The Walt Disney Animation Studios Website
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Sotiris
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Re: The Walt Disney Animation Studios Website
If I had to guess, I'd say Raya. I think if it was for Encanto they would have blurred it out. They're really careful nowadays. But it also could be from an unrelated project or an exercise given to trainees.
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Jules
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Re: The Walt Disney Animation Studios Website
OK, after quickly skimming through it, I was just gushing to Disney Duster on how glad I am that the WDAS website has finally gotten its much needed overhaul.
Regrettably, on closer inspection I must now take back everything I said.
I usually aim to be moderate and sensible when criticising things, but be warned that I will be coming down on this newly-designed website like a ton of bricks. I expect my complaints may appear nitpicky or obsessive to many, but please allow me to illustrate my points.
For clarity, I will be commenting on the section of the website tasked with cataloguing all the previous WDAS feature films. My assessment does not apply to other sections of the site.
First things first ... in the past I have complained vociferously on the disgraceful lack of care put into this particular aspect of the official website. All we had before was a glorified slide show containing a single still or promotional image for each WDAS film. These images often came from low-quality sources, and in some cases two films would share the same slide. Each image was peppered with a few tiny icons which when clicked would reveal a totally random piece of trivia or concept art (usually at very low resolution, and sometimes merely another very poor quality film still.) Moreover, this section was barely updated. Zootopia and Moana were added eventually, but nobody bothered to include their titles or release dates. We were treated to just a single image from each film. Ralph 2 and Frozen II were not included at all.
Understandably this frustrated me to no end. How could the world's oldest surviving animation studio be incapable of providing at least a semi-decent history of their feature films on their own website? Why is their site so incredibly inferior to Pixar's in this regard? I find it rather shameful that mere fansites clearly take far more pride in preserving and documenting the studio's filmography than the studio itself.
So now we have the redesign. The only way is up, right? After all these years of mediocrity, they've surely gotten their act together and crafted a site worthy of its studio and heritage! At first glance, it looks good! Every WDAS film now has its own entry when clicking on the individual posters. It seems not all of these are actual theatrical posters - some of them appear to be sourced from the DVD/blu-ray covers - but they look decent enough and I guess it's only a minor oversight.
Unfortunately, clicking the individual titles will reveal that despite the flashy-looking redesign, there clearly is still little love and effort put into documenting the studio's feature filmography.
Firstly there is a huge lack of consistency. I clicked Snow White first. I noted that the page includes the film's title card, which I liked! However, I soon realised that other movies (e.g. Pinocchio, Saludos Amigos) have had their title art digitally extracted from their respective title cards, and very ineptly too. You can clearly see the stair-stepping and aliasing around the lettering that indicates that whoever did the editing either cannot use image manipulation software to save their life, or can but does not care enough to do the job properly. Other movies forego the in-movie title logo entirely and instead use those that are usually reserved for print (e.g. the movie poster) or web designs (e.g. Dumbo, Frozen). Of these, some utilise the redesigned (and inferior) official logos (e.g. Aladdin). Naturally these do not feature the unsightly artefacts that plague the ones that have been repurposed from within the film proper, but they are in stark contrast with those, as well as the complete and unaltered title cards.
Other logos substituted for the title cards are downright baffling. The Princess and the Frog gets the old logo! While arguably this logo looks better than the official one, it dates back to when the movie was still in production and should not have been used. Conversely, Fantasia 2000's logo looks like something a fan would create. It is basically identical to the original Fantasia logo as it appeared on the 1940 film's title card, but with 2000 added beneath in the same font and style. I have never seen Fantasia 2000's title depicted this way before. I can only guess that it is either a work-in-progress logo used during the film's development, or it is indeed fanart that has been located online and stolen (presumably brought up by Google search and confused for the official thing.) If I am mistaken about any of this and am talking a pile of baloney please do not hesitate to correct me. Tarzan is another head scratcher. The Disney logo above the title is not the standard one, but has clearly been cropped out of the official Walt Disney Animation Studios logo! Wtf?
Onto the descriptive text for each film! It appears all right at first ... then you start to notice that it all seems very promotional, like it wants to sell you the blu-ray release of each film really badly. Well ... of course it does - because the absolute majority of these descriptions have clearly been copied and pasted from the text used for the films' DVD and blu-ray releases! Naturally it comes with such insipid lines as "Your family will love this fun-filled adventure!" or "Get ready for the most paws-itively awesome adventure ever!", as well as endorsements for the Walt Disney Signature Collection line. If this didn't disgust me I'd be laughing my head off that they couldn't find anybody to write anything new and fresh for these movies (a paragraph would have sufficed - I'm not expecting a thesis, or anything as elaborate as Pixar's website.) In truth, they didn't even need to create new descriptions! The Disney Animated iPad app from 2013 had perfectly good, well-written descriptions for all the movies in the canon. If they had to recycle something, they should have recycled those!
