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Disney Does Digital, Ditches Drawings
May Kasahara writes "This is something which has been the talk amongst animators for the past couple of weeks: Walt Disney Feature Animation is in the process of halting all work on traditionally-animated features and going completely CG. Supposedly, all of their animators-- even staunch traditionalists such as Glenn Keane-- are being trained on 3D computer animation techniques. The last hand-drawn high-budget Disney feature scheduled for release is Home on the Range, which is due out next April. It appears that Disney is bowing to the supposed pressures of the market, even though the hand-drawn Lilo and Stitch was considered a success and the all-CG Dinosaur (done at Disney's now-defunct FX house The Secret Lab) was not. However, I believe there's another factor at work: Pixar's contract with Disney is set to expire soon, and the revered CG house has been making their own demands of Disney for the contract's renewal."
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - cartoon Mickey Mouse was found dead in his Anaheim home this morning. There weren't any more details yet. I'm sure we'll all miss him, even if you weren't a fan of his work there's no denying his contribution to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
Dear Abby,
You are a fuckhead.
Signed,
Shutthefuckupbitch
I always thought the idea of freezing yourself after death with the idea that future technology can cure whatever ails you was a touch silly. After all, you're not so much waiting for a day when they can cure a given disease, you're waiting for the day when they can re-animate the dead.
Even if you're frozen moments before death, the body they unfreeze will be so over ridden with cancer (or whatever) they're going to have a hard time keeping you alive long enough for the cure to even work.
No, your best bet is to get frozen a good 6 months prior to when you are likely to die, and have a poison capsule stuck in your teeth just in case you get woken up in a future George Bush XXVI is president (rim-shot).
'Dotters discuss Disney.
Disney ditching drawing? Digital Disney? Dumb.
Donald Duck doesn't do dimensions. Dumbo doesn't. Dalmations don't. Drawings darling. Drawings delight.
Dinosaur dimensionful -- Dinosaur dumb. Duh.
Disney's dangerous decision dooms Disney's deliverables! Defines Disney's decay, death.
Don't deify dimensionality. Deceptive.
- Dominic
Well, it doesn't change all the time in "2-D" but it DOES change. Disney has a fantastic package called "Deep Canvas" that does most of the work for generating the 3-D backgrounds while appearing like 2-D space. Its used heavily in Tarzan, Atlantis, and Treasure Planet (where they added the ability to "move" parts of the background around). It allows the background people to "paint" directly into the computer the complete 3-D picture, by painting onto geometric solids with the stylus.
meanwhile, a skeleton-graphics outline of the shapes are sent to the 2-D animators to draw onto, with those outlines removed by the cleanup crew before going into the computer for the final mix down. The computer has already replaced the "ink-and-paint" department, and the "multi-plane camera" of Disney's history; there are no "cels" anymore.
Machines now are fast enough, over their 1997 Tarzan-era counterparts, to render Deep Canvas's work at run-time, as opposed to having to do overnight rendering sessions and see the finished product the next day. This means that effectively Deep Canvas can now be used for pretty much ALL the sets, whether the background will move or not, because the biggest time constraint (rendering) is now a non-issue.
However, what you will get, IMHO, when the 2-D people start using the computer more directly is a lot of scanning. They'll still draw the roughs onto paper, scan them into the computer, then manipulate their 3-D character model to what they already drew. It may actually be the trick to get 3-D to move "properly".
One of the biggest problems with (Disney Feature Style) 2-D animation is the characters move around too much, compared to real life. One of the biggest problems with (Pixar/Dreamworks) 3-D animation is the characters move around too little, compared to real life.
So by having 2-D people drawing on paper, scanning into the computer, you'll get 3-D models that move too much. Have them runthrough and slow things down a little, and the balance between the two (making "perfect" 3D) may finally be achieved.
The only thing *really* being lost in all this is the ability of the animators to reflect the "look" of the actors who provide the voices. Ellen DeGeneres's character in Nemo is the closest I've seen 3-D come to doing what Disney does with their 2-D characters, in that aspect. Consider Rourke in Atlantis (James Garner), Victor and Hugo in Hunchback (one definitely looks like Jason Alexander), Danny DeVito's character in Hercules, or even the the two mooses in Brother Bear (who do kinda look a little like Bob & Doug MacKenzie). 3-D character design at present does not allow that kind of control over eye movements to really get the drama or comedy of the original voice performance across, where the best model for that is the voice artist themselves. Exagerations work in 2-D, they don't work in 3-D. As I said, Dory is one of the few times I've been able to "see" the voice actor in the work produced (Shrek's Donkey being the first, but its hard to miss Eddie Murphy, who'd already done voice work before in Mulan). 3-D just doesn't have the "human touch" consistently, IMHO, that well-done 2-D will always have.
One last comment: Is it really necessary to have the background angle move all the time? Its good for action scenes, and sometimes for tense dramatic moments, but it really gets in the way of exposition sequences, and ANY film director will tell you that. Just because you CAN move the background all the time, or even most of the time, doesn't mean you should. Even in 3-D films, they don't do it all the time; set a camera angle (the job of the layout department) and stick to it.
On a side note, I'd give almost anything to have the footage of DeGeneres in the studio during her recording of the "whale song" sequence of Nemo...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe