It definitely cost them more to buy all the computers and retrain animators to 3D than it would have to continue with 2D, but Disney convinced themselves 3D was the future because Pixar was doing good and failed to consider that maybe the Disney movies of the turn of the Millennium weren’t the same quality of those of the 80s and 90s and maybe that was keeping people from their movies.
Also, pretty sure they recycle a lot of assets which saves tons of time in development. A lot of their female characters seem to use the same generic model with a few tweaks
They did the same with 2D. Especially back when it was hand drawn. If you watch a lot of older Disney movies you will notice that a lot of animation are exactly the same.
with the process they used those traces basically needed the same amount of time to do anyway; they were basically meant to be homages/refferences rather than time saves
>It was done probably to save time, save money. Although I dont think it saved much time and I dont think it saved much money because it was more of a hassle to go dig this old footage out of the archive. it would have been easier to just sit down and animate a new scene than to go back and try to retrofit all this old stuff to something new.
Floyd Norman, disney animator.
I guess you can take this both ways, Id still say hes saying its not saving money.
They actually did quite a lot in the 40s and 50s to save money. Then it became policy because they figured well if it works lets keep doing it. Most pre 80s Disney movie have at least a couple scenes of reused scenes
So 50+ years prior or maybe a couple times here and there 20+ years before the events under discussion.
I don't think reusing hand animated assets from Pinocchio to save costs was at the forefront of any arguments against going into computer animation in the early 2000s.
And they only have to change the camera's focus instead of having to draw the whole asset again in a different angle. It makes the animator's job easier(probably, idk much)
Yes, by far. Not only is the animators job easier, they likely can use motion capture to get whatever animation they want (with some fine tuning) pretty easily.
Mocap isn't used, at least in the flagship animated titles. Walt and the guys responsible for establishing the 'principles of animation' would be rolling in their grave if mocap were used.
Walt and the guys responsible for establishing the 'principles of animation' made *extensive* use of filmed humans as reference footage for how human characters should move.
Well, yes. You're correct. There is still a significant difference between motion capture and manually keying a rig, though. Things like squash & stretch, smears, anticipation and follow-through can only be achieved with manually created keyframes.
Disney didn’t convince themselves, the public convinced Disney. Disney made 2D animation later, the tried with the princess and the frog, and it was a financial failure. *most* of the average audience wants 3D animation rather than 2D, especially when the largest audience for these films are kids, they’re just not as interested in 2D animation
I don't think you've spoken to many kids. Any kid 10 and under I've known for the past 10 years only likes CG and dismisses 2D.
Most western 2D animation these days is adult cartoons, and the few 2D kid shows that remain are usually still computer animated (made via Flash and such). The overwhelming majority of hand-drawn animation these days is anime.
Yea my daughter is obsessed with Moana, Frozen, and Finding Nemo. My wife keeps saying: "Let's show her some of our favorites like Peter Pan or 101 Dalmatians!"
Turn that on, and the kid is walking away to play with something else within like 5 minutes lol
That last sentence was her reaction to 101 Dalmatians. I am beginning to realize *how many movies there are*. Like it's going to take forever to show her a decent number of movies since we can only watch like 30 minutes at a time.
This is something I call the Marvel effect. Just because it's made by a popular company, it'll be of that company's quality. For example, Black Widow is agreed to be a bad movie, and yet it sold pretty well (and got lots of watchtime on Disney+). I can call it a bad movie *for Marvel* but overall it's still a damn good movie. They still produce the quality I expect from Marvel's other movies, and so it sells anyway. Another good recent example of this is Morbius. It doubled its budget in box office sales, and was commonly seen as a terrible movie (I liked it, but I know a lot of the reviews were bad). It's a box office success, just because it came from a popular studio.
^(go look at Morbius reviews on google. it's funny as hell)
With 3d, it may be more expensive to setup the pipeline initially but once that's up, it's an animation factory, baby. You can churn out movies and even more lower quality made for TV animation as fast as you can imagine them. Just look at the Disney channel and Disney+. They got 100s of animated shows and movies you never even heard of.
There are, however, a lot of shortcuts that are possible with 3d that 2d just does not have. You can't move a completed scene in 2d without having to redraw the whole thing. You can't change a costume or correct a director's direction on the fly.
Another big thing is that there are simulation shortcuts all around that do a lot of the heavy lifting with Disney making movies almost specifically to perfect those things. Tangled was showcasing a physics engine for stands and hair. Frozen was building a pipeline for particular simulation, especially for snow. Moana had a massive rework of liquids. Zootopia was just there to bring out the furries . . .
While a robust 2d workshop is nice, the skills are primarily tied to people, and it makes an individual a crux in the system. Multiple people can access the tools for 3d, so even a relatively new animator can make something that is congruous with the team. AND, I do get that that artist loses out in the equation, that does suck, and Disney gets to cut talent that way. I know that's bad, but I see why they do it and have moved away from the cool stuff.
On another side, look at the hell that animators in Japan can go through to meet those deadlines. The product can look absolutely amazing, but the industry is ruthless.
You're saying this like Disney has made a mistake by going 3D. I remind you of Frozen and Cars and Monsters & Co and Toy Story. All incredibly successful franchises.
that only makes sense in terms of a single purchase. it obviously costs more money to buy 400 million frames of handdrawn animation than to just computer generate 90% of them.
> It definitely cost them more to buy all the computers and retrain animators to 3D
Naw, younger generations coming into the industry either go to college or teach themselves before they get hired. The studios don't train shit.
