The State of Animation

March 28, 2005

Oliver and Company [1988]My wife and I were watch­ing the mak­ing of Disney’s Oliver and Com­pany on DVD. Unlike today’s exten­sively (and some­times exhaus­tively) researched “making-of” fea­turettes, you could tell this one was used more so as a mar­ket­ing tool. Halfway through the fea­ture, the announcer men­tions that Dis­ney used “state of the art” com­puter tech­nol­ogy as an aid to tra­di­tional 2-D animation.

The next scene shows an inter­view with Roy E. Dis­ney who seems excited about the adap­ta­tion of com­puter tech­nol­ogy and sug­gests that it’ll be a use­ful tool for future Dis­ney films. Now here’s the kicker — towards the end of the com­puter ani­ma­tion bit the announcer reminds the view­ers that while com­puter ani­ma­tion is a fan­tas­tic tool to aide in 2-D ani­ma­tion, fear not, for it will never replace tra­di­tional animation.

15 years later we’ve seen the imme­di­ate clo­sure of Disney’s Florida Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio in 2004 which “put approx­i­mately 250 ani­ma­tors, tech­ni­cians and other per­son­nel out of work.” — a move that many say ended the era of tra­di­tional ani­ma­tion and the rumor that Dis­ney will redo many of their clas­sic films using CGI (or Com­puter Gen­er­ated Imagery).

Like many I’ve been extremely impressed with Pixar’s films, but also feel a bit sad­dened by the fact that tra­di­tional ani­ma­tion is viewed as some­thing arbi­trary and stone aged. To me there are tra­di­tion­ally ani­mated films that impress me more so than computer-animated movies. Put it this way, to this day I’m still moved and in awe of many 2-D ani­mated films (like The Jun­gle Book and Bambi) and mostly because of the flu­id­ity and beauty that res­onates via a few pen­cil strokes.

The secret to Pixar’s suc­cess, at least from what I’ve gath­ered from watch­ing “making-of” fea­turettes and books, is their abil­ity to dig deep into their sub­ject, into the core of their film and its mes­sage and then flesh it out with CGI, some­thing that is lack­ing in other ani­mated films.

Start learn­ing graphic design in Philadel­phia and look for­ward to cre­at­ing the next famous ani­mated char­ac­ter in movies.

Related: The State of Ani­ma­tion Fea­tures by Michael Heilemann 

12 comments

Dis­ney are only after the bot­tom line; money. There will always be tal­ented ani­ma­tors using tra­di­tional meth­ods that can do far bet­ter than the cor­po­rate enti­ties, though may not be as vis­i­ble. The Japan­ese mar­ket is a good exam­ple of this.

by Matt Burris on March 28, 2005 at 5:12 pm. Reply #

“but also feel a bit sad­dened by the fact that tra­di­tional ani­ma­tion is viewed as some­thing abi­trary and stone aged. To me there are tra­di­tion­ally ani­mated films that impress me moreso than computer-animated movies”

Depends on your view­point. I don’t see great ani­ma­tion in terms of medium, but the abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate story and emo­tion through what­ever medium there is. You may be Mr Slick­ster with Maya, but some guy can come along and blow you away with a flicker pad. I reckon a good direc­tor can spot that. You nailed it on the head though — Pixar have really con­cen­trated on char­ac­ter and story. Do I think of how cool the CGI is? From a tech­ni­cal view­point yeah because I’ve played with Maya a bit — but what it comes down to is I wanted them to find Nemo :) Even geeky me sees through the CGI and thinks about the char­ac­ter — that’s success.

Pixar vs Dis­ney with only pen­cil and paper and fixed still cam­era? Pixar every damn time — they have the tal­ent and the environment.

by gpshewan on March 28, 2005 at 5:36 pm. Reply #

Of inter­est, an entry I wrote called The State of Ani­ma­tion Fea­tures.

by Michael Heilemann on March 28, 2005 at 6:04 pm. Reply #

Obvi­ously tra­di­tional hand drawn ani­ma­tion is less than stel­lar these days. I agree with your obser­va­tions and would not attribute it towards the medium. Is CGI some­thing rev­o­lu­tion­ary and super cool? Heck yeah, just look at the inte­rior of the whale sequence of Find­ing Nemo. It is near impos­si­ble to get that kind of real­ism by hand draw­ing 32 frames per sec­ond. But I don’t think it’s the eye candy that makes Pixar flicks so popular.

Disney’s sto­ries have been pretty bor­ing and run-of-the-mill. There are no more broth­ers Grimm fairy tales to go ’round. Pixar has been devel­op­ing sto­ries that are unique and fun to watch over and over again. Maybe they are an unstop­pable train with lots of tal­ent aboard. It def­i­nitely is a major time of change for fea­ture animation.

It’s not such a good time for us Dis­ney buffs, but I’m sure there will be a resur­gence of amaz­ing hand drawn ani­ma­tion. It will be retro and funky, hopefully.

by Mike on March 28, 2005 at 5:21 pm. Reply #

“…Put it this way, to this day I’m still moved and in awe of many 2-D ani­mated films…”

I think Japan­ese animé should also be con­sid­ered when dis­cussing the facets of 2-D ani­ma­tion. They have some epic sto­ries that many of us never get to expe­ri­ence — I for one really enjoy high qual­ity animé, as dorky as that may sound.

by Donnie Jeter on March 28, 2005 at 9:39 pm. Reply #

Damn good point Don­nie that I’m ashamed to say I for­got about. Animé rocks :) Fell in love with that many years ago after going to an all-night screen­ing of about six moviews :D

by gpshewan on March 28, 2005 at 9:58 pm. Reply #

I tend to agree with the notion that Pixar has been suc­cess­ful as much for their con­cen­tra­tion on story and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, as for the qual­ity of com­puter ani­ma­tion. I think the power of ani­ma­tion is the abil­ity to bring ideas to life that couldn’t oth­er­wise be explored.

