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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."
Walt Disney would have loved this move to full CG! He likely would not have liked Pixar's pushy behaviour, however. Apparently Walt loved the results of drawing cartoons, but complained about the long hours at his desk, until he gave up drawing altogether to supervise his own studio. He also loved new inventions, as he was the first person to make a cartoon with sound (Steamboat Willie (1928)). Therefore, I would have to say that Walt would have loved the idea of making machines draw for him!
3D is not all.
I personally consider that "The Emperor's new groove" though classsically designed is much better than some more technologically advanced movie.
Now, if they want to privilegiate the marketing and the buzzwords to the storytelling, it's their business.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
It would be interesting to see "normal" animations generated with computers, instead of the now-so-common 3D things like Finding Nemo.
I would suppose digital equipment would offer lots of possibilities for texturing in general, and cinematic effects such as lense focus, motion
blur and a lot of more complex things.
Well, if 3D feature animations sell, then those we shall have, it seems. And I do have to admit that Finding Nemo does have a similar look to it as some "traditional" animation titles, being "less" three-dimensional..
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I do not think the point here was about ditching paper, that transition has already mostly happened. (AFAIK)
The point was moving from drawing lines in 2d to modeling+animating+rendering in 3d. (although the result might sometimes look like hand-drawn, if wanted..)
eetu.
Disney has been using CG in their "traditional" animation for some time. My kids were watching "The Emperor's New Groove" the other day and I watched the behind-the-scenes portion in which they showed how many elements (such as the wagon pulled by the John Goodman character) were CG and combined with traditional animation for the characters. It looks just like the cel-based animation, since they use shaders that make the 3D objects look hand-drawn. If I recall correctly, they also used a good bit of CG in even older productions, such as "Beauty and the Beast."
This is also a trend that goes beyond Disney- DreamWorks used lots and lots of CG in "Spirit- Stallion of the Cimmeron" (the extras on the DVD are worth watching).
The thing to remember in all this is that the move to CG doesn't mean you won't have Disney features that look hand-drawn. Not all CG looks like work from Pixar or "Shrek." Use the right shaders and picking out the CG from hand-drawn gets very difficult indeed.
Can CG do high quality artistic caliber 2d drawings ?
When I am watching a movie i almost don't care if it's 2d or 3d as long as it's good.
Of course, that doesn't mean that they should abandon the 3D animation arena to Dreamworks and Pixar. Developing talent and capabilities in the 3D arena are clearly needed (and could be melded into existing 2D techniques ala the ballroom scene in "Beauty and the Beast"). Still concluding that 2D is dead seems a bit premature to me.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
I think this is more than a little unfair. In the early days, Disney's films were highly original, because they had to basically invent the process upon which modern animation studios basically get a free ride. They had to deal with far more fundamental questions than Pixar does today, such as: Could you hold an audience's attention for 75+ minutes with a cartoon? Could you make an audience do anything but laugh with a cartoon? Could you, for example, make them cry? These are hard problems to solve, and nobody had tried it before.
As for originality, I'm not sure that Pixar's five (so far) films are a good sample. Shrek isn't an original story either, but it did extremely well at the box office. Besides, A Bug's Life isn't exactly the most original plot ever written.
Disney's problem, as I see it, is that they got complacent. They've decided that they're going to release two animated features a year, and that's too much creativity for their team, so they basically started turning their direct-to-video "cheapquels" into theatrical releases (Jungle Book 2 and Return to Never Land being two recent examples) and assumed that people would turn up to see them. If there's one thing that Disney has a long history of, it's producing filler material.
Nobody knows what kind of movie will work and what will not. The history of cinema is littered with highly original flops as well as highly derivative flops. However, there are certain things which are known not to work, and trying to sell a film on brand name alone is one of them.
Now to Pixar. They have a young, fresh team with lots of new ideas, and enough money in the bank to sit on a film until it's ready to be made. The big question is: How long can they sustain this? Only time will tell.
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Disney's been heading into the CG arena for quite a few years now. While cels are still hand drawn they all end up scanned into a computer and colored and composited digitally. Drawing directly on the computer instead of scanning cels simply cuts out a rather pricey step in the animation process. They also get to leverage the computer's innate ability to do really tedious jobs quickly.
If they made some software that would take something drawn on a tablet and convert it into NURBS and let the animator define relationships easily they could save a lot of time animating. They could adopt interpolation techniques used in 3D animation to flat 2D animation. It also isn't terribly difficult to adapt 3D animation to look like cel drawings. Disney's been doing that for years, ever since the antilope scene in Kimb^H^H^H^HLion King. The milling crowds in the Hunchback of Notre Dame were animated using a similar technique.