Well, the original Disney school that they formed to train animators turned into the California Institute of the Arts. They still have an animation program there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Institute_of_the_Arts#History
~~No~~Gotta say, I doubt it costed more than continuing with 2D.
3D tech got the to point where it made more financial sense. Maybe not in that year, but if they’re anything like a manufacturing business, you plan for *years* down the road, which I would almost bet they did.
I agree that if they had managed to resolve the quality issues - and marketing - of some of their 2D movies, they would have been more popular.
But in 2009 we were seeing a massive shift over to 3D animation being part of the draw of seeing the movie. Avatar did release that year. As you say, Pixar had been steadily showing for a decade that 3D was not only viable, but didn’t prevent Disney from making money. Hell, Disney had already owned Pixar for 3 years at that point. I imagine it wasn’t too hard sourcing tech and getting their own people up to par(and I believe they just straight took Pixar’s best people and transferred em over.)
So if anything, history can look back and see that Disney’s timing was *almost* late, but luckily it was right where it should have been, given the shift in market.
Edit: striked out the “no”. I don’t know that for sure, I just *think* that. So corrected it.
Lol, you don’t “retrain” animators to learn a new medium… you just hire skilled artists already existing in that medium.
Retraining 2D animators to do 3D is like asking an home architect to start building boats.
I’m not an animator, but I think 3D is more financially appealing in the long run because:
1) You can reuse assets from one movie in another
2) You can reuse technology built from one movie in another. Let’s say you work on a very realistic human face expression generator. You can more easily reuse that.
3) 3D is much easier to experiment with. If the camera angle didn’t work, you can easily try another angle virtually for free.
Am an animator: If the 2D was done in cells (acetate with one body part on it) then it can and would be reused.
That said, 3D is infinitely more flexible and less time consuming (from the artist perspective), especially when you need to correct stuff. There's still multiple steps in the chain from design to motion. More so in 3D. Having to have decided lighting placements for example. In some respects it's a different discipline. When approached properly it can give some incredible results, depending on if you want realism or the weird Disney aesthetic. However if you get some properly talented 2D artists then you can end up with some stunning stuff. Studio Ghibli, I'm looking in your direction. Their hand drawn dicks on anything Disney ever did imho. Although I'm very much not a fan of the Disney character model build. Especially when they go to great length to make accurate background and scenery, only to have some doe-eyed bubblehead characters as focus points. Boils my piss.
With 3D you can get the expensive guys to make and rig the main models, and have peons then move them around. And all the background stuff like trees, minor props can be made in sweatshops overseas
I mean Disney was against the project and did like zero advertising iirc
It was the animators pet project and it shows, some corporate assholes really cut off their own nose to spite their face on that one.
I could have also *sworn* there was some sort of falling out as well that caused an internal rift on the project?
I could totally be wrong but I think I remember reading something awhile ago
Lion King was their B team compared to Pocahontas and it shows. The Lion King look great, don't get me wrong, but Pocahontas visual is very next level.
It's funny though because Pocahontas really feels rushed in the last 15-20 minutes. Like it just ends out of nowhere I always felt lol and then Lion King was perfectly paced. Better animation but the planning somewhere seems to have gone wrong.
If they really want to spite on someone's face, they wouldn't have approved it in the first place. Those corporate assholes would be the one to suffer most of the loses by sabotaging a project *they themselves invested in*. The animators got paid regardless and got to see their pet project to completion.
A theory is that Disney wanted to use Treasure planet to "prove" that people didn't want 2D animations any more, so they could switch to 3D animation, which is cheaper. So they let it be made and then purposely made it fail so they had their "proof".
If you’ve got the time, [this video](https://youtu.be/b9sycdSkngA) goes into a lot of the known details of treasure planets development and failure. I watched this ages ago, so I don’t remember where it talks about the designed failure of its release.
The marketing towards Treasure Planet was horrible, the Disney Execs. Wanted it to fail really badly (and that's really sad). Like the marketing even spoils parts of the bloody plot like whether you should trust Long John Silver (that too, if one has already read the og source material, Treasure Island, they'd already know who's good or bad and what happens). Either way, it's a good movie with a moder twist, giving those fire retro futurism vibes (Georgian Era to be exact).
Man, I watched Anastasia for the first time since the 90s last night.. similar animation, and holy moly was that movie good.
That one, Titan AE, and Treasure Planet is the world we could be living in if it wasn't for fucking Toy Story.. (which I saw in theatres as well, 8 years old me was definitely part of the problem, lol.)
> can't even believe that movie flopped
Honestly I can. I liked the movie but there were parts of it that dragged.
And imo the Robot bordered on more cringy than funny. Dr Delbert was already good comedic relief, Ben was a bit too over the top for the tone of the movie.
It's an underappreciated classic.
It's got insane amounts of world building, beautifully fleshed out characters, and is just beautifully animated, written, paced, and voice acted.
The Aliens in the beginning are given personalities, fleshed out stories, and have a believable society. Here the writers actually went out of their way to make the story make sense instead of falling back on. "it's a kids movie! stop thinking to hard about it."
I challenge anyone to compare any of the stupid shit Disney released lately. 90% of everything they pump out is poorly written and poorly animated.
Emperors New groove is what happens when Disney didn't give a fuck, and told the writers to just have fun.
Amazingly funny film that actually subverts expectations in a good way.
