Disney to go back to their 2d roots?

[VGmaster9]

If they're really going through with this, I'm psyched. Hopefully they'll start doing more hybrid animation combining 2d and 3d effectively. Would love to see something like Treasure Planet with modern technology.

[Dean]

Interesting. Treasure planet is so underrated :'(

[D.T. Nethery]

Anything promoting hand drawn animation is appreciated , but I think some of the articles are a bit overblown about “Disney’s Return to Hand Drawn Animation”. Clickbait titles getting a lot of fans excited thinking that the Big Event hand drawn feature films like Aladdin or The Lion King , etc. are coming back … so far I don’t see that happening soon , but hopefully they are laying the groundwork for it. If it does happen I'll be very glad to see it.

In this article Eric Goldberg clarifies the real situation : “Over the past few years, I’ve been involved on a fair number of hand-drawn projects for the parks, so we’ve been keeping it alive this whole time. But I think what’s changed recently is the attitude of the studio that this is something we need to keep in the training program. We recognize we’re starting small with just a handful of people to start with, but they’re a good handful. They’re very talented and we’ve really enjoyed working with them. And yes, there are projects coming down the pipeline that absolutely will require hand-drawn animation. You won’t get me on record saying something like, “We’ve got 28 features coming in hand drawn,” but there is a lot of interest in hand-drawn work at the studio.”

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/series/sket ... 15588.html

[slowtiger]

Completely overhyped press coverage about a Disney press release. What they say is essentially: We're selling the kids a video about how to draw OUR IP characters, and we put making scribbles during 3D animation production officially into our training program. That's it. Nothing about producing 2D animated films.

[D.T. Nethery]

Completely overhyped press coverage about a Disney press release. What they say is essentially: We're selling the kids a video about how to draw OUR IP characters, and we put making scribbles during 3D animation production officially into our training program. That's it. Nothing about producing 2D animated films.

I will say I'm glad to see Disney encouraging kids (and adults) to draw and emphasizing the continuing relevance of being able to draw even in the context of animation production where CG animation is the final form of animation on the screen. Of course, for concept art, character design, and storyboarding good drawing skills are essential. But also for animation, because even if the final result is CG , animators will still thumbnail their scenes and some even go the extent of doing a hand drawn rough animation pass on some of their scenes to work out the animation first before they do the CG version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwOG36J7IyQ , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZsFo2nDbME .

If I had seen a series like Sketchbook when I was a young person interested in animation I would have been inspired by it. (as indeed I was inspired by shows like "The Disney Family Album" on the old Disney Channel , which featured episodes about Disney animation artists such as Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball, Ken Anderson, Eric Larson , Woolie Reitherman, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Marc Davis, not to mention the various episodes of the old Disneyland television series that would give a "behind-the-scenes" look at how the animation was made.)

But I agree with you that the various articles that have popped-up recently promoting this idea of "Disney's return to hand drawn animation" (based on the promotion of the new Sketchbook series appearing on Disney+Plus) seems over-hyped. Hand drawn animation continues to be utilized in various capacities at Disney (the occasional short film, animation for theme park attractions, character exploration animation done prior to creating CG models of the characters) , but if these articles and videos like the one posted above are giving fans reasons to think that there are numerous hand drawn feature films in the pipeline being readied to go into production soon I believe they will be disappointed. At this time there are a handful of veteran traditional animators still at Disney and they have recently started a small training program with 6 trainees (chosen from among 2000 applicants) : "Last year, chief creative officer Jennifer Lee and Disney Animation Studios president Clark Spencer [producer of Lilo & Stitch, among others] launched a new hand-drawn animation training program. Six trainees were selected from 2,000 applicants. They will train for twelve months under Eric Goldberg, Mark Henn, Randy Haycock, and Rachel Bibb." .

[Peter Wassink]

Six trainees were selected from 2,000 applicants. They will train for twelve months under Eric Goldberg, Mark Henn, Randy Haycock, and Rachel Bibb."[/i] .

Wow, that sounds like one brutal selection process!
harder to become a 2d animator than an astronaut these days

[Peter Wassink]

.............

[D.T. Nethery]

Six trainees were selected from 2,000 applicants. They will train for twelve months under Eric Goldberg, Mark Henn, Randy Haycock, and Rachel Bibb."[/i] .

Wow, that sounds like one brutal selection process!
harder to become a 2d animator than an astronaut these days

Indeed. If they had 2000 applicants wanting to learn traditional animation (I'm sure most of them young people) that does seem to show there is a still a high level of interest in trad animation. To me, the main issue is getting a major studio/film distribution company to throw the full weight of their marketing machine behind the theatrical release of a hand drawn movie.