More evidence of the sloppiness here ... Some of the movies have a section marked Awards, detailing the Oscars, Baftas, etc., earned by that particular film. However, there are a number of other award-winning films in the canon that the website never acknowledges - even Snow White! The Rescuers apparently won a very interesting and unusual award that is denoted by a single comma.
Furthermore, it turns out Richard Rich did not really direct The Fox and the Hound. Some other dude called Richard Rice did that. They couldn't even get the title of their most recent film right! Frozen II is listed as Frozen 2 despite the official title bearing the roman numeral.
Finally, I'll discuss the images that accompany each film. Now, I will give them props here for including far more than there ever was on the previous website. However, issues are still very much present and accounted for. Each film has three or four attached images. Among these you will find film stills, which I think is less than ideal but not particularly objectionable. However, it baffles me how they seem to insist on including really low quality stills. They are either low-res or riddled with JPEG artefacts. This is even more inexcusable for the CAPS films. Secondly, while there is some rather nice development art, background paintings and pencil animation drawings included, none of the art is labelled or explained even with the shortest of captions, and neither has there been any thought put into the selections to account for the stifled frame in which the images must fit. Some of the artwork is so badly cropped that it's laughable. Try looking at the Ratigan character concept. You get a very nice view of his belly, but not his legs or upper body. Nice!
In the end, what I see here is a hastily compiled webpage that doesn't even begin to do justice to all these films. It is also disheartening to realise that it will likely remain this way. While a website can easily be updated to correct errors and glitches I have always noticed that every time the WDAS website is overhauled, any oversights and shortcomings remain there permanently until it is redesigned eight or so years later. This is a slap in the face. I don't know if complaining about these gaffes may lead to their being corrected. Who do you contact, anyhow? Do you send a message over the official WDAS Facebook page? I don't know.
Also, I really want to know who is entrusted with designing and maintaining the WDAS website. Is this job done inhouse at WDAS? Or does the Walt Disney Company in general take care of it? Or perhaps they hire an outside company to design it for them? Even if it's the latter case, the website is surely maintained by employees at WDAS so that's no excuse.
Please tell me what you guys think. Are my complaints justified or am I being an ass?
Regrettably, on closer inspection I must now take back everything I said.
I usually aim to be moderate and sensible when criticising things, but be warned that I will be coming down on this newly-designed website like a ton of bricks. I expect my complaints may appear nitpicky or obsessive to many, but please allow me to illustrate my points.For clarity, I will be commenting on the section of the website tasked with cataloguing all the previous WDAS feature films. My assessment does not apply to other sections of the site.
First things first ... in the past I have complained vociferously on the disgraceful lack of care put into this particular aspect of the official website. All we had before was a glorified slide show containing a single still or promotional image for each WDAS film. These images often came from low-quality sources, and in some cases two films would share the same slide. Each image was peppered with a few tiny icons which when clicked would reveal a totally random piece of trivia or concept art (usually at very low resolution, and sometimes merely another very poor quality film still.) Moreover, this section was barely updated. Zootopia and Moana were added eventually, but nobody bothered to include their titles or release dates. We were treated to just a single image from each film. Ralph 2 and Frozen II were not included at all.
Understandably this frustrated me to no end. How could the world's oldest surviving animation studio be incapable of providing at least a semi-decent history of their feature films on their own website? Why is their site so incredibly inferior to Pixar's in this regard? I find it rather shameful that mere fansites clearly take far more pride in preserving and documenting the studio's filmography than the studio itself.
So now we have the redesign. The only way is up, right? After all these years of mediocrity, they've surely gotten their act together and crafted a site worthy of its studio and heritage! At first glance, it looks good! Every WDAS film now has its own entry when clicking on the individual posters. It seems not all of these are actual theatrical posters - some of them appear to be sourced from the DVD/blu-ray covers - but they look decent enough and I guess it's only a minor oversight.
Unfortunately, clicking the individual titles will reveal that despite the flashy-looking redesign, there clearly is still little love and effort put into documenting the studio's feature filmography.