Sure, The Incred­i­bles had great visu­als, but it was one of the best movies of the year because of the inter­est­ing plot and won­der­ful char­ac­ters. It also gave Craig T. Nel­son more work, and can’t we all agree that Hay­den Fox is THE MAN?

The Secret of NIMH isn’t my favorite ani­mated movie because it has ground­break­ing ani­ma­tion. I just love the plot. For my money, it’s still the most intrigu­ing ani­mated movie ever made.

by Greg on March 28, 2005 at 10:12 pm. Reply #

If you ain’t got story, you ain’t got shit. Take a look at Robots.

by Colin D. Devroe on March 29, 2005 at 7:46 am. Reply #

Words to live by, man… hey, I’m a big Incred­i­bles fan (just got the DVD) and it would be hard to imag­ine it done in 2-D. But as peo­ple have said here before it’s not about tech­nol­ogy cool­ness (that can only take you so far) but how you tell your story. It could have been done with match­sticks, but if those match­sticks can move me with joy, melan­choly, tears and emo­tion in gen­eral, then that’s what really counts. Whiz-bang tech­nol­ogy with­out heart and soul put into it is nothing.

Dis­ney lost it a num­ber of years ago, more or less around com­ple­tion of “The Lion King” (Lilo and Stitch being a sin­gu­lar excep­tion to the rule) and the con­sol­i­da­tion of the Eis­ner dark empire, whose only inter­est is to max­i­mize returns in past glo­ries recy­cling them ad nau­seam (Pooh movies, any­one?) and milk the Mickey cow till it runs dry. Period.

Some­thing many ani­ma­tion buffs ignore so eas­ily these days is that it took a cou­ple of for­mer Dis­ney artists –Don Bluth and Gary Gold­man– to light some fire under Disney’s butt, releas­ing a num­ber of films that sig­naled a renais­sance of the art form in the mid-eighties, when Dis­ney was already declar­ing ani­ma­tion dead (not the first time, huh). In fact, Don is my favorite ani­ma­tion direc­tor of all time and I feel he sadly doesn’t get enough cred­its or respect from the indus­try given his piv­otal role in ani­ma­tion history.

Back then there was some rumor that Pixar could fund a school/filmmaking insti­tu­tion based in 2-D. Could it hap­pen some­day? I know Pixar has a LOT of respect for tra­di­tional ani­ma­tion… they could become 2-D’s sav­ing grace.

by beto on March 29, 2005 at 11:47 am. Reply #

I don’t have much to add — I hate that tra­di­tional 2-D ani­ma­tion is going away. I love Pixar for their sto­ry­telling. The 3-D work is cool (fan­tas­ti­cally cool), but stick­ing feath­ers up your ass doesn’t make you a chicken.

Pixar has the goods. I haven’t seen much else that com­pares (besides some animé).

by Max on March 29, 2005 at 11:14 pm. Reply #

Alot of great input here, thanks for shar­ing. I could have elab­o­rated on the fact that tra­di­tion­ally ani­mated films from Dis­ney as of late have been of poor qual­ity but I left that open to interpretation.

Also, I agree in regards to Animé. How­ever, when it comes to shows like Drag­onball Z or shows with wacky titles like “Super-Hyper Go-Go Chicken Balls”, I’m not that impressed. On the other hand, movies like Spir­ited Away or any­thing by Miyazaki-san con­tinue to impress me with their visu­als and story. It’s an acquired taste no doubt but some­thing that evokes a strong sense of imagination.

by kartooner on March 30, 2005 at 3:37 pm. Reply #

“Drag­onball Z or shows with wacky titles like “Super-Hyper Go-Go Chicken Balls“
Drag­onball Z was really never that seri­ous, but is sparked a cul­tural phe­nom­e­non in Japan and around the world. I’m sad­dened about DB, the orig­i­nal artist had a great story in mind, it a defi­nate end, but Toei sorta forced Toriyama to keep append­ing to it. It was much bet­ter dur­ing the time it was actu­ally about a homage to the great Chi­nese epic of Jour­ney to the West. I still con­sider the series before the Saiyans to be much greater than the present series. Even though I was raised on orig­i­nal animé, before it got pop­u­lar in Amer­ica, I admit that such series like DBZ helped intro­duce animé to Amer­ica, and spark inter­est in great shows and series that oth­er­wise would be hard to intro­duce with­out a demand. It is my hope that the gen­er­a­tion raised on great fea­tures like Miyazaki’s mas­ter­pieces and the thought pro­vok­ing Ghost in the Shell series to grow up, and revive ani­ma­tion. Look where that led to today, we got Avatar, a rich, cul­tural expe­ri­ence with pur­pose.
As for the Super Hyper what­ever you said, I’m sure you’re think­ing of that car­toon about robot mon­keys that hope­lessly try to emu­late manga style.

by rkai on December 6, 2008 at 9:27 pm. Reply #

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