DVDizzy.com

Which makes me wonder how they're going to pull it off, without getting comparisons of Thomas the Tank Engine. They pretty much owned the "talking transportation with faces of them" market, before Cars came along.

Which makes me wonder, what is it about slapping faces on vehicles or modes of transportation that children seem to fall head-over-heels? Then again, even I fell under the spell of Thomas when I was young. Come on, who honestly didn't love those Thomas train sets that were always set up in the toy stores?

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"If your life had a face, I would punch it." - Kim Pine, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

They always wanted to do sequels. Their worlds at least imply sucfh possibilities, so why should it be a bad thing?

Anyway, Pixar's not involved in this, so why worry? It's DisneyToon

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Yeah I don't get the hate. It's a DisneyToon production. And as long as they're making these original series of DTV's I'm fine. They're not insulting Disney's classics and Pixar is in no way involved.

I do hope the visual style more resembles Susie and Pedro instead of Pixar, since this is Disney after all. Also, a bit more cartoony than Cars would be nice.

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Brad Garrett cast in 'Planes'
http://pixarblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/b ... lanes.html



You know what? Although I do not care for the film, I really hope it becomes immensely successful. In that way, DisneyToon Studios can keep making more of them or other Pixar spin-offs and forever leave WDAS' characters and properties to rest in peace.

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Hayao Miyazaki would want to see this film. He adores things to do with flight.

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Source: http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/ ... ndise.html

He finds refreshing that the movie is simply made to sell merchandise? It's that the norm? Wouldn't the "refreshing" thing be making art for art's sake for once?

Perhaps he found refreshing that the execs were honest about it at least; that they weren't hypocritical in making assertions of art and high filmmaking.

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Oh ya, that should be enough to stop the concern...

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All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

-Walt Disney

As an animator-to-be myself, I'd be extremely glad to take a position like that, because even though animators are considered "artists", I'm not in this for "art". I don't care if I go down as a great "artist." I just want to entertain people and make people happy. If movies are the way to do it, great - if merchandise based on movies is the way to do it, great. I think a lot of animators feel that way.

Also, the fact that they're being honest is huge. They weren't as honest with Pooh.

But in order to entertain people and be a good entertainer don't you need to be a good artist too? Aren't usually these two co-dependant?

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^In a sense, they are, but sometimes the artistic value outshines the entertainment value and vice-versa. It's a balancing act. Transformers has so much action, the audience loses interest, but if a film were to be too artsy, the audience loses track of the reality or gets bored.

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What do you mean?




Yes and no. You can make a film with sock puppets, but so long as it engages the audience, does it matter? I mean tell me that "Jackass" or video's on YouTube like it are "art?" My experience has taught me that most people get bored with "pure" art. Entertainment is in fact something different. It's keeping someone's attention for an unset amount of time. Art on the other hand is someone's expression of thoughts or feelings. See the difference? But, many times the two world do co-exist.

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All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

-Walt Disney

He probably means that although the decision to make another Pooh film was solely to refresh the franchise and boost merchandise sales, (Iger personally asked Lasseter to revive Pooh), they gave the impression that the reasons were more than that (i.e. artistic, continuing the legacy of hand-drawn animation etc).



Source: http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/ ... ndise.html

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Yes, but that has to do with one's definition of entertainment. Personally, I wouldn't call the Jackass franchise "entertainment" but to which his own. It comes down to personal taste, I guess.

Also, regarding animators and other artists in the industry, I think that although they may not be involved in a finished product that could be called "art" as they have no say in the storytelling process, as long as they do the best to their abilities in correlation to the time and budget provided and care to do the best work possible, I would still call that a "devotion to art".

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Sotiris, you're spot on about what I said about Pooh. Although that's not to say that I have a problem with that. Quite the opposite, in fact. My issue with things is that so many fans and artists in the animation industry have this delusional idea that films should all be made in high art, and so many fail to realize that the biggest driving force in any Hollywood film, animated or not, is money.

Even back in Walt's day... he didn't make Snow White because the artist in him wanted to burst free. He made it because shorts weren't pulling in enough money to uphold the studio. Sure, he made it to the best of his ability, but he was never a "create art for art's sake" kind of guy. There's a quote from him that goes something like, "I am not concerned with making art. I make my films the way I want to make them and then let the experts tell me about them." And when merchandise based off of characters came into play, Walt was a frontrunner with all of the Mickey merchandise that started showing up.

So merchandise based on animation is nothing new, but the minute a decision is based on something from the money side of things, people get all up in arms. I think that's stupid. They start blaming "the suits" and whatnot, and while it is true that it IS the suits' decisions, so many fail to understand that making money is their job, just as making the film as entertaining as possible is the artist's job.

Basically what I'm saying is that it's nice to hear that DisneyToons was just upfront about it, saying "Listen. If you want to be an "artist", go somewhere else. We're here to make money." That's what is refreshing about this.

All in all, I think if someone wants to be an artist, they need to go make independent films so they can make all the art they want to and make all the decisions they want to. But don't apply to Disney or Pixar or Dreamworks hoping to be artistically fulfilled, and then complain when decisions are made to make money.

/rant. Sorry this was so long haha... I didn't expect it to be. We actually had a pretty in depth conversation about this at school a few weeks back, so I have all these thoughts on the tip of my tongue haha

Teaser Trailer for 'Planes'

<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/oFLFgPFuqT0" frameborder="0"></iframe>

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Kinda cool.

Now who wants to bet they'll make this a theatrical release?

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I do! 'Cause they won't

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Killjoy .

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Was that Stephen Colbert as the voice of the yellow airplane? Kind of sounded like him to me.

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"If your life had a face, I would punch it." - Kim Pine, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World