Cinema Cemetery

What Killed Traditional Animation?

Disclaimer:

The following is my own opinion and not the opinion of any studios I have worked for in the past or will work for in the future. All specific information comes courtesy of publicly accessible articles, please see the bibliography for more information.

When was the last time you saw a traditional-looking animated film in the theaters?

When was the last time you saw a cg animated film in theaters?

It’s easy to see how sharp the dropoff of that classic animated aesthetic is over the last ten years or so, but what is the reason behind this seeming death of an art form? To answer this question, we’re going to travel back in time a bit.

“Let’s rewind the clocks to November 22 of 1995, when the first Toy Story bowed in theaters. During this time hand-drawn animation was still prevalent in US theaters everywhere and was arguably still in its ultimate prime, while CG animation was still in its infancy and not yet the industry standard (as is the case today). Back then, the idea of a fully CG-animated feature film (let alone it becoming industry standard) was almost unheard of. (2)”

Toy Story was an exciting first, but it transcended the simple novelty of its aesthetic by being a great story with interesting characters! No other studio in 1995 could compete with the cg graphics and it was so wildly different from the animation style popularized by Disney, that few people really thought this little, unique, upstart studio’s computer-aided visuals would eventually steamroll the more traditional animation aesthetic popular at the time.

“But as history would have it, even Disney’s iron grasp on hand-drawn animation would begin to slowly fade away as the early 2000’s saw more of its hand-drawn feature films come up short in the box office: Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, and Home on the Range. As the medium of hand-drawn animation began to fall out of favor with each passing year, so did Disney’s interest in soldiering on with a medium that was starting to hand them diminishing returns. The feature animation unit of Disney-MGM Studios (now known as Disney’s Hollywood Studios) in Orlando was shut down in March of 2004. Home of the Range was also released the same year and, as with the others, it underperformed at the box office. (2)”

“The (so called) ‘death’ of hand-drawn feature animation didn’t happen overnight. Rather, it was gradual. It was one that took place in the span of nearly a decade and a half since Toy Story came out. Eventually, ‘We can do that!’ turned into ‘We can only do this!’ as hand-drawn animation started to disappear from our theater screens. Now, the days when hand-drawn animation was considered commercially viable are long gone as CG-animation and the technology behind it are what drive the industry forward... (2)”

Despite jumping on the bandwagon that seemed to be the most profitable at the time, Disney DID go back to the traditional style in a last ditch attempt to make it work for them again.

Yet“...missteps in marketing and an error of judgment that saw Princess and the Frog stomped on by the release of Avatar five days later.

Two years afterward, 2011 would see Disney take a final dip in the waters of hand-drawn animation with Winnie the Pooh. Despite shining reviews and a modest, easily achievable budget, it too was trampled on by the release of another big film ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2’ (2)”

So that’s it then? Kiss old school animation goodbye?

Not entirely, the situation may seem dire...but only from a narrow field of view. If we’re talking about wide release feature films in north america, then yes, traditional-looking animation is nearly non-existent. But that’s just a single slice of a global pie. 

“Computer animation may be what audiences see in theaters, but hand drawn animation hasn’t completely disappeared. (6)”

“If you're in the United States, it's understandable that you'd think that hand-drawn movies just aren't around anymore - but that's not entirely true. Studio Ghibli, legendary animation house best-known for producing Miyazaki's acclaimed feature films (you probably know them, even if you don't know you know: Kiki's Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and tons more) is still hard at work - and so is he…(3)” despite his constant claims of retirement. And that’s just an example that’s managed to cross the pond in a big way.

In 2017 alone the following animated films have come out, granted some of them are more mixed media than purists would like, but they all capture an aspect of that nostalgic animation vibe in some sense. This is not a full and complete list, but I did my best. 

From Japan we got:

Napping Princess, several feature additions to the Digimon film series Tri, Fairy Tale: Dragon Cry, Fate/Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel, Genocidal Organ, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, Kizumonogatari 3, Black Butler: Book of the Atlantic, Lu over the wall, Mary and the Witches Flower, The Night is Short: Walk on Girl, Nova Seed, Pokemon: I choose you (the 20th movie), and Sword Art Online the movie: Ordinal scale, Chain Chronicle Light of Haecceitas Parts 2 and 3, Code Geass Lelouch of the Rebellion: Awakening Path, Crayon Shin-Chan: Invasion Alien Shiriri, Detective Conan: Crimson Love Letter, Doraemon the Movie 2017, Free! Timeless Medley parts 1, 2, and 3, Kuroko’s Basketball The Movie: Last Game, Lupin the Third: Spray of Blood, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection, Matzinger Z: Infinity, Overlord: The Dark Warrior, Overlord: The Undead King, Pretty Cure Dream Stars!

