Hand-Drawn Animation Dead at Disney

[unprincess]

are you a brony Mickeyfan1990?

I might might end up watching this film with my niece if she can convince my sister to sit through a 2d cartoon movie about talking ponies.

[Avaitor]

67% is hardly glowing.

[Kyle]

First Hey Arnold trailer.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU02NWfHT2g[/youtube]

[Sotiris]

I guess I'll have to get a Netflix subscription now.

BREAKING: Netflix Will Produce Sergio Pablos’ 2D Feature ‘Klaus’
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film ... 54767.html

[Kyle]

Do netflix movies ever see theatrical releases? Because I really want to see this in theaters. Either way, I'm really looking forward to this.

[Jules]

Hey Sotiris and Kyle!

I distinctly remember The Little Prince being reportedly released to cinemas after it was picked up by Netflix (shame on Paramount for dumping it), so I would say a US theatrical bow for Klaus can be expected.

I do wonder, however, how it will make its way to European shores and the rest of the world. I would buy a cinema ticket pronto to watch this movie in the theatre in my country.

I expect Netflix will let somebody else handle theatrical distribution duties for international territories.

[estefan]

Netflix has worldwide rights and usually only releases their movies in one or two theatres to qualify for Oscars. I'm sure they will give Klaus a limited theatrical release to make it eligible for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, but it will be with little advertising and likely only in New York and Los Angeles. Netflix doesn't see theatrical distribution as part of their business plan, as opposed to Amazon, which does give their films a standard theatrical rollout months before moving them to their streaming service.

Nonetheless, it's awesome they're bankrolling Klaus. And while it won't get a wide theatrical release, putting it on Netflix will still give it plenty of eyeballs.

[JTurner]

Netflix has worldwide rights and usually only releases their movies in one or two theatres to qualify for Oscars. I'm sure they will give Klaus a limited theatrical release to make it eligible for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, but it will be with little advertising and likely only in New York and Los Angeles. Netflix doesn't see theatrical distribution as part of their business plan, as opposed to Amazon, which does give their films a standard theatrical rollout months before moving them to their streaming service.

Nonetheless, it's awesome they're bankrolling Klaus. And while it won't get a wide theatrical release, putting it on Netflix will still give it plenty of eyeballs.

I find it interesting that Netflix invested in this as well, although I don't necessarily agree that it won't get a wide theatrical release. It depends on what they decide to do, and things can change. That's not to say that I think it will happen, but I wouldn't rule it out either. Just wait and see.

Either way, nice to see this being made. It'll be interesting to see if Netflix will invest in Hullabaloo or that Dragon's Lair Movie too.

[Kyle]

Maybe it could end up like Life of Pi, where they initially tested the waters a bit but proved successful enough that it got a wider release. If it doesn't I'll be pretty disappointed, not for myself so much as for the medium,for the studio. It deserves to make a bigger splash than it would on a streaming service. It looks more unique than anything else out right now. And not just in an artsy fartsy indy way, this thing should have mass appeal given the proper avenue.

[JTurner]

Maybe it could end up like life of pie, where they initially tested the waters a bit but proved successful enough that it got a wider release. If it doesn't I'll be pretty disappointed, not for myself so much as for the medium,for the studio. It deserves to make a bigger splash than it would on a streaming service. It looks more unique than anything else out right now. And not just in an artsy fartsy indy way, this thing should have mass appeal given the proper avenue.

Agreed. I definitely hope this becomes something truly special.

Hold on a minute, though, what exactly is Life of Pie? I feel kinda in the dark about that.

[Kyle]

It was live action movie in 2012 directed by Ang Lee about a boy stranded on a raft at sea with a very realistic CG tiger. It was based on a novel. It wasn't meant to be a reference directly related to Disney or animation, though I guess it did kinda have more animation than live action a lot of the time. Anyway it intended to be a limited release, I think because they thought it would have limited appeal. Think Cast Away but without the star power of Tom Hanks. Word of mouth spread it won a bunch of awards, enough to earn a medium release, then eventually it got an even wider one.

[JTurner]

It was live action movie directed by Ang Lee about a boy stranded on a raft at sea with a very realistic CG tiger. Wasn't meant to be a reference directly related to Disney or animation, though I guess it did kinda have more animation than live action a lot of the time. Anyway it intended to be a limited release, I think because they thought it would have limited appeal. Think Cast away but without the star power of time hanks. Word of mouth spread it won a bunch of awards, enough to earn a medium release, then eventually it got an even wider one.

Oh wait, I remember that movie now! I saw it, and yeah, it WAS a great movie. Yeah, it would be awesome if they handled Klaus like that!

[unprincess]

Netflix picking up Klaus is such fantastic news! I only have a Netflix dvd account but I may just have to get a streaming one too. Unless they release it on dvd like they did The Little Prince.

[Sotiris]

Randy Haycock worked on another theme park projection, animating Mickey Mouse this time. It always saddens me when Disney's last few 2D animators are relegated to this type of work.


