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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Pre-feature cartoons coming back on Disney films
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-07-2006 09:29 AM
quote: Charles Greenlee
Manga and Japanimation or Cheapanimation as I call it is what most cartoons out are now based on. While it has cool effects, the animation itself is jumpy, and repetative, and the characters are drawn with quick sketch strokes, and heavy lines. All typical of cheap, low quality animation.
I will agree the bulk of Japanese animation is pretty cheaply done. There are exceptions to that, such as features like Akira and Ghost in the Shell. Those two movies and a fair number of others have some very well done animation. Still, it doesn't rival the meticulous standard of traditional animation set by Disney.
A movie like Jungle Book would actually have 24 drawings per 1 second of film time. You don't get that at all with Japanese animation. Even the best feature length shows commonly have less than 5-10 drawings per second, if even that. It's pretty easy to spot the various short cuts that are taken.
The style of "manga" and "anime" is an equally glaring problem. I know lots of Americans like the look of it, mainly since it is so different to our own animation. But from the Japanese perspective, all that stuff just looks the same. Animators over there aren't allowed to do anything different. The tyranny of that style goes against the principals of creativity.
quote: Anslem Rayburn
Nobody is interested in paying premium money to watch old technology in a theater. I'm not saying that old school animation (and decent story telling) is no fun, but new school animation (with decent story telling) is an easier sell.
I don't agree with that.
A great deal of the animated CGI movie thing is a passing fad. There's a lot of mediocre to even badly done animated movies being released these days. The quality bar has been slipping as well for CGI effects in live action movies as well. And we're seeing the talent pool for 3D artists and animators shifting to other areas. You can make more money doing 3D work in computer game development than you can in working on movie projects.
Pixar has been able to do well for two reasons. First, they work very hard on developing their stories and do so following the work flow model perfected by Disney. Second, they work harder than any other studio to continually push the quality bar higher and higher with each release.
Customers will line up to pay for a good hand drawn animated movie. Home on the Range didn't fail because much of it was hand drawn. It failed because the movie was crap. Put something together as good as The Lion King and people will go to see it.
The trick is being able to assemble the talent to create a good hand drawn animated movie. It's difficult, but not impossible. Many American animators and artists have had to find work elsewhere due to the 3D CGI fad for feature films and the widespread outsourcing of traditional animation work overseas to Korea.
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Charles Greenlee
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 801
From: Savannah, Ga, U.S.
Registered: Jun 2006
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posted 12-07-2006 12:54 PM
Even good non-disney animation. I used to love Looney Toons, still do. They could take the traditional feel and maticulousness and make new ones with computer assist. Yeah, I know there are new Looney Toons cartoons, but they lack something, they seem a bit weak. Traditional animation and computer animation can get along great. As mentioned before, Lion King, and Beauty and the Beast, the Great Mouse Detective. The computers can animate backgrounds and certain elements and keep the traditional feel. Remember, in those cartoons, the computer added something nice to the cartoon, not violated them. And then you have computer assisted animation, where it's still traditionally hand drawn, and then scanned into a computer, and the animation tweaked to make it smoother, but on the outside it just looks like silky smooth traditional animation.
I consider CGI only animation it's own Genre. It's not cartoons. Cartoons are cartoons.
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Paul Mayer
Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under!
Posts: 3836
From: Albuquerque, NM
Registered: Feb 2000
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posted 12-07-2006 03:12 PM
Warners too, please!
CGI has all but killed traditional hand-drawn methods at studios like Disney, which closed the last of their old animation units under the old regime. Now that Lasseter sits on the board at Disney we'll see if he can breath some new life into the old factory.
In the end it does not matter what the art looks like - it only matters that there is a story worth telling and that it is told well. Without a story and characters worth caring about, a film (live-action or animated) is just a demo reel. That Lasseter works with and promotes 3D CGI as his method of choice is really secondary to the fact he and his staff work very hard on the stories they tell - as hard on the stories as they do on their art. Films like A Bug's Life, Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, and Cars would be great films no matter how rendered.
Lasseter is friends with Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of Japan's most highly regarded animation house Studio Ghibli. Miyazaki is an animator who does not like using computers for image creation, though he grumpily admits computers are great for some aspects of the animation production and post-production process. Miyazaki's films will always start as hand-drawn animation as he feels that it is much faster, cheaper, and better to do the pictures that way. Nowadays, those hand-drawn images get scanned into a computer instead of photographed on an animation stand, which opens the door to all kinds of visual possibilities not otherwise available. But in the end it's still the story and the characters that matter the most, and Lasseter considers Miyazaki to be an inspiration with the fantastic stories he tells.
There is a great DVD available in R2 NTSC in Japan called Thank You John Lasseter (Doumo Arigatou, Lasseter-san) which features lengthy interviews with both Lasseter and Miyazaki about their work, and their friendship of over 20 years. The video was shot in part at Disney and Pixar as a documentary about the North American premiere of Miyazaki's Spirited Away, the English-language dub of which Lasseter exec produced. The DVD is a video thank you letter of sorts to Lasseter for his help with that film.
Back on thread, congrats to Disney for trying this experiment in theaters. Warners, are you watching?
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Charles Greenlee
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 801
From: Savannah, Ga, U.S.
Registered: Jun 2006
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posted 12-08-2006 12:45 PM
Very much like me with the 1984 version of Fantasia, in digitall recorded surround sound. But, it was a newly recorded soundtrack, not the original. It wasn't bad, it was rearranged sligtly, and clean and clear being new and not based on the 1939 recordings, but the quality of the performance wasn't as good. Even without that, I'd still partial to the original Stokowski performance. Fortunately, whoever was responsible for the 50th and 60th anniversary releases, was smart enough to go back to the original and clean it up. Love Toccata and Fugue play on a organ, but it's also beautiful played by an orchestra. I listen to the CD all of the time. ::End rant::
Point is they could still do the 5.1 with the old sounds. Sure the fidelity wouldn't be as good as new recordings, but the old ones are already apart of the cartoon. Not to mention when you start changing the sounds, what's going to stop you from deciding a different noise is going to be more "appropriate" and now you're changing everything. I say, just clean it up, maybe remix in surround, but keep the original material. ![[thumbsup]](graemlins/thumbsup.gif)
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Not that they still have the original elements, mind you... ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Though it would be nice, and probably something they'd do just to sell some special edition DVDs, but really, they're fine without.
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