Traditional Animation: The Return

[Drtooth]

I saw a trailer for "Wall-E." It looks rather promising, especially coming after the dull "Ratatouille."
*an audience boos loudly, and tomatoes go hurling into my face!*

No offense, but didn't you once go on a rant about how much like a Dreamworks film it would be? Now you say it's boring? I'm confused.

Personally, I found the movie refreshing. no pop culture jokes (though they had a thinly vailed stab at various "chefs" that slap their names on crappy food products.... cough cough Wolfgang puck... Emmerill...). And definately no cheap fart jokes.

I say, if you're going to go for toilet humor, do it cleverly. Make it worth it. Just don't put something in their as a cheap laugh.

 

[wwfpooh]

I say, if you're going to go for toilet humor, do it cleverly. Make it worth it. Just don't put something in their as a cheap laugh.

I.e. do it Animaniacs! style & not Family Guy style.

 

[Drtooth]

Not even Family Guy style last season Ren and Stimpy without John K style.

I may just break down and see Kung Fu Panda, for all the snot I'm giving it. The animation looks great, but it looks like more of the same. But I do love the character design of that Panda.

 

[wwfpooh]

Who knows? It may surprise you, for all you know.

 

[Ilikemuppets]

Who knows? It may surprise you, for all you know.

It would be a surprise if it was a surprise, but as it has already been stated here, it looks like typical Dreamworks fodder. I think Jeffrey Katzenberg who I respect and I think has done a lot of wonderful things in the career. But I believe that he said something to the tune of know he really doesn't know anyhting about animation. I'm not mad at him, but it just goes to show who places like theses are not run by creative passionate people who care abut the product and what they do as much as it's now being run by business suits and bean counters who's main concern is the bottom line..

 

[frogboy4]

It doesn't matter if a film is live action or animated it has to have an interesting story, a unique perspective, a reason for being made. Many of the animated films from DreamWorks PDI are made simply because the hot commodity of computer technology exists and famous people are willing to provide voice work for cheap.

Brad Bird has pointed this out countless times. Don't you think Disney is itching to make an Incredibles sequel? Brad Bird wants that too, but only if he can make something that isn't simply a retread.

Sure, glossy CG distracted the public for a while and caused many people to think less of traditional animation, but the fad is over. Studios don't think people are interested in drawn animation, but that is far from the truth. The stories from the Disney pictures weren't up to snuff and ultimately that was the nail in the coffin.

I never liked Lilo and Stitch, but it was successful and came out the same year as their bomb Treasure Planet (which I did like). The will was and is there, but other factors have been missing and it's not the animation. Brother Bear and Home on the Range followed and sealed animation's fate. However, I still think that beautiful but stale Pocahontas and intriguing but patchy and problematic Hunchback sewed the seeds of the animation department's demise at Disney.

Story first. Neither forms of animation should be considered fads or fashionable. They are the means to tell a story. We should get variety. Eventually people are going to get fed up with CG Space Chimps and plotless Bee Movies buzzing about and turn to a good story told in classic animation. I hope that's soon.

 

[JJandJanice]

It doesn't matter if a film is live action or animated it has to have an interesting story, a unique perspective, a reason for being made. Many of the animated films from DreamWorks PDI are made simply because the hot commodity of computer technology exists and famous people are willing to provide voice work for cheap.

Brad Bird has pointed this out countless times. Don't you think Disney is itching to make an Incredibles sequel? Brad Bird wants that too, but only if he can make something that isn't simply a retread.

Sure, glossy CG distracted the public for a while and caused many people to think less of traditional animation, but the fad is over. Studios don't think people are interested in drawn animation, but that is far from the truth. The stories from the Disney pictures weren't up to snuff and ultimately that was the nail in the coffin.

I never liked Lilo and Stitch, but it was successful and came out the same year as their bomb Treasure Planet (which I did like). The will was and is there, but other factors have been missing and it's not the animation. Brother Bear and Home on the Range followed and sealed animation's fate. However, I still think that beautiful but stale Pocahontas and intriguing but patchy and problematic Hunchback sewed the seeds of the animation department's demise at Disney.

Story first. Neither forms of animation should be considered fads or fashionable. They are the means to tell a story. We should get variety. Eventually people are going to get fed up with CG Space Chimps and plotless Bee Movies buzzing about and turn to a good story told in classic animation. I hope that's soon.

Yeah you pretty much say anything I feel about it.

Kung Fu Panda seems just as pointless as Bee Movie and as you stated it's like Dreamworks doesn't even care who does the voices as long as their already famous, I'm sorry when I say this but I think Dreamworks is to animation what Villina Ice is to music. It's just about money, no heart, no soul, don't care about the product, it's just crap,

 

[lowercasegods]

The Walt Disney Company returns to their roots with the upcoming feature film The Princess and the Frog. It's scheduled for the end of 2009, and it will be the first traditionally animated movie from the company in five years! Not only that, it's a musical! Finally, a return to the type of work that made the Disney movies such classics.

I thought that the success of Enchanted might have helped prompt this, but I guess it was in production while that was. This could only mean good things for the future of Disney movies and, perhaps the type of Muppet films we'll be seeing.

First off, I LOVE your icon! Did you draw it? That's a great Scooter!

Second up, I'm excited about Disney returning to it's 2-D animated musical fairytale roots, too! I'm a little dismayed that they're already making changes to the story because of perceived racial matters (seriously, The Frog Princess, as it was supposed to be called, was NOT a knock on the French! And I'm part French!).

And I think Disney needs to do a LOT more fairy tales! It's what they do best. Granted, some of the renditions they've done of fairy tales have unnecessarily sanitized and sugared-up the stories from their darker origins, but at least two have turned out fantastic. Peter Pan was as good an interpretation of J.M. Barrie's original masterpiece as any I've seen. And Pinocchio actually took a convoluted and morally ambiguous serialized story and made it a coherent and lovable film. Trust me, the original story wasn't that hot.

So anyway, as a cartoonist and a fan of fairy tales, I'm very excited to see a hand drawn animated film come out of Disney once again!

 

[Ilikemuppets]

Many of the animated films from DreamWorks PDI are made simply because the hot commodity of computer technology exists and famous people are willing to provide voice work for cheap.

This is true, but the cast of Sherk after the first movie have been the highest paid "voice actors in history and it just gets more ridiculous. It like in insult to people who have devoted their whole career to the craft.

 

[Super Scooter]

First off, I LOVE your icon! Did you draw it? That's a great Scooter!

Thank you! I didn't draw it, my cartooning style's a bit different from that. It's some artwork from an animated Muppet series that was pitched in 2004(?). It was called "American Mayhem," and I assume it was to have been about the Electric Mayhem while Scooter was their "road manager".

However, I really want to draw my own Super Scooter icon eventually. Maybe, perhaps.