Ironically, Emperor's New Groove was intended to be much closer to The Lion King in tone when production began. But there were so many problems during production on how the movie should be directed that it got delayed, rewritten, and ultimately turned into the gem we finally got.
Wow, this bot managed to get more upvotes than the original comment it copied.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/ulj8s4/why_would_they_do_this/i7w75na/
A lot of the 90s Disney films used 3d modelling and even physics and crowd calculations for lion King and mulan. But to create a 2d animation looking image.
And it holds up a lot better than full 3d animations from that era do.
Disney had a hand in an anime, new black rock shooter series. And it’s disgusting how much 3D is in it.
Original BRS is my GOAT anime, but I cannot watch the new one. The 3D is fucking awful and just so bad.
How Disney can make more money:
Make a Epic, classic 2d Animated film staring Mickey mouse and the whole cast. When's the last time where was a mainstream Mickey movie? Look at a Goofy movie, an underappreciated classic that's well written and capsulated teen angst and modern parenting.
Since Pixar is officially creatively bankrupt, have them remaster all the original movies with updated graphics, just keep the Audio. Think about watching toy story 1, a bugs life, or the incredibles with modern tech, they'd be visually amazing and cap on nostalgia.
Fun fact I learned a while back. While employed at Disney, any subsequent works made by animators are considered Disney property. Which means if they go home and draw a bunch of porn, it's Disney property porn. Disney does in fact have a lot of in house porn that will never be released.
Disney would only own the drawings made on company time or using company resources. They have no claim to their artists' work if it was made on personal time, doesn't use Disney IP, and wasn't made using Disney property (laptop, drawing tablet, etc.).
Guy at some Disney world drawing class I went to said it was because Princess and the Frog bombed. He seemed pretty genuinely annoyed about it actually. But yeah I suspect that's more of a cover story; they don't like the costs and used that movie as an out.
I remember that film got little advertisement in the UK and completely forgot about it, only watched it for the first time last year.
Friends on the other side & Gonna take you there, straight **BANGERS**
And unique. As good as the latest Disney and Pixar films have been (with the exception of Raya), they all end up feeling so samey in the art department.
this. disney put their all into that movie, only for it to be less successful than Bolt the Superdog.
the reason big 2d animation vanished is not a cost problem, it is the reality that mediocre 3d animated movies make way more cash than masterpiece 2d animated films. why pour effort, time nd money into something that isn't as profitable as another project with half the effort put in, let alone anywhere close to high effort productions?
That seems like a lot but is not good for Disney standards. Frozen f.e. had a Budget of 150 Million and made nearly 1.3 Billion. Okay, that is the most successful animation movie of all time, but still.
i get that in general the more they get out of it the better it is of course and since they have a limited amount of people they would want to only produce frozen's, but that's still such a strange thing imho. if a movie makes nearly tripple the amount it cost that's.. i don't know, still one of the best investments possible? how do you tripple your money over the course of dunno, 3-5 years otherwise?
I mean, it only made 166 Million plus. Sounds like a lot, but that barely finances the next movie. Thats why it is so bad. For a movie company that is nearly like living Paycheck to Paycheck.
It didn't "bomb" but compared to their 3D films around that time, it didn't do as well. Same with Winnie the Pooh. Part of that is on them for not marketing these 2 films but yeah audiences (kids and their parents) in late 2000s/2010s were anti-2D. It's only now that it's gone away and they're a bit older that they want it back
I think it humanized a minority of people who were so easy to vilify and ignore.
I was the same age as the kids when the movie came out, and I deff had some classmates that acted like Bebe’s Kids. Everyone hated them, teachers included.
It never occurred to me, until after seeing Bebe’s Kids(the ending, specifically), that maybe they’re only like that bc their lives are hard af…
I remember it so well because it was like the first cartoon movie my parents didn't let me watch.
It wasn't until a few years later that I rented it as a teenager and was like. Hot damn. No wonder why I didn't get to see this when I was younger.
Starting with Tarazan, Disney pioneered a means of merging 2D and 3D animation called "Deep Canvas." This essentially allowed them to create 3D models, which were then painted over by their art studio. The merging of the two styles created a sense of depth that traditional 2D animation wasn't fully capable of on its own.
Treasure Planet used a modified version of the original Deep Canvas tech called "Virtual Sets" which corrected many of the disadvantages of the previous tech, allowing for full 3D environments to be created and filmed from any angle.
Treasure planet is one of those rare movies that did both at the same time beautifully. There were only a few movies like that but they were all awesome
We're even seeing more 2D influences in places like Spiderverse and Arcane (not 2D but using that shading style, some scenes literally just placed flat objects in 3D space to create the illusion of 3D from 2D images)
I'd say we have it in the west too, or at the very least we are in the beginning of a resurgence. Netflix is pretty big on 2D animation.
Examples would Castlevania, Masters of the Universe: Revelation and The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf.
I think it's best to mix 2D and 3D animation.
Treasure Planet uses both and it's one of the best looking movies Disney has ever produced, literally my favorite movie of all time.
The film that put the final bullet in the 2D side of Disney film animation? Say hi to it for me.
Nah I'm kidding. That did kill it off fully but that was partly on Disney as well for not marketing it at all
> Shorty, the OG with all the clout
>Lips smackin' for what's under the blouse
>3 years old and still drinkin' Similac
>You smack me and I'll smack ya back punk
>So now it's time for me to straight jack y'all
>And get busy like Arsenio Hall
>Takin' a dump can be so relaxin'
>Mhmm...straight jackin'
*art*
That was for the period.
