Originally Posted By JeffG This was a very well-written article and I do agree with quite a few of the points made, although I'm not so sure about a few others. The one mistake that I found the article to be making (to a degree) is one that I see fairly often. That mistake is the treatment of "animation" as a single genre of film instead of as a medium for telling many different types of stories. That is the viewpoint that tends to lead to every new animated film being automatically compared to "The Lion King" or some other recent blockbuster, regardless of whether there is any similarity beyond the fact that both are animated. It is also the reason why a single flop seems to lead to speculation about whether or not animation is a dying art, even though that speculation never turns out to be accurate. I do think there was some accuracy to that point of view back when animated films were few and far between and generally were only being made by Disney (at least in the US). As Disney ramped up production and other companies started producing more and more animated films, the films have started tracking more like live-action. Each film seems to succeed or fail based on public interest, the marketing campaign, competition from other films, and the merits of the film itself. It is for this reason that I really have a hard time going along with the "market saturation" theory for why films like "Atlantis" or "Treasure Planet" have not done as well. While Disney's increased output probably has somewhat diluted the box-office draw of placing the Disney name on a film, I'm not so sure that is such a terrible tradeoff when the end result is more films with an opportunity to succeed. Certainly, recent hits such as "Lilo & Stitch", "Tarzan", and the Pixar films have shown that Disney can still succeed quite well with animated films. I think the key problems with "Treasure Planet" and "Atlantis" were likely a mix of audience apathy towards animated adventure films, mixed word-of-mouth, heavy competition, and marketing campaigns that failed to reach the right target audience. Essentially, these are the same sorts of issues that lead to disappointing performance for any kind of film, animated or otherwise. I have also seen this tendency to lump all animation together in some of the discussions of the recent successes with CGI films. I do think that the novelty of 3D CGI animation probably helped to initially get people into the theater for "Toy Story", but after that it has essentially been a series of good films that were marketed well. Certainly, we have already seen CGI films released that flopped ("Final Fantasy" and "Stuart Little 2") or were disappointments compared to expectations ("Antz" and "Dinosaur"). I've seen a few comments (mostly on this forum) implying that the fact that they were CGI films were the main reason for the success of "Shrek" and "Ice Age". In reality, though, most of the pre-release buzz for "Shrek" seemed to be focused on the fairly biting satire, and particularly on the jabs at Disney and other parts of show business. The marketing also heavily took advantage of the star power of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz. In the case of "Ice Age", I really think that film's success was primarily due to an absolutely hilarious trailer combined with the very good timing of the film's release when there was minimal competition out there. That earned the film a big opening weekend, which then allowed mostly-positive word-of-mouth to carry it from there. Ultimately, I think what we are now seeing is simply that animated films are tracking like any other films. Some are hits, some are misses, and most are somewhere inbetween. That probably is the way it will continue to be. -Jeff
Originally Posted By Emz Disney already had its big 2002 animated release five months earlier with Lilo & Stitch. Disney was also gearing up its heavy marketing campaign for the Lilo & Stitch DVD which hit at the same time as Treasure Planet's opening. Not to mention Disney was also touting Lion King in IMAX and Monsters Inc. on DVD. At this time, the market was definitely over-saturated with Disney animation. The marketing for Treasure Planet was mediocre and uninspired, with lousy commercials/trailers and very little licensing. No appearances on talk shows by voice actors, either. I did see the McDonald's Treasure Planet Happy Meals advertisment a lot, but that was about it. Ironically, the Happy Meals tie-in contract is supposedly what forced Disney to have to keep the horrible Thanksgiving release date. Going up against Harry Potter is pretty much suicidal for any film geared towards children/teenagers. At this point, a Harry Potter film could be savaged by every critic in the world and kids would still want to go see it. It did not help for the Media pundits to repeatedly pronounced Treasure Planet a financial "flop" before the film had even been out a week. Many people connected "Treasure Planet" and "flop" and assumed the film was no good and stayed away. Overpaid CEO Michael Eisner made matters even worse, dropping the blame on those darned expensive and frivolous animators and then announcing that Disney was restating its earnings loss due to "Treasure Planet" flopping. I can't understand why companies make films that they won't properly market or support. I and many others have gotten the sense that Disney was not very interested in promoting Treasure Planet.