South Korea came on strong with:

I’ll Just Live in Bando

From the USA we got:

Batman and Harley Quinn, Hey Arnold: The Jungle Movie, The Jetsons & WWE, Justice League Dark, My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea, My Little Pony: The Movie, and (for some reason) Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory, Teen Titans: The Judas Contract

China created:

Have a Nice Day

From Ireland we got:

The Breadwinner

France brought us:

The Big Bad Fox and other tales, Mutafukaz

India made:

Hanuman: Da’ Damdaar

Iran created:

Release from Heaven

Hungary brought:

Tales from the Lakeside

From Columbia we got:

Lila’s Book

Poland brought us:

Loving Vincent, Moomins and the Winter Wonderland

Italy cooked up:

Pipi, Pupu & Rosemary: The Mystery of the Stolen Notes

Denmark created:

Next Door Spy

Sweden constructed:

Gordon and Paddy

Indonesia crafted:

Si Juki the movie

Russia produced:

The tale of peter and fevronia, three heroes and the king of the sea, as well as three heroes and the princess of egypt 

And last but not least, Austria gave us:

Tehran Taboo

Non-cg style animation, put simply, is far from being dead. It’s just not in the places we used to find it.

“Even if it's been...years since Disney's last animated feature film, you can still find 2D cartoons one place: TV. Long-running classic The Simpsons is about as omnipresent and American as apple pie, and new animated shows like Steven Universe enjoy great popularity. (3)”

“But there's another screen in our lives today. I'm looking at it right now, and so are you. ... Some of today's best animated awesomeness comes to you directly from the internet, through indie webseries or YouTube-only music videos. And just because they're not in theaters or backed by the biggest of names doesn't mean they don't kick butt, or rack up views in the millions. (3)”

“Then there's the Disney short Paperman, a fond homage to old-school style that so well captured the look and feel of pencil and (of course) paper, that at first, it might fool you into thinking no computers were even involved…(3)”

Though the popular mass-market animated films in cinemas recently have been cg, the artists making them are as sharp as ever!

“While the methods have changed over the years, using pixels rather than pencils still requires drawing and animation skills.

‘The bottom line is, even if you're making something entirely digitally, there is a craft of animation regarding traditional drawing skills and ways of making things move,’ says Gary Thomas, associate director of the charity Animate Projects.

‘Those are skills required whether you're making a flip book or doing something entirely with CGI.’ (5)”

“Now this is not to say one technique is better than the other. That is simply not true. We get good hand drawn animated films just as much as we get good computer animated films and vice versa. The technique is not what makes a film superior but rather the story, characters and themes that make the film relatable to the audience. How that film is put together is secondary. The problem comes when the people in charge of a film compare and contrast what is popular at the time to what works. This is nothing new in the film making industry as it happens almost all the time. (4)”

“ For any animation, you need to be able to draw in the first place. If you can't draw with a pencil in your hand, you're not going to be able to draw in a computer. It's still drawing.

A human being still has to tell a computer how to make a character move and that's still animation skill. Instead of drawing each frame, animators have to make the character move accurately and it is a complex experience. Each joint a character would move is manipulated and moved by an animator. Each of those characters has got over 1,000 points of articulation,

It's a very skilled job and [requires] understanding the way different parts of the body move.

The computer doesn't really do the creative work or fill in the blanks meaningfully but it's still more like puppeteering in very slow motion rather than drawing (5)”, yet they share the same roots.

Even in this fast-paced, cg studio landscape; fine art skills will never truly go extinct:

“From character designs, to storyboards, animatics and concept sketches, the art of traditional illustration and animation is far from dead. The first steps in making an animated movie are to quickly, and roughly sketch out character concepts, backgrounds, color schemes and scripted scenes to help develop the visual style of the film. An animated film’s conceptual team will pour through hundreds of character designs before refining them into the lively characters you see on screen. It would take these designers far too long to 3D model each of these character concepts. The same is true for environments and scenes dressings. The time and energy it would take to 3D model designs that will most likely be rejected in a matter of seconds, or at the very least heavily modified, would be extremely inefficient. (6)”

So back to paperman.

More and more, we’re seeing elements of what we loved about those old animated movies we grew up with, working their way into modern cg animation. 

“Over time computer animators began to, and still do, incorporate cartoony elements that harken back to traditional cartoons and animation. This is especially evident in the character designs in films like Book of Life and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. With the latter film and DreamWorks Madagascar films, the animators made use of the classic animation technique of ‘squash and stretch’ with exaggerated facial features and body movements for comedic affect.

Tangled has a very 2-D animated aesthetic. The film makers wanted to make it feel more like a traditional animated movie, going so far as to have had 2-D animation legend Glen Keane direct the movie before he dropped down to supervising animator. His work shows with the character designs and motions that are more common in the world of traditional animation. In addition, the backgrounds in Tangled are animated and designed in a more painterly style commonly found in traditional animation rather than a photo realistic style. (4)”

As the artform of the cg movie continues to develop, it embraces more and more of that which it cast off in the first place: traditional animation. 

So if you love the old school, fear not. Around the world, online, and on television, that style you adore is alive and well. Additionally, modern feature-length cg animation is starting to implement lessons learned from the rich history of the style which predated it. I have no doubt in my mind that we’ll see continued experimentation as the years progress.

So, what killed traditional animation? Nothing. Traditional animation is still alive and well, making everything around it better as a result.

This has been cinema cemetery, digging six feet deeper into filmmaking culture.

-Josh Evans