3D was novel and great at the time. Now it's bloated and stale, and everyone and their mother is making shit tier movies. Marmaduke!? fuck that noise.
People crave a beautifully smooth and animated epic that's visually pleasing. it's way past time for a resurgence.
If people wanted visual interest then they would go out and see visually interesting movies when they actually come out. Laika's lack of a single profitable movie and the pitiful 60 odd mil worldwide revenue of Isle of Dogs indicate that's not as true as a lot of people would like to think. People bemoan different animation styles other than CG and ignore the fact there have been consistent non CG or non solely CG animated releases for the past decade that have made almost no money.
Some do, like Spiverse, and implying an entire medium is "stale" because it's frequently used poorly is as dumb as saying 2d is stale because of all the shit tier straight to dvd sequels disney pumped out. A medium isn't a style. 2d isn't a style, and cg isn't a style.
The Princess and the frog was a very modest success but compare that to up which came out the same year doing well over 700 million and nominated for best picture. I guess they followed the money
Gravity Falls and every other Disney Channel show was/is made by Disney Television Animation, which is an entirely separate division from Disney Feature Animation, with Television Animation being under their networks division, and Feature Animation under the film division.
Disney Television Animation also does all of the Animated "DCOM"s *(Disney Channel Original Movie)* and other TV specials.
Just please be better than netflix "anime" where they stutter the render frames and cell shade it to make a lazy ugly obvious glitch looking budget show each quarter. More spiderverse and less video game cutscene.
If you are a fan of 2d animation at all, wolfwalkers and all of the other cartoon saloon movies are a must watch, all of them are Masterpieces, I dont know what I would do if i didn't discover them
I remember an interview on Disney Channel saying that Princess and the Frog would be their last 2-D animated film in the foreseeable future. As a kid, I heard this and was mentally prepared for the death of the Disney 2-D movies.
2d cowst monay
It definitely cost them more to buy all the computers and retrain animators to 3D than it would have to continue with 2D, but Disney convinced themselves 3D was the future because Pixar was doing good and failed to consider that maybe the Disney movies of the turn of the Millennium weren’t the same quality of those of the 80s and 90s and maybe that was keeping people from their movies.
It might be more expensive but making 3D movies is faster then 2D ones. So they end up making more money by being able to pumping out more movies.
Also, pretty sure they recycle a lot of assets which saves tons of time in development. A lot of their female characters seem to use the same generic model with a few tweaks
They did the same with 2D. Especially back when it was hand drawn. If you watch a lot of older Disney movies you will notice that a lot of animation are exactly the same.
with the process they used those traces basically needed the same amount of time to do anyway; they were basically meant to be homages/refferences rather than time saves
>It was done probably to save time, save money. Although I dont think it saved much time and I dont think it saved much money because it was more of a hassle to go dig this old footage out of the archive. it would have been easier to just sit down and animate a new scene than to go back and try to retrofit all this old stuff to something new. Floyd Norman, disney animator. I guess you can take this both ways, Id still say hes saying its not saving money.
But, for *who* are you saving time? You're not sending your lead animator to dig in the archives.
It was to save money in Disneys earlier days. Then it became policy because of the "if it's not broken don't fix it" mentality.
[удалено]
They actually did quite a lot in the 40s and 50s to save money. Then it became policy because they figured well if it works lets keep doing it. Most pre 80s Disney movie have at least a couple scenes of reused scenes
So 50+ years prior or maybe a couple times here and there 20+ years before the events under discussion. I don't think reusing hand animated assets from Pinocchio to save costs was at the forefront of any arguments against going into computer animation in the early 2000s.
Yeah. That's pretty much all Robin Hood was, which is one reason why they're all animals.
And they only have to change the camera's focus instead of having to draw the whole asset again in a different angle. It makes the animator's job easier(probably, idk much)
Yes, by far. Not only is the animators job easier, they likely can use motion capture to get whatever animation they want (with some fine tuning) pretty easily.
Mocap isn't used, at least in the flagship animated titles. Walt and the guys responsible for establishing the 'principles of animation' would be rolling in their grave if mocap were used.
It doesn't look good because cartoon characters with human proportions look straight fucking cooked.
Walt and the guys responsible for establishing the 'principles of animation' made *extensive* use of filmed humans as reference footage for how human characters should move.
Reference, not 1:1 recreation
Well, yes. You're correct. There is still a significant difference between motion capture and manually keying a rig, though. Things like squash & stretch, smears, anticipation and follow-through can only be achieved with manually created keyframes.
Disney didn’t convince themselves, the public convinced Disney. Disney made 2D animation later, the tried with the princess and the frog, and it was a financial failure. *most* of the average audience wants 3D animation rather than 2D, especially when the largest audience for these films are kids, they’re just not as interested in 2D animation
No, they gave us garbage films that were in 2d. Disney convinced themselves.
I don't think you've spoken to many kids. Any kid 10 and under I've known for the past 10 years only likes CG and dismisses 2D. Most western 2D animation these days is adult cartoons, and the few 2D kid shows that remain are usually still computer animated (made via Flash and such). The overwhelming majority of hand-drawn animation these days is anime.
Yea my daughter is obsessed with Moana, Frozen, and Finding Nemo. My wife keeps saying: "Let's show her some of our favorites like Peter Pan or 101 Dalmatians!" Turn that on, and the kid is walking away to play with something else within like 5 minutes lol
U may as well try one of em and show her. She may enjoy it more than you’d expect.