Regardless of how Disney makes their films I just want them to hire some decent writers. Their movies aren't flops because of the animation techniques, they flops because they're crappy movies. I had really high hopes for Atlantis. It looked like it might be an interesting flick from the previews. Titan AE despite its suckiness was a much better animated action flick. Emperor's New Groove however was pretty funny and is one of if not the best animated disney flick made in the past several years. Treasure Planet was as boring and uninspired as Atlantis. Hercules however was pretty funny and kept my interest. Lilo & Stitch so didn't live up to my expectations. It needed way more Stitch hilarity and less whining about being a family.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Heck, if Pixar built their own distribution channel, they could probably compete with Disney for bringing over a lot of the better anime. I can't believe it took until the last few years for someone at Disney to decide to translate and distribute Miyazaki's work in North America. In fact, if I remember correctly that John Lasseter was a major factor in the Disney distribution of Miyaxaki's work, I could see Pixar taking over that distribution unless Disney already has those distribution rights under contract.
But I'm not sure if Jobs really wants to go that far. Is there really room for one more movie distribution company in N.A? Steve Jobs may want to keep to Pixar's core competencies. At one point in time Pixar was a software shop that sold Renderman and other CGI tools and John Lasseter's shorts were either skunkworks or funded to show off the capabilities of the company's software products. Now they seem to be primarily an animation house built around John Lasseter. While some diversification may be in order to not be completely dependent on Lasseter (Ifni forbid he ever be hit by a bus!), movie distribution may not be the best alternative.
If you've been following John Lasseter's work since Luxo Jr. and Red's Dream, then it shouldn't come as a big surprise that Pixar's recent features have done better than most of Disney's. John is not only a CGI pioneer, but also an incredible storyteller.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Disney needs to learn a few lessons from Pixar regarding respect for their viewers.
Disney DVD:
Too damn many previews, lame plots, good characters, One disk for movie, other disk for special features, lots of stickers on the side to peel off.
Pixar DVD:
Almost the opposite. You get two discs containing the movie, one wide and one full pan & scan. So, one for the kids to thrash and one to keep for later, or give to a friend. No forced previews, and one security sticker.
Frankly, the Pixar packaging and presentation value is easily 2X that of Disney and that does not even count the movie. Which has been more lame than usual these days.
Pixar is making new stories instead of pillaging the public domain as Disney tends to do often. Sure, there are new stories from Disney, but they have not been as good as those produced by Pixar.
Given all the crap Disney does behind the scenes regarding copyright issues plus their overly pushy presentation and packaging issues, I believe many people are more than willing to look at other options.
Disney can retool their production house all they want, but they are going to lose big in the DVD market as long as they keep releasing the way they do.
I can't wait to see Pixar go once they can do what they want.
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Pixar's 1986 short film Knick Knack that was played with Finding Nemo and included on the DVD has been modified to remove "adult" content.
Was this at Disney's request?
The contract Pixar signed with Disney basically said this:
Make 5 movies for us. We (Disney) will own all the franchise rights. Once your 5 movies are up, we'll let you out of the contract.
Pixar makes Toy Story. Disney makes millions. Pixar makes A Bugs Life. Disney makes millions. Pixar makes Toy Story 2, originally for direct to video, but its so good, Disney decides to put it in theatres.
Pixar asks, will Toy Story 2 count toward our 5 picture obligation? Disney says, hell no - it's not a new franchise. You still owe us three new films. Pixar makes Finding Nemo, Disney makes millions, etc.
At this point Pixar is asking, why are we busting our butts for the mouse and letting them rake in all the money? Disney has had it good... way too good.
This is just normal negotiations, now that Pixar is in a better position. Disney needs that cash flow (since they're doing a lousy job at generating decent stories in-house), but Pixar also benefits from the awesome distribution and promotion arm that Disney wields. I figure Disney will sign Pixar, but will shortly try and cut them loose if and when their own in-house 3d department makes good.
Too bad for Disney (I think laying off most of Feature Animation was a mistake), but that's what happens when the accountants and lawyers are running the asylum...
The French Disney studio was closed because France was always too expensive to do animation in. The studio was only created to appease the French government to get Eurodisney through.
The Japanese studio closing is a sad thing. Disney don't have enough quality product to feed their studios, so it came down to Australia and Japan, and Japan got the arse for whatever reason. There is still an active studio in Australia producing 2D stuff, most of which goes direct to video but there is some film work. A lot of the crappier TV/direct to video stuff is done by contractors in the philipines. So 2D, hand drawn animation still does exist at Disney.