Originally Posted By MouseBear Salutations Jim, Your article was very well written and you did a great job supporting your points. I agree that WDFA has lost its way, but I think everything will work out. Unfortunately I suspect it will be someone else who fixes feature animation. I think what we will see more and more is Disney contracting for animated movies. This is pretty much the relationship they now have with Pixar; and I think Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois have made a similar agreement with Disney. Its too bad the studio that Walt founded won't be doing the work he pioneered. However, at least great animated films will still be made. MouseBear
Originally Posted By treelo I recall a time (early to mid '90's) when Entertainment Weekly would post the current Disney Animated film as it's headlining story for their Summer/Holiday Movie issues. Now, the Disney films are listed as "Also in Theaters". I think that says so much to the excessive flooding of the market Disney has been doing. There is no longer anything special about the next big animated film. Now we look to it, wondering, "Will this be the film to pull Disney out of it's slump?" And the slump just seems to get worse. Jim, you hit the nail on the head by stating the reason the Pixar movies do so well, is due to their strong story and characters. If Disney would create a staff of storytellers in their FA Dept. as strong as Pixar's, there could actually be a re-birth in the FA medium. I have not seen TP all the way thru. I was excited to see this one, but ended up walking out 10 minutes or so into the movie, as it did nothing for me. Sometimes I get the feeling there are people in this company that are purposefully trying to run it into the ground, what with the continuous disappiontments in the motion picture division and the theme parks. ALADDIN: A MUSICAL SPECTACULAR is a textbook case. Tons of money and big names went inot the show, but what did we end up with? A mediocre, at best, show that probably will not bring people into the park.
Originally Posted By Jim Thank you all for your comments, but I want to make it clear that I am not bashing the films themselves. I loved TREASURE PLANET and ATLANTIS and so on. My point is that it is the structure surrounding them that needs help. This is not to say that there aren't ways of improving the system that produces these films; however, the films that Disney has made over the last decade have been wonderful. Milo, Yzma, and Jane Porter are all richly created characters who are just as rich as Buzz, Sully, and Jessie. If anything, Disney should dump these "creative executives" and let the artists do what they know how to do. That's one of the reasons why Pixar has been so successful.
Originally Posted By Emz Out of morbid curiousity, just how much does a "creative executive" at Disney make? How much does one of those 25 (yes, 25!) "Vice-Presidents of Animation" make yearly? Uncle Walt would no doubt be horrified at what these people (much less Eisner) are being paid to run his legacy into the ground.
Originally Posted By Lord Jubjub Whoa! Emz, ARE YOU SERIOUS!? There are 25 people involved in the upper production of animated films that have nothing directly to do with the day-to-day production of those films? <scratches head at the possible responsibilities of those people>
Originally Posted By Emz YES. There are 25 "Vice Presidents of Animation" (whatever the hell THAT is). I wonder what you have to do to get one of those jobs? (or who you have to be related to?) ;-) I have heard that part of the current SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) investigation of Disney involves charges of nepotism (as well as other things).
Originally Posted By actingforanimators Salary for most creative executives at FA is between $36K to $120K plus bounuses, and depending on the level of responsibility. Most are lower level development assistants. At present not ONE of the more than a dozen hires to this position from outside of the company has come from a background in animation. Any background in animation. The others were on the production managment side or story editing side and of those less than 25% worked for more than three years in animation.
Originally Posted By Sapphire Another problem with Disney oversaturating the market has been that *critics* got rather tired of them. A big factor in the success of the early 1990s films was critical support; they elevated them to a higher level than routine kiddie fare. But starting around the time of "Pocahontas" things began getting tiresome. (It didn't help that to many critics, the somewhat half-hearted attempts to make the films, starting with that one, more "mature" weren't working.) I liked "Treasure Planet" a lot more than I thought I would; it indeed started weakly but got better as it went along and did feel warmer and more visually luxurious than "Atlantis" (I liked that film too, but it was much colder emotionally). But I had feared it would suffer due to "Harry Potter" already being out and I was right. Most people in the media - such as animation historian Jerry Beck in yesterday's USA Today - are saying that if 2D isn't over, then it at least needs a good rest for a few years until the novelty returns (and after a few more CGI disappointments, perhaps). Unfortunately, I suspect Disney doesn't want to wait that long. Is there anything that can be done to keep Disney 2D from becoming the exclusive domain of awful sequels?
Originally Posted By gmaletic This was a pretty good article. There were a few points that stuck in my head as I was reading through it, however. Jim claims that Disney animation is at a "crossroads like no other," but I'm not sure that's true. In the early 80s, I'm guessing things were much more dire. After the dismal results of "The Black Cauldron," it seemed reasonable to say that feature animation of any sort was dead. It's hard to imagine anyone making that same claim now. Disney had a hit this year in Lilo & Stitch. Even more encouraging, other studios like Pixar, Dreamworks, and Fox have had big animated hits as well. So even though I disagree about the "dire straits" that animation finds itself in today, I think that Jim's right in saying that audiences don't really care whether a feature is animated via computer or hand-drawn animation. "Shrek," "Toy Story," and "Ice Age" didn't win at the box office because they were animated by computer. They won because they were all very good...better than almost all of the Disney "traditional" product over the past ten years. Audiences don't have a preference for computer-animated films...they like good films. But I think Jim refutes his own good argument in section two when he says that "to not develop traditional animation (particularly as other studios abandon it, leaving a need in the market in the future) is a bad decision." If audiences don't care how a film is animated, then what value is there to Disney having the "traditional animation" market to itself? (If they don't care, is there such a thing as the "traditional animation" market?) Like it or not, computer animation is the future (a considerable proportion of even the "traditional" films are done by computers nowadays), and I hope all of the talk about "traditional" animation being dead--invalid as I think that argument is--inspires Disney to take computer-generated animation into new realms. All computer-generated films today are done in a photo-realistic fashion...how about taking a more stylized approach? For one, there's absolutely no reason why a computer-generated film couldn't look just like a "traditionally" animated film. Better yet, there's no reason why it has to look like _anything_ in particular. Beyond these artistic concerns, the real question is: why bother worrying about whether future films will be "traditionally" animated, when the most important concern is whether Disney will start making "good" animated films with some consistency? That, more than anything, will save animation in any of its forms.