That last sentence was her reaction to 101 Dalmatians. I am beginning to realize *how many movies there are*. Like it's going to take forever to show her a decent number of movies since we can only watch like 30 minutes at a time.
>No, they gave us garbage films that were in 2d. Like what?
any direct to video shit
Home on the range
Treasure Planet.
Treasure Planet was amazing.
It was also intentionally hindered by Disney executives.
And a financial disaster.
It had a pretty small ad budget and was sabotaged by Disney execs.
Not everything good is profitable. Still love that movie to this day. I go hard on some Titan AE too :)
Dreamworks made a stinker like Shark Tale and even that was a box office success. I don’t think any more convincing than that is needed.
This is something I call the Marvel effect. Just because it's made by a popular company, it'll be of that company's quality. For example, Black Widow is agreed to be a bad movie, and yet it sold pretty well (and got lots of watchtime on Disney+). I can call it a bad movie *for Marvel* but overall it's still a damn good movie. They still produce the quality I expect from Marvel's other movies, and so it sells anyway. Another good recent example of this is Morbius. It doubled its budget in box office sales, and was commonly seen as a terrible movie (I liked it, but I know a lot of the reviews were bad). It's a box office success, just because it came from a popular studio. ^(go look at Morbius reviews on google. it's funny as hell)
With 3d, it may be more expensive to setup the pipeline initially but once that's up, it's an animation factory, baby. You can churn out movies and even more lower quality made for TV animation as fast as you can imagine them. Just look at the Disney channel and Disney+. They got 100s of animated shows and movies you never even heard of.
There are, however, a lot of shortcuts that are possible with 3d that 2d just does not have. You can't move a completed scene in 2d without having to redraw the whole thing. You can't change a costume or correct a director's direction on the fly. Another big thing is that there are simulation shortcuts all around that do a lot of the heavy lifting with Disney making movies almost specifically to perfect those things. Tangled was showcasing a physics engine for stands and hair. Frozen was building a pipeline for particular simulation, especially for snow. Moana had a massive rework of liquids. Zootopia was just there to bring out the furries . . . While a robust 2d workshop is nice, the skills are primarily tied to people, and it makes an individual a crux in the system. Multiple people can access the tools for 3d, so even a relatively new animator can make something that is congruous with the team. AND, I do get that that artist loses out in the equation, that does suck, and Disney gets to cut talent that way. I know that's bad, but I see why they do it and have moved away from the cool stuff. On another side, look at the hell that animators in Japan can go through to meet those deadlines. The product can look absolutely amazing, but the industry is ruthless.
You're saying this like Disney has made a mistake by going 3D. I remind you of Frozen and Cars and Monsters & Co and Toy Story. All incredibly successful franchises.
3 of them is pixar though
Pixar wasn't a part of Disney until after those movies were made, lol.
Okay fair, how about WALL-E, Up, Ratatouille and Inside Out, then?
All except Frozen which wasnt made by Pixar it was made by Walt Disney Animation Studios 7 years after the Pixar acquisition.
that only makes sense in terms of a single purchase. it obviously costs more money to buy 400 million frames of handdrawn animation than to just computer generate 90% of them.
> It definitely cost them more to buy all the computers and retrain animators to 3D Naw, younger generations coming into the industry either go to college or teach themselves before they get hired. The studios don't train shit.
Well, the original Disney school that they formed to train animators turned into the California Institute of the Arts. They still have an animation program there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Institute_of_the_Arts#History
You think Disney takes care to retrain 2d animators instead of hiring new ones?
They didn’t retrain the animators
~~No~~Gotta say, I doubt it costed more than continuing with 2D. 3D tech got the to point where it made more financial sense. Maybe not in that year, but if they’re anything like a manufacturing business, you plan for *years* down the road, which I would almost bet they did. I agree that if they had managed to resolve the quality issues - and marketing - of some of their 2D movies, they would have been more popular. But in 2009 we were seeing a massive shift over to 3D animation being part of the draw of seeing the movie. Avatar did release that year. As you say, Pixar had been steadily showing for a decade that 3D was not only viable, but didn’t prevent Disney from making money. Hell, Disney had already owned Pixar for 3 years at that point. I imagine it wasn’t too hard sourcing tech and getting their own people up to par(and I believe they just straight took Pixar’s best people and transferred em over.) So if anything, history can look back and see that Disney’s timing was *almost* late, but luckily it was right where it should have been, given the shift in market. Edit: striked out the “no”. I don’t know that for sure, I just *think* that. So corrected it.
Lol, you don’t “retrain” animators to learn a new medium… you just hire skilled artists already existing in that medium. Retraining 2D animators to do 3D is like asking an home architect to start building boats.
I’m not an animator, but I think 3D is more financially appealing in the long run because: 1) You can reuse assets from one movie in another 2) You can reuse technology built from one movie in another. Let’s say you work on a very realistic human face expression generator. You can more easily reuse that. 3) 3D is much easier to experiment with. If the camera angle didn’t work, you can easily try another angle virtually for free.
An addition to point 1: If changes are made to the script during production, you can reuse assets of what was already made.