One of the biggest changes a move to an entirely computer based system presents is it takes away your training school for new animators. Traditionally, animators start out as inbetweeners, doing all the grunt work to get a film through. The inbetweeners with talent are soon picked up and moved through the various departments before they become proper animators and eventually senior animators if they are good enough. Moving to an entirely digital platform means the inbetweeners and cleanup artists suddenly don't exist anymore. Where do the animators come from in this new model? It's a pretty big change.
That said, most animation at Disney has been mostly computer based for years. While most of the 2D frames are still drawn on paper, they're scanned and painted and composited entirely on computer. It speeds the process up and improves the quality significantly, while still preserving the feel of hand drawn animation, which is a good thing imho.
Actually, it's worse than that. Disney takes half the profits, then charges Pixar a distribution fee. Disney actually gets more like 70% when it's all added up.
It strikes me as more selfish than silly. There are people starving today for lack of a loaf of bread or clean water. But instead of saving them, the rich spend outrageous amounts of money in the hopes that someone will give a shit about them in 200 years. Even if all the science comes about to revive the person, the whole scheme revolves around people caring more about the frozen person that he does about people here today.
-Dave
The downside of 3D animation is that it only looks good when it's expensive. The only way to cut corners in 3D animation is to not feature humans.
The upside of 2D animation is that it can look good even when it's on very low budget. Combine that with the fact that 2D outsourcing studios around Asia are almost as cheap as slave labor, and the Japanese can make a great looking movie like Ghost in the Shell for $5.5M, or Spirited Away for $18M (or was it $12M?).
The less a movie costs, the smaller an audience it needs, so it can have a riskier/smarter plot. The more a movie costs, the more mainstream it has to be. Back when Disney, Dreamworks and Fox were still willing to do 2D, they had the opportunity to make low budget, experimental animation as cool as anything the Japanese do. Instead, they blew it on expensive and pretty-but-boring movies like Treasure Planet and Stallion of Cimmaron. Now that they're doing all 3D all the time, there's no way they can experiment and stumble across something cool. There's simply too much money at stake in each movie.
What hope there is now for trendy animation from American studios would be the shows on Cartoon Network and Comedy Central, and web cartoons like homestarrunner.com. Those guys are working on small enough budgets and long enough timeframes that they can experiment and take time to build up an audience.
Strangely enough, that's not really true. On Studio Ghibli's latest film, The Cat Returns, they included a second disc titled "Giblies." In Japanese, the studio's name pronounced with a soft G (Jibli), but the second disc title has it spelled with a hard G.
Anyway, the entire disc is basically the animators playing around with various 3d software programs. You'd hardly recognize it as 3d! It's very stylistic and doesn't have that "puppet" feel at all. Of course, the entire thing is rendered with a special cell shader (not the type I'm used to seeing) and was overall very difficult to tell from a regular 2d animation.
Could Disney pull this off? Who knows, but it's at least a possibility.
-Redundancy Man strikes again!
The article cites that, among other things, traditional 2D takes too long, and somehow looks dated. Hrm. Someone should inform Hiyo Miazaki that Priness Mononoke & Spirited Away are behind the times. There's something to be said about goddamn moving paintings . They also state that Brother Bear was hand drawn for a warm, organic feel. It's a shame they're in such a hurry to lose that.
Why not a mix of the two technologies? In keeping with the times, the 6-episode anime "FLCL" by Gainax was an entirely digital creation, while still being cell-based. No shortage of cutting edge techniques employed there. Made for a gorgeous DVD transfer, to boot.
Maybe this isn't a such bad thing. Maybe this will make room for other talented 2D cell artists to tread where the Mouse no longer fears to go. I've got my fingers crossed.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
Coke introduced 'New Coke', people hated it and grew nostalgic for 'Old Coke'. So Coke brilliantly re-introduced 'Coke Classic'. Turns out 'Coke Classic' sales beat pre-'New Coke' sales. People still debate whether Coke created a conspiracy here or got lucky. And there's even room for more future mystique harvesting - people still think the 'Old Coke' tasted better than 'Coke Classic', so someday Coke could release 'Coke Old Fashioned' or something and make more money selling unhealthy water crammed with as much sugar (12 teaspoons) as science will allow.
Anyway, Disney's doing the same thing. People will long for the good old days of hand drawn animation now long gone. Pretty soon, Disney will designate movies as '100% hand drawn' and artificially add value and mystique to the same old thing they've been doing before.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?