Originally Posted By Emz Here's Jerry Beck's quote and the bit about Disney Animation from USA Today: Freeze frame on 2002 -- 12/31/2002 By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY (this part snipped from the rest of the article) Old-fashioned animation is over. Or at least due for a break. Disney's highly publicized, traditionally drawn $140 million Treasure Planet opened at family-friendly Thanksgiving. But it has made only $33 million and is fast disappearing from theaters. Likewise, Nickelodeon's Wild Thornberrys has taken in just $18.4 million in two weeks and is fading compared with 2000's surprise hit Rugrats in Paris, which took in $76 million. Neither Thornberrys nor Planet could surpass the three-dimensional computer-generated adventures of Ice Age ($176.4 million) and the edgy theme and Elvis tunes that boosted Lilo & Stitch ($145.8 million). Two-dimensional animation "just isn't appealing to kids right now because it's nothing they haven't seen before," animation historian Jerry Beck says. "The best thing it could do is go into hibernation for a few years until it becomes fashionable again, as all things in Hollywood do."
Originally Posted By Jim My comments on the audience perception of the two forms of animation does support the claim of a need for traditional animation in the marketplace. Traditional animation, right now, is quite different from CGI. The effect is different. TARZAN could not be made using only computers. Traditional animation has warmth and a realism of movement that, I feel, is lacking in CGI animation. I don't think the average audience member (particularly kids) perceives this. They just like the film and the characters (and there are benefits to the CGI look as well--I don't want to downplay that). The hole that could be created by this lack of traditional animation is stories such as PETER PAN, THE JUNGLE BOOK, THE LITTLE MERMAID, etc that could not be done by computer with the same effect. This past week, I was watching MONSTER'S, INC. For me, as an educated animation fan, I could not tell the 3D quality in comparison to the 2D quality of TREASURE PLANET. It has a very different look, but it still looks the same dimension. I was surprised by the USA TODAY article--it's all bandwagon.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>I was surprised by the USA TODAY article--it's all bandwagon. << It sure is. And it contradicts itself right from the start: Traditional animation is dead -- then it goes on to say Lilo & Stitch was one of the biggest hits of the summer! The idea that "2-D" isn't appealing to kids is ridiculous, and it's insulting to the intelligence of children. Perhaps they are interested in different subject matter than the more adult-oriented offerings of late. >>For me, as an educated animation fan, I could not tell the 3D quality in comparison to the 2D quality of TREASURE PLANET.<< The terms "3-D" and "2-D" when describing traditonal vs. CGI animation is a huge misnomer (both are 2-dimensional media), but I think we're stuck with it.
Originally Posted By JeffG >> "The terms "3-D" and "2-D" when describing traditonal vs. CGI animation is a huge misnomer (both are 2-dimensional media), but I think we're stuck with it." << I think the bigger problem is that "traditional vs. CGI" is much less effective terminology. In fact, there really isn't any reason why a fully-CGI film couldn't be created that looked essentially identical to what is frequently thought of as a "traditional" film. It is largely just a matter of whether the artist is drawing with a pencil and paper or with a stylus on a computer drawing tablet. CGI does add additional options, though, which is why there is currently more of a distinction in visual styles. Pixar, PDI, Blue Sky, and others have been using 3-D rendering for their CGI animation. That does result in a very different look compared to traditional hand-drawn animation. I really do doubt that we are far away from the day when all animated films will be fully produced via computer. Today's "traditional" films already aren't far away from that. For the most part, hand-painted cels went the way of the dodo in the early 90s and CGI is certainly widely used to enhance effects work as well. Characters and backgrounds are still largely being hand-drawn, but they are then scanned into a computer to be colored and manipulated. It isn't a huge leap to just have the animators start doing the drawing on computer tablets. In fact, tradition and nostalgia is probably the main thing that has prevented that from happening already. -Jeff
Originally Posted By BuzzLightyear84 I really don't think "CGI vs Traditional" should even be an argument. While it is true that films like Lilo and Stitch or other Disney classics would not have the warmth they have if they were made in CGI, the flip side is true as well. I can't imagine Toy Story or Monsters Inc being any better if they were made with "traditional" animation any more than if Disney had gone with a CGI Stitch. And I don't think anyone would argue that the Toy Story films lacked heart. The real problem is in the films themself. You can take a mediocre movie and animate it with CGI, and it's still a mediocre movie. The same if it was made with "traditional" animation. The focus should be on the story of the films themselves and not how they are made.
Originally Posted By Emz South Park is created entirely using Maya 3D software and yet South Park still has the appearance of traditional 2D paper cut-outs.