Source: https://randyhaycock.tumblr.com/post/16 ... a-piece-of

[Semaj]

They try to pretend that they're giving their hand-drawn artists something to do, when it becomes increasingly obvious that they don't have anything for them to do.

[blackcauldron85]

Definitely not Disney, but have you heard of Birdboy: The Forgotten Children? It looks incredible!

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film ... 55807.html

And In This Corner of the World looks beautiful and full of sadness but joy, too:
https://youtu.be/ih9P0QCCrUw

[JTurner]

There was also Mary and the Witch's Flower, recently issued by GKids. As well as Big Fish and Begonia. Both are absolutely beautiful movies and in handdrawn. Japanese animation is definitely a go-to for me.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Can't find the link, but I read somewhere that certain purists meant Don Bluth cheated when he used backlit animation in The Secret of NIMH instead of using paint only to create the effects (just as Tron from the same year was accused of cheating for using computers). Of course if was not cheating. But beyond different painting techniques, what many options did you have to create certain effects in the pre-computer days? The only I can think of of is backlit animation, exposure techniques and two ways to add depth to the background; the multiplane camera and the Fleischer Brothers' three dimensional backgrounds ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnvnyb1e-p8 ). The Xerox process also allowed filming of physical models that were painted white with black lines to be included in a scene. There were challenges and solutions back then just as it is in animation today, but of a different kind.

As mentioned elsewhere, the old Disney movies may have had limitations, like how many characters you can show in a scene (with computers you could create the wildebeest stampede scene in The Lion King), but otherwise I can't say I have noticed how the movies could have been improved in any way. Would the opening shots of Bambi or Pinocchio have been better with CGI, or Gepetto's workshop? Or when we see him fishing inside Monstro's belly and when the school of fish arrives?
Also in certain scenes in Fantasia, and in Alice in Wonderland when she is laying in the flower meadow, while the water is running in the brook next to her, and segments like Golden Afternoon. Just to mention a few. Also Peter Pan and scenes like when they are flying over London. I can't think of anything that would have improved these scenes. They are perfect the way they are.
Limitations means challenges, and if you are able to handle the challenges the results speaks for themselves.

It always impress me to see how animators were able to create things like water, from rain in Bambi, brooks and rivers, and storm and waves in The Little Mermaid. You obvioulsy needs skills as a programmer to make water in a computer animated movie, but as far as I know, you don't need much artistic skills to use these programs. And the knowledge about how to create water is just one of several elements of hand-drawn animation that we could lose as so-called procedural animation becomes more common.

About Mary and the Witch's Flower, Disney had their chance once: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wh ... e1058ff218

[blackcauldron85]

How to draw Tarzan video WITH GLEN KEANE was just uploaded to the D23 YouTube channel!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6zvJyD2dzI

[Sotiris]

DreamWorks Animation is producing a fully 2D-animated short called "Bird Karma", yet WDAS hasn't made one since The Ballad of Nessie in 2011. Shameful.

Told over richly toned watercolor textures, Salazar’s film features a long-legged bird that becomes enamored of a gloriously colored fish. When he finally captures and eats his elusive quarry, the karmic consequences prove highly unfortunate for him.

The short has a classic 2D look—there are ink and paint credits, folks!—and the rough, sketchy style is something Salazar says he has always admired. “As soon as [animation] was cleaned up, it lost something for me,” he says. “Keeping it rough allows the movie to have this handmade look, and that’s really important.” The studio had to create a pipeline for the short because it no longer had one for 2D animation, says Hermann. Despite the handmade look, the film is produced digitally, with the backgrounds painted on paper and then scanned into Photoshop. TVPaint was used for the animation, and Adobe After Effects for the rest. “Every time there was something that looked CG, we tried to make it look more handmade,” Salazar says.

Bird Karma has been making festival rounds, something DreamWorks plans to do with all its shorts. Of the 26 original pitches, eight are in some form of production and the studio plans to roll out a couple per year for the next few years.

Source: https://www.awn.com/animationworld/new- ... marsupials

Employing what Salazar calls a “clean-rough” visual style, Bird Karma harkens back to classic hand-drawn animation but with a looser, sketchier texture that produces the emotional impact of some of the finest concept art. “I’ve always loved those 2D rough tests, to the point where it’s always a little disappointing to see the final cleanup, because it always seems as if something has been lost. So, for Bird Karma, I was hoping we could keep a rougher line. It isn’t rough or clean, it’s somewhere in-between,” Salazar says.

DreamWorks hasn’t staffed a cleanup department since its 2D days, which meant that Salazar and his team -- most of whom had worked together since Prince of Egypt, including Jakob Jensen, Kristof Serrand, Simon Otto and Steve Wood -- had to clean up all the animation on their own.

“That’s why we have this clean-rough style where the line is vibrating a little. It’s still a bit shaky, which is something that I always wanted to see because we could never do this in a feature film, we always have a clean line,” Salazar explains, noting that the rough lines also fit well with the environment, giving all the elements an appearance of suspension. “It looks like it’s watercolor, and the drawings really look like they’re handmade. I think if the drawings were cleaned up, they would lose some of the charm and it wouldn’t look appealing. It would look too plasticky or too simple,” he says.