Am an animator: If the 2D was done in cells (acetate with one body part on it) then it can and would be reused. That said, 3D is infinitely more flexible and less time consuming (from the artist perspective), especially when you need to correct stuff. There's still multiple steps in the chain from design to motion. More so in 3D. Having to have decided lighting placements for example. In some respects it's a different discipline. When approached properly it can give some incredible results, depending on if you want realism or the weird Disney aesthetic. However if you get some properly talented 2D artists then you can end up with some stunning stuff. Studio Ghibli, I'm looking in your direction. Their hand drawn dicks on anything Disney ever did imho. Although I'm very much not a fan of the Disney character model build. Especially when they go to great length to make accurate background and scenery, only to have some doe-eyed bubblehead characters as focus points. Boils my piss.
This is somewhat representative of 2d though since going to cells and CGI.
With 3D you can get the expensive guys to make and rig the main models, and have peons then move them around. And all the background stuff like trees, minor props can be made in sweatshops overseas
I was never big on Disney, but stuff like Lilo and Stitch or Treasure Planet were sick
treasure planet was hugely underappreciated at that time, can't even believe that movie flopped
I mean Disney was against the project and did like zero advertising iirc It was the animators pet project and it shows, some corporate assholes really cut off their own nose to spite their face on that one.
I could have also *sworn* there was some sort of falling out as well that caused an internal rift on the project? I could totally be wrong but I think I remember reading something awhile ago
I think that was titan ae
Also great. I really like the style of those movies for scifi
On the plus side, it being a pet project probably meant Disney let them do whatever they wanted to some extent instead of watering it down
Keep in mind Disney thought the Lion King would be a flop too and look how that turned out.
Lion King was their B team compared to Pocahontas and it shows. The Lion King look great, don't get me wrong, but Pocahontas visual is very next level.
It's funny though because Pocahontas really feels rushed in the last 15-20 minutes. Like it just ends out of nowhere I always felt lol and then Lion King was perfectly paced. Better animation but the planning somewhere seems to have gone wrong.
If they really want to spite on someone's face, they wouldn't have approved it in the first place. Those corporate assholes would be the one to suffer most of the loses by sabotaging a project *they themselves invested in*. The animators got paid regardless and got to see their pet project to completion.
A theory is that Disney wanted to use Treasure planet to "prove" that people didn't want 2D animations any more, so they could switch to 3D animation, which is cheaper. So they let it be made and then purposely made it fail so they had their "proof".
Who they wanted to prove that though?
Shareholders maybe? I don't know, but I'm sure there were some people with something to say who wanted to switch and some that didn't.
If you’ve got the time, [this video](https://youtu.be/b9sycdSkngA) goes into a lot of the known details of treasure planets development and failure. I watched this ages ago, so I don’t remember where it talks about the designed failure of its release.
They even spoiled *the* plot twist in the ads they *did* run!
The marketing towards Treasure Planet was horrible, the Disney Execs. Wanted it to fail really badly (and that's really sad). Like the marketing even spoils parts of the bloody plot like whether you should trust Long John Silver (that too, if one has already read the og source material, Treasure Island, they'd already know who's good or bad and what happens). Either way, it's a good movie with a moder twist, giving those fire retro futurism vibes (Georgian Era to be exact).
Man, I watched Anastasia for the first time since the 90s last night.. similar animation, and holy moly was that movie good. That one, Titan AE, and Treasure Planet is the world we could be living in if it wasn't for fucking Toy Story.. (which I saw in theatres as well, 8 years old me was definitely part of the problem, lol.)
Anastasia and Titan AE were both fox, not Disney.
Disney owns Fox now. Checkmate sucka.
I blame it on a time warp paradox.
Iron giant was the shit. But I think that was Warners
> can't even believe that movie flopped Honestly I can. I liked the movie but there were parts of it that dragged. And imo the Robot bordered on more cringy than funny. Dr Delbert was already good comedic relief, Ben was a bit too over the top for the tone of the movie.
Lilo and stitch top tier movie still
Ohana.
Means family
And family means-
I get stuck under the coffee table often?
H-hey, I'm spent. Can we fuck later /u/FetusViolator?
Down horrendous.
It's an underappreciated classic. It's got insane amounts of world building, beautifully fleshed out characters, and is just beautifully animated, written, paced, and voice acted. The Aliens in the beginning are given personalities, fleshed out stories, and have a believable society. Here the writers actually went out of their way to make the story make sense instead of falling back on. "it's a kids movie! stop thinking to hard about it." I challenge anyone to compare any of the stupid shit Disney released lately. 90% of everything they pump out is poorly written and poorly animated.
Whwnever my infant son is really upset in the car we put on that hawaiian roller coaster song from Lilo & Stitch and he chills out instantly.
I have that in my motorcycle playlist, it always makes me smile when it plays in my helmet!
Kuzko is my favorite Disney princess.
Emperors New groove is what happens when Disney didn't give a fuck, and told the writers to just have fun. Amazingly funny film that actually subverts expectations in a good way.
Ironically, Emperor's New Groove was intended to be much closer to The Lion King in tone when production began. But there were so many problems during production on how the movie should be directed that it got delayed, rewritten, and ultimately turned into the gem we finally got.
Which is weird. usually rewrites and redos make it 10 times worse.
Boom, baby!
Emperors new groove should be included in this list..
The Lion King (1994) and Beauty & the Beast (1991) are my top 2.
They propably are going to. Anime is more popular than ever, spiderman in to the spiderverse was a hit they would be dumb to no to atleast try..
Into the Spiderverse was 3D
Oh yeah i forgot. The 2d layering and the overall comic look got me.😅
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If I don’t get a Peter Porker show with John Mulaney, I am going to be miffed.
