Disney Returns To Handdrawn Animation
Now that Disney Animation Studio is under the helms of Pixar's John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, there is a talk of the House That The Mouse Built returning to handdrawn animation. My reaction? Why did Disney even thought that they should have dismantled their 2d past in the first place. When Pixar became big with hits like "Toy Story" and "Monsters, Inc.", the entire American animation culture thought it wise to go completely 3d. While that is what most thought would have been the right decision, the result has been to the contrary. Aside from Pixar themselves (and perhaps Dreamworks Animation SKG's "Shrek"), the mojority of the 3d animation outputs have been an embarassment. Most was never able to reproduce the kind of "magic" that Pixar was able to produce--the very baton they seemed to have snatched out of Disney's hands.
To say that good 2d animation is dead is simply laughable. Anyone who follows the animation industry on the other side of the Pacific (Japan) knows that 2d is alive and kicking. The Japanese seems to have even been able to keep their handdrawn tradition, while incorporating computer animation--sometimes in ways that makes it looks like 2d animation with cel shading techniques. Studio Ghibli's outputs being some examples of good handdrawn animation abound from the Land of the Rising Sun.
So now Disney is talking about making a try at the 2d animation again. I do hope that they will do it right. Having laid off the majority of their talents back during the 3d restructuring, we know there are skilled people who will be ready to get back into the game. But the mistake I see that will prevent them from succeeding is the one thing I have always griped about Disney cartoons: their reliance on formulaic fairy tales with the damseles and heroic princes. The talk is that they will do an adaptation of the frog prince story, now called the "Frog Princess".
The formular that Pixar continues to get right in production after production is the steering clear of overt adaptations of the kind of stories Disney has been churning out since their live action/ animation "Alice's Wonderland"; while at the same time produces stories that have messages similar to those old fashioned tales.
Have American consumers become so attached to the idea that stories for animations should be of a certain genre that they will not watch anything else? The box office history seems to point to that. Everytime an animation house attempted to create stories that veer from the old formular, the numbers hadn't looked very good. But perhaps Pixar--and the attempts of other studios--have changed all that. The one good thing about the current 3d stuff is that, while few still reference the fairy tale stories, most have gone on to create original tales for their own sake. This is definitely what we need to be incorporated into this returned venture into the handdrawn.
Tags: Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks Animation, Studio Ghibli, animation, 2d animation, handdrawn animation, 3d animation, computer animation
