Thursday, April 26, 2012

Hand Drawn?

Ain't It Cool Nooz quotes Diz Co.'s animation research library:
... Ron [Clements] and John [Musker] are currently working to develop the next hand-drawn feature at Disney Animation. (Sorry, we can’t tell you what that is.) ...

Hand-drawn? The way Princess and the Frog is hand-drawn?

Uuuhhhhhh ....

11 comments:

Matt DeWater said...

This post has Paperman-style written all over it.

...I hope.

Floyd Norman said...

What I've seen so far is pretty darn impressive.

Finalefireworker said...

For somebody who's not in the industry, could somebody explain why Princess in the Frog isn't "hand drawn"? Is it because it was done on computers?

Does that mean every sketch was made on the computer?

Matthew Maners said...

PATF was hand drawn, not sure why someone would think otherwise. We did a bit of 3d throughout but you would be hard pressed to know what is 3d in that film. We did do the effects work on Cintiqs and used toon boom but we were still drawing it by hand.

Finalefireworker said...

Thanks for the explanation, Matt. I'm a big fan of animation and do a lot of what I consider "research" on this blog, so I was pretty confused and intrigued by the remark...

But one thing I've learned in my years of lurking is that animators have incredibly diverse opinions. So if somebody has a differing perspective, I'd like to hear that too.

-Anthony

Anonymous said...

It's all semantics. People call it 2D, hand drawn or traditional.

In my opinion "traditional" in it's purist sense would be how animation was produced by the majority of studios during the Golden Age. All frames, drawn on paper, and then inked and painted onto cels and filmed on top of hand painted, on paper, backgrounds.

In that regards pure traditional is pretty much dead. But hand drawn animation is very much alive, whether it be done in a cintiq or tablet, it is still drawing frames of animation, cleaning them up and coloring them.

CG is Computer Generated, which the computer provides many of the frames and the characters are no longer drawn, but manipulated like puppets. This can include crude flat animation like Southpark or some Flash projects or something as advanced as what Pixar and Dreamworks produce.

2D now refers to style, rather than technique and what used to be called 3D is now CG. And then you have those productions that encompass all of those techniques or like many of the movies coming out this year employ stop motion, which would be physical puppets, manipulated by hand and shot with a camera.

Floyd Norman said...

I really don't care what they call it, it's just regrettable that top talents such as Glen Keane and Andreas Deja are no longer working at Disney.

I'm reminded of a comment Joe Grant made as we were returning from lunch a few years ago. "Where are the artists?" he said.

It's not that Disney lacks artists today, it's just that technology - not art - seems to drive the process.

Celshader said...

I really don't care what they call it, it's just regrettable that top talents such as Glen Keane and Andreas Deja are no longer working at Disney.

I'd read that Glen Keane had left, but I did not know that Andreas Deja had left, too. I'm sorry to hear that. :^(

Inside The Hat said...

To Floyd:

1) Glen leaving had almost nothing to do with traditional animation (or the lack thereof) being done at Disney.

2) You say technology drives the process. What do you think drives the technology? Tangled was made because the art demanded 70 feet of realistic hair. Wreck-It Ralph is an homage to video games. Future projects also have high visual expectations that frankly can't be done traditionally. Paperman went the other direction and has an art house style. Ron and Johns film is also doing something unique. If anyone is doing cookie-cutter CG, it's Dreamworks. Disney is at least trying new things.

And the level of artistry from artists at Disney is some of the highest I've seen in a long, long time. From both young and old. So when you consistently lament Disney in your comments and blog, I suspect it comes from ignorance and some sentimental "back in my day" feelings, not from an actual observation.

Diablo said...

'1) Glen leaving had almost nothing to do with traditional animation (or the lack thereof) being done at Disney.'

Floyd never said Glenn left for that reason. You just read that into it.

'Disney is at least trying new things.'

Didn't Disney ALWAYS try new things? From sound to color to Xerox process to cg elements?

What some lament is Disney's cliches and cookie cutter storytelling. Like in "Tangled"!!

I expect more form Disney, because they have done better in the past.

d.

Anonymous said...

In that regards pure traditional is pretty much dead. But hand drawn animation is very much alive, whether it be done in a cintiq or tablet, it is still drawing frames of animation, cleaning them up and coloring them.

I really don't care what they call it [meaning traditional animation], it's just regrettable that top talents such as Glen Keane and Andreas Deja are no longer working at Disney.

Floyd never said Glenn left for that reason. You just read that into it.

I think he was making that connection.

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