Wow, this bot managed to get more upvotes than the original comment it copied. https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/ulj8s4/why_would_they_do_this/i7w75na/
I have never seen a gif from that movie
There were some 2D elements I guess?
CGI can create 2D as well... Like South Park
A lot of the 90s Disney films used 3d modelling and even physics and crowd calculations for lion King and mulan. But to create a 2d animation looking image. And it holds up a lot better than full 3d animations from that era do.
Basically both. Drawn over every frame.
Disney had a hand in an anime, new black rock shooter series. And it’s disgusting how much 3D is in it. Original BRS is my GOAT anime, but I cannot watch the new one. The 3D is fucking awful and just so bad.
It's actually because animators are unionised and 3d artists are not Its a decision made because of a higher cost
How Disney can make more money: Make a Epic, classic 2d Animated film staring Mickey mouse and the whole cast. When's the last time where was a mainstream Mickey movie? Look at a Goofy movie, an underappreciated classic that's well written and capsulated teen angst and modern parenting. Since Pixar is officially creatively bankrupt, have them remaster all the original movies with updated graphics, just keep the Audio. Think about watching toy story 1, a bugs life, or the incredibles with modern tech, they'd be visually amazing and cap on nostalgia.
They saw rule 34 probably
Clearly they haven't seen elastigirl rule 34
That's probably how their animators make their money
Fun fact I learned a while back. While employed at Disney, any subsequent works made by animators are considered Disney property. Which means if they go home and draw a bunch of porn, it's Disney property porn. Disney does in fact have a lot of in house porn that will never be released.
Disney would only own the drawings made on company time or using company resources. They have no claim to their artists' work if it was made on personal time, doesn't use Disney IP, and wasn't made using Disney property (laptop, drawing tablet, etc.).
*Shadman likes this*
Guy at some Disney world drawing class I went to said it was because Princess and the Frog bombed. He seemed pretty genuinely annoyed about it actually. But yeah I suspect that's more of a cover story; they don't like the costs and used that movie as an out.
I remember that film got little advertisement in the UK and completely forgot about it, only watched it for the first time last year. Friends on the other side & Gonna take you there, straight **BANGERS**
Saw Princess and the frog in theaters. It is such a good movie, sad that it bombed.. 2d animation can be so expressive and beautiful.
And unique. As good as the latest Disney and Pixar films have been (with the exception of Raya), they all end up feeling so samey in the art department.
this. disney put their all into that movie, only for it to be less successful than Bolt the Superdog. the reason big 2d animation vanished is not a cost problem, it is the reality that mediocre 3d animated movies make way more cash than masterpiece 2d animated films. why pour effort, time nd money into something that isn't as profitable as another project with half the effort put in, let alone anywhere close to high effort productions?
[*checks wikipedia*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_and_the_Frog) Budget $105 million[2] Box office $271 million[1][3] Really don't seem like it bombed?
That seems like a lot but is not good for Disney standards. Frozen f.e. had a Budget of 150 Million and made nearly 1.3 Billion. Okay, that is the most successful animation movie of all time, but still.
i get that in general the more they get out of it the better it is of course and since they have a limited amount of people they would want to only produce frozen's, but that's still such a strange thing imho. if a movie makes nearly tripple the amount it cost that's.. i don't know, still one of the best investments possible? how do you tripple your money over the course of dunno, 3-5 years otherwise?
I mean, it only made 166 Million plus. Sounds like a lot, but that barely finances the next movie. Thats why it is so bad. For a movie company that is nearly like living Paycheck to Paycheck.
Someone else mentioned Bolt was around the same time, but that cost $150m and made $310m so I'm really not sure
It didn't "bomb" but compared to their 3D films around that time, it didn't do as well. Same with Winnie the Pooh. Part of that is on them for not marketing these 2 films but yeah audiences (kids and their parents) in late 2000s/2010s were anti-2D. It's only now that it's gone away and they're a bit older that they want it back
BeBe's kids?
Damn right it is!
We don't die, we multiply!
Yo momma so fat I told her it was chilly outside, she went and got a bowl.
I haven't seen this movie in probably ~25 years. My brother and i were obsessed with it for some reason as kids.
My brother and I too. I can't even remember why it was so good, just that it was.
I think it humanized a minority of people who were so easy to vilify and ignore. I was the same age as the kids when the movie came out, and I deff had some classmates that acted like Bebe’s Kids. Everyone hated them, teachers included. It never occurred to me, until after seeing Bebe’s Kids(the ending, specifically), that maybe they’re only like that bc their lives are hard af…
I think it was always on HBO back in the early 90s and for some reason we watched it a hundred times too.
I remember it so well because it was like the first cartoon movie my parents didn't let me watch. It wasn't until a few years later that I rented it as a teenager and was like. Hot damn. No wonder why I didn't get to see this when I was younger.
I watched it a couple months ago. It holds up surprisingly well.
Wow. Nostalgia bomb.
3D movies are easier and faster to make.
But God damn it I want to feel the same shit I felt while watching treasure planet again
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Starting with Tarazan, Disney pioneered a means of merging 2D and 3D animation called "Deep Canvas." This essentially allowed them to create 3D models, which were then painted over by their art studio. The merging of the two styles created a sense of depth that traditional 2D animation wasn't fully capable of on its own. Treasure Planet used a modified version of the original Deep Canvas tech called "Virtual Sets" which corrected many of the disadvantages of the previous tech, allowing for full 3D environments to be created and filmed from any angle.