“We also saved time this way, because cleaning up a short is very time consuming, so I was happy about that,” he goes on. “We saved time, and also I think it looks better, but on the other side, we lost a lot of time painting it because all the lines were open. Whenever people tried to paint with the paint bucket tool the color would just spread out everywhere, so they had to almost hand-paint it frame-by-frame.”

Rough edges and all, Bird Karma employs a tremendous amount of artistry. One major inspiration for the visual style was the renowned British watercolorist J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851), who used a typical “glazing” technique with the application of many layers of semi-transparent paint on paper to give depth and transparency to the landscape and increase the level of atmosphere.

And while the film’s setting is quite minimalist -- really just a line with water and sky -- ongoing gradual weather changes capture the viewer’s interest, providing a vibrant feast for the eyes. Production designer Raymond Zibach (Boss Baby, Kung Fu Panda franchise) single-handedly painted all the backgrounds and executed the color keys for the characters, applying a paper texture under the image, and then using different types of wet and dry watercolor brushes to achieve a watercolor effect. “If you look closely at the moment in the movie when it begins to rain, you can even see the canvas getting wet and the color start to drop down the frame in the background,” Salazar remarks.

“Raymond talked to me about doing it in watercolor and I loved the idea, because the all of the film is in the water,” Salazar continues. “He told me, ‘Well, let’s do something that looks watercolor. Even for the characters,’ and that was perfect for the movie.”

Each element of Bird Karma is made to look like it’s hand-painted or hand-drawn. “Every time there was something that looked too computer-made, we tried very deliberately to get away from it,” Salazar recalls. “So there aren’t really any fancy camera moves. It’s very steady, very still.”

The reception for Bird Karma has been very gratifying for Salazar, who attended the film’s opening night screening at this year’s Annecy Festival and recently participated in a special making-of presentation at the Creative Talent Network eXpo in late November.

“It is always wonderful to do a presentation with students. They are the most lively audience and they’re enthusiastic -- they scream, they laugh, they’re very, very vocal and you can see the sparkle in their eyes,” he effuses. “It’s difficult when you’ve been working for 10, 15, 20 years in the business, it’s not the same. People came to see me after the presentations, and they were saying, ‘Oh, I hope DreamWorks does more 2D animation. Oh, I love 2D animation.’ A lot of people really are into 2D even though most of them don’t do 2D and they’re not planning to do 2D in the future, but they just love the medium and they’re hoping that we do more of it at DreamWorks. I tell them that there won’t be any feature films in 2D anytime soon, but maybe short films, that might happen again.”

Source: https://www.awn.com/animationworld/excl ... bird-karma

Q: Can you tell us about the look of the short?

William Salazar: The short is 100% handmade and hand painted. It is all hand-drawn traditional animation. There is no clean up, so the pencil line is rough and slightly flickering, which gives life to the characters and a very handmade quality. The final image looks like a watercolor painting. The colors inside the character bleeds, trying to imitate the watercolor effect.

Q: How was the animation produced? How many people worked on the project with you at DreamWorks?

William Salazar: I animated about 60% of the short myself. Eventually, I had the help of four great 2D animators in the studio for a couple of months, who really wanted to take a little break from CG. Jakob Jensen, Kristof Serrand, Simon Otto and Steve Wood: They were all 2D artists from The Prince of Egypt days. We had Ramone Zibach (production designer whose credits include the Kung Fu Panda trilogy and Boss Baby) painting all the backgrounds, overlays, underlays and doing color keys, etc. We also had a fantastic little team of After Effects artists/compositors, led by Erik Tillmans, to create the final image, and to move all the different parts of this puzzle. They did a very good job, adding reflections in the water, and sparkles — a lot of details that make the image richer.

Q: Were you surprised that DreamWorks decided to jump on board to help make this 2D animated short a reality?

William Salazar: I am very grateful that DreamWorks decided to help me finish this project. I could not have done it without the help of the studio, and such amazing artists. I believe that 2D is a beautiful art form, and it’s too bad it has disappeared from the big Hollywood movies. Every feature film made in the U.S. now is CG, with a few exceptions (stop-motion). We still have a few artists here at DreamWorks who can draw and animate 2D, so Bird Karma was a fantastic opportunity to use their talent. I am also very surprised that they would go for such an offbeat comedy. It shows the executives had an open mind about exploring different styles of storytelling.

Q: What has the reception been like for your short?

William Salazar: A lot of people who love 2D animation had very positive reactions after seeing the movie. Animation students from CalArts and Gnomon asked me if there was a chance 2D would make a comeback at DreamWorks. Right now, there is no plan to make a feature film in 2D, but we might do another short. There is definitely an interest from students and some animation lovers for a return of hand-drawn animation.

Source: http://www.animationmagazine.net/featur ... ird-karma/


Poster


Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/BlO670hFDZi ... sanimation


Stills from the short






Source: https://www.socialnews.xyz/2018/06/11/d ... ma-stills/