to the painters vs phtoographers, Drew Struzan's movie posters beat out all photoshop posters anytime anyplace. They're not even close.

 

[Kamandi]

In some ways Disney rigged the deck against their own ink and paint shop. When you look at Brother Bear, Princess and the Frog, and Winnie the Pooh you know they weren't going to be huge.

The most promising traditional animated film they had going was Rapunzel. Disney decided to shelve all the 2d and shift production to 3d. Tangled was a big hit for the studio, no credit given to the prior work done by the 2d staff.

 

[Coheteboy]

Well, here's the more or less official news from one of the old animators..

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/...heir-hand-drawn-animation-division-81043.html


Sad indeed.

 

[crows]

Well, here's the more or less official news from one of the old animators..

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/...heir-hand-drawn-animation-division-81043.html


Sad indeed.

makes me wonder what will they do now? look for work with other companies?

 

[Coheteboy]

makes me wonder what will they do now? look for work with other companies?

I think just more CG movies until someone brightens up and realizes that people honestly love hand drawn animation.


Maybe the hand drawn artists will start making their own movies. Here's hoping.

 

[cokebabies]

I watched Little Mermaid again this weekend. I put it on while waiting for something to finish transferring to my media box, then just decided, "I'm just going to watch the whole thing."

What an awesome movie.

 

[Coheteboy]

Watching this video, I think it's all the evidence one could need/want in support of hand drawn animation. The CG scenes in contrast are incredibly jarring and don't feel very natural. They look great when you watch them by themselves but definitely aren't as organic as an artist's personal touch on a character.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f__SF96ORFE&feature=share[/ame]