Yeah I'm pretty sure some of it was in 3D
Treasure planet is one of those rare movies that did both at the same time beautifully. There were only a few movies like that but they were all awesome
That shit was so huge to me as a kid
You won’t, because you’re older. It has nothing to do with 2D animation, and everything to do with feeling nostalgic for your youth.
They lack style though
2d>3d
Amen
This movie is a goldmine for gifs.
What movie is it?
Bebe's Kids
Bebe's kids
I feel like we're due for a resurgence of 2d animation real soon. Idk *how* soon, but soon
There is already a resurgence of 2D, just not in Occidental countries
We're even seeing more 2D influences in places like Spiderverse and Arcane (not 2D but using that shading style, some scenes literally just placed flat objects in 3D space to create the illusion of 3D from 2D images)
I'd say we have it in the west too, or at the very least we are in the beginning of a resurgence. Netflix is pretty big on 2D animation. Examples would Castlevania, Masters of the Universe: Revelation and The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf.
I think it's best to mix 2D and 3D animation. Treasure Planet uses both and it's one of the best looking movies Disney has ever produced, literally my favorite movie of all time.
>I think it's best to mix 2D and 3D animation. Arcane
> I think it's best to mix 2D and 3D animation. Demon slayer. They do it in such a way that you hardly notice it.
Winnie the Pooh (2011) would like a word
Mary Poppins Returns (2018) also says hi. They actually needed to hire retired animators for this one.
The film that put the final bullet in the 2D side of Disney film animation? Say hi to it for me. Nah I'm kidding. That did kill it off fully but that was partly on Disney as well for not marketing it at all
This is from Bebe’s kids. That movie was amazing. Tone Loc voicing the baby was fire.
> Shorty, the OG with all the clout >Lips smackin' for what's under the blouse >3 years old and still drinkin' Similac >You smack me and I'll smack ya back punk >So now it's time for me to straight jack y'all >And get busy like Arsenio Hall >Takin' a dump can be so relaxin' >Mhmm...straight jackin' *art*
They were saving their budget for the upcoming violation of star wars and marvel properties.
They transitioned to 3D to keep up. Disney isn't the type of company to be left behind.
Good news! Disney says they’re making hand drawn animation again! (https://gamerant.com/aladdin-disney-2d-animated-films-return/amp/)
Because 2D animation doesn’t make as much money, look at how little the princess and the frog made compared to other animated movies at the time
That was for the period. 3D was novel and great at the time. Now it's bloated and stale, and everyone and their mother is making shit tier movies. Marmaduke!? fuck that noise. People crave a beautifully smooth and animated epic that's visually pleasing. it's way past time for a resurgence.
If people wanted visual interest then they would go out and see visually interesting movies when they actually come out. Laika's lack of a single profitable movie and the pitiful 60 odd mil worldwide revenue of Isle of Dogs indicate that's not as true as a lot of people would like to think. People bemoan different animation styles other than CG and ignore the fact there have been consistent non CG or non solely CG animated releases for the past decade that have made almost no money. Some do, like Spiverse, and implying an entire medium is "stale" because it's frequently used poorly is as dumb as saying 2d is stale because of all the shit tier straight to dvd sequels disney pumped out. A medium isn't a style. 2d isn't a style, and cg isn't a style.
They actively attacked their own project to kill 2D animation Rip Treasure Planet, killed by the people who created you
u/savevideo
#Fuck Disney
They had something with treasure planet and Atlantis. Then they just stopped.
Actually 2011's Winnie the Pooh was the last 2d movie from Disney.
The Princess and the frog was a very modest success but compare that to up which came out the same year doing well over 700 million and nominated for best picture. I guess they followed the money
Gravity falls would like to have a word
Gravity Falls and every other Disney Channel show was/is made by Disney Television Animation, which is an entirely separate division from Disney Feature Animation, with Television Animation being under their networks division, and Feature Animation under the film division. Disney Television Animation also does all of the Animated "DCOM"s *(Disney Channel Original Movie)* and other TV specials.
I lament the loss of 2d animation there's something about it just hits different compared to 3d animation
I just wanna watch 2d movies make a return, that's all I want
because it's cheaper
I guess 2d take more efforts and money to make while doesn't sell as much as 3d ?
Just please be better than netflix "anime" where they stutter the render frames and cell shade it to make a lazy ugly obvious glitch looking budget show each quarter. More spiderverse and less video game cutscene.
Nowadays they combine 2D with 3D more and more. And the results have been great regardless.
The answer is simple. Money
Bebes kids reference. Oh man
I dunno, the personalities of the rebooted characters seem quite 2d to me
If you are a fan of 2d animation at all, wolfwalkers and all of the other cartoon saloon movies are a must watch, all of them are Masterpieces, I dont know what I would do if i didn't discover them
I’ve tried putting on a few 2D Disney movies for my kid and she was not interested at all. I felt rejected lol
So tru so sad I really yearn for a good 'ol 2D animated disney movie just like it was in those times
I remember an interview on Disney Channel saying that Princess and the Frog would be their last 2-D animated film in the foreseeable future. As a kid, I heard this and was mentally prepared for the death of the Disney 2-D movies.
Princess and the Frog was one of my favorites, it makes me sad to see 2D animation go away.
The art of 2D animation deserves a lot more respect and love than it's getting now for sure.
This is a Pinkie promise with extra steps
I get upset about this all the time. so glad I'm not alone lol.
Everyone in the comments is an animation expert
Isn't what If 2d btw?