The demise of hand-drawn animation

"...but nobody seems to mention the fact that Pixar was simply making better movies than its parent company..."

Pixar isn't owned by Disney.

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And look at Miziyaki films... Spirited Away was amazing, as are all of his films. Hand-drawn animation isn't dead, just the talented people behind it are not doing it...

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" "...but nobody seems to mention the fact that Pixar was simply making better movies than its parent company..."

Pixar isn't owned by Disney."

But Pixar WAS owned by Disney when Disney fired all it's animators.

I love 2D animation. It has a quality that 3D doesn't. They're both great formats, and I don't see why people are saying 2D is dying. It shouldn't, and I think the company that embraces both will be the company that stays well ahead of the competition.

I miss the days of Disney 2D animation.

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Sorry, Chris, you are incorrect.

From Pixar.com
"In May 1991, Pixar entered into the Feature Film Agreement with Walt Disney Pictures for the development and production of up to three computer animated feature films to be marketed and distributed by Disney. It was pursuant to the Feature Film Agreement that Toy Story was developed, produced, and distributed. In February 1997, Pixar entered into the Co-Production Agreement (which superseded the Feature Film Agreement) with Disney pursuant to which we, on an exclusive basis, agreed to produce five original computer-animated feature-length theatrical motion pictures for distribution by Disney. Pixar and Disney agreed to co-finance the production costs of the Picture, co-own the Picture, co-brand the Picture, and share equally in the profits of each Picture and any related merchandise as well as other ancillary products, after recovery of all marketing and distribution costs, a distribution fee paid to Disney, and other fees and costs, such as participations to talent and the like. The first four original Pictures under the Co-Production Agreement were A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles, which were released in November 1998, November 2001, May 2003, and November 2004, respectively. Toy Story 2, the theatrical sequel to Toy Story, was released in November 1999, and is also governed by the Co-Production Agreement although it does not count towards the five original Pictures. We are currently in various stages of production on the remaining Picture under the Co-Production Agreement, Cars (June 9, 2006)."

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i've struggled with articulating why i love hand drawn and painted animation so much more than CGI (which i believe is often quite wonderful, but just not nearly so wonderful as the more traditional animation). part of my struggle is that i don't want to be, or seem to be, a luddite with a massive reaction-formation against change.

things change, styles change, we go from black and white to color film and we add sound. these things are granted and understood to be important for the progress of the medium. this is the case with CGI's advent -- it's opened up so much space for alternate forms of creativity in the animation realm.

but there's something about traditional techniques of animation production. there's the phenomenal aspect of it -- the fact that the image one sees is the product (at its most basic unit, the single cel) of a hand connected to a person actually painting the image on celuloid. i enjoy collecting anime cels and there's something wonderful about turning a cel over and seeing the actual strokes, the layers of paint that went into creating just that single cel (this is not to glorify the life of your average in-betweener at the local animation sweat shop, but it's simply to describe the fact that the object -- the cel -- is marked by material history. it's a situated object in that respect . . . and i love that fact about traditional animation. each cel is "worked," if i can use that term in this context.)

and there's also the fact (equally as wonderful, i think) that tradional animation is not so deeply embedded within what i would call the regime of perfect simulation, a hard-coded logic that is best expressed in the "wonder" we're all told we should (indeed must) feel about how 3 dimensional the Chicken Little looks, how perfectly "life-like" a character's hair moves in the Final Fantasy movie, how (perversely enough) the style in the recent Appleseed so closely "conforms" to the stylistics of hand-painted anime. traditional animation, by its very nature and its mode of production, avoids this cult-like idealization of perfect simulation. i think there's something in that avoidance that is special and good.

cel

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It interesting how most articles seem to overlook the obvious quality gap between Disney's latest and Pixar's greatest films. It's as if market analysts can only factor in two things when; Box-Office Teturn and Type of Animation.

The suits at Disney may be equally confused, but I think they're probably being somewhat realistic about the shortcomings of their recent flops. Unfortunately, rather than improving the strength of their stories, they're opting for a quantity over-quality approach; taking advantage of 3D faster and cheaper production schedule.

Having worked as as animator at several 2D and 3D studios, I know how expensive and time-consuming each process is, and Disney should be able to make four or five crummy 3D films for the cost of one crummy 2D film. Ironically, I think under the deluge of 3D movies from Dreamworks, Blue Sky, and other up-and-comers, some finely-crafted 2D masterpieces might be the only thing that would have kept Disney's reputation as a cultureal leader, if not a market leader, afloat.

There's some good coverage and commentary on the NYT article at Cinematech and HDforIndies:

http://cinematech.blogspot.com/2005/09/disney-moves-away-from-hand-drawn.html

http://www.hdforindies.com/2005/09/disney-moves-away-from-hand-drawn

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As one of my instructors told me, a good story, told in whatever medium, is a good story. Disney is going back to the 80's mentality of "if we make it look cool enough, people will dig it." I agree with the previous statements that rather strengthen or even evolve their storyteling techniques, Disney is opting for more flash and less substance. Like my pappy used to tell me, "You can put a pretty ribbon on garbage but it's still gonna be garbage."

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