Firstly there is a huge lack of consistency. I clicked Snow White first. I noted that the page includes the film's title card, which I liked! However, I soon realised that other movies (e.g. Pinocchio, Saludos Amigos) have had their title art digitally extracted from their respective title cards, and very ineptly too. You can clearly see the stair-stepping and aliasing around the lettering that indicates that whoever did the editing either cannot use image manipulation software to save their life, or can but does not care enough to do the job properly. Other movies forego the in-movie title logo entirely and instead use those that are usually reserved for print (e.g. the movie poster) or web designs (e.g. Dumbo, Frozen). Of these, some utilise the redesigned (and inferior) official logos (e.g. Aladdin). Naturally these do not feature the unsightly artefacts that plague the ones that have been repurposed from within the film proper, but they are in stark contrast with those, as well as the complete and unaltered title cards.
Other logos substituted for the title cards are downright baffling. The Princess and the Frog gets the old logo! While arguably this logo looks better than the official one, it dates back to when the movie was still in production and should not have been used. Conversely, Fantasia 2000's logo looks like something a fan would create. It is basically identical to the original Fantasia logo as it appeared on the 1940 film's title card, but with 2000 added beneath in the same font and style. I have never seen Fantasia 2000's title depicted this way before. I can only guess that it is either a work-in-progress logo used during the film's development, or it is indeed fanart that has been located online and stolen (presumably brought up by Google search and confused for the official thing.) If I am mistaken about any of this and am talking a pile of baloney please do not hesitate to correct me. Tarzan is another head scratcher. The Disney logo above the title is not the standard one, but has clearly been cropped out of the official Walt Disney Animation Studios logo! Wtf?
Onto the descriptive text for each film! It appears all right at first ... then you start to notice that it all seems very promotional, like it wants to sell you the blu-ray release of each film really badly. Well ... of course it does - because the absolute majority of these descriptions have clearly been copied and pasted from the text used for the films' DVD and blu-ray releases! Naturally it comes with such insipid lines as "Your family will love this fun-filled adventure!" or "Get ready for the most paws-itively awesome adventure ever!", as well as endorsements for the Walt Disney Signature Collection line. If this didn't disgust me I'd be laughing my head off that they couldn't find anybody to write anything new and fresh for these movies (a paragraph would have sufficed - I'm not expecting a thesis, or anything as elaborate as Pixar's website.) In truth, they didn't even need to create new descriptions! The Disney Animated iPad app from 2013 had perfectly good, well-written descriptions for all the movies in the canon. If they had to recycle something, they should have recycled those!
More evidence of the sloppiness here ... Some of the movies have a section marked Awards, detailing the Oscars, Baftas, etc., earned by that particular film. However, there are a number of other award-winning films in the canon that the website never acknowledges - even Snow White! The Rescuers apparently won a very interesting and unusual award that is denoted by a single comma.
Furthermore, it turns out Richard Rich did not really direct The Fox and the Hound. Some other dude called Richard Rice did that. They couldn't even get the title of their most recent film right! Frozen II is listed as Frozen 2 despite the official title bearing the roman numeral.Finally, I'll discuss the images that accompany each film. Now, I will give them props here for including far more than there ever was on the previous website. However, issues are still very much present and accounted for. Each film has three or four attached images. Among these you will find film stills, which I think is less than ideal but not particularly objectionable. However, it baffles me how they seem to insist on including really low quality stills. They are either low-res or riddled with JPEG artefacts. This is even more inexcusable for the CAPS films. Secondly, while there is some rather nice development art, background paintings and pencil animation drawings included, none of the art is labelled or explained even with the shortest of captions, and neither has there been any thought put into the selections to account for the stifled frame in which the images must fit. Some of the artwork is so badly cropped that it's laughable. Try looking at the Ratigan character concept. You get a very nice view of his belly, but not his legs or upper body. Nice!
In the end, what I see here is a hastily compiled webpage that doesn't even begin to do justice to all these films. It is also disheartening to realise that it will likely remain this way. While a website can easily be updated to correct errors and glitches I have always noticed that every time the WDAS website is overhauled, any oversights and shortcomings remain there permanently until it is redesigned eight or so years later. This is a slap in the face. I don't know if complaining about these gaffes may lead to their being corrected. Who do you contact, anyhow? Do you send a message over the official WDAS Facebook page? I don't know.
Also, I really want to know who is entrusted with designing and maintaining the WDAS website. Is this job done inhouse at WDAS? Or does the Walt Disney Company in general take care of it? Or perhaps they hire an outside company to design it for them? Even if it's the latter case, the website is surely maintained by employees at WDAS so that's no excuse.
Please tell me what you guys think. Are my complaints justified or am I being an ass?
Re: The Walt Disney Animation Studios Website
I read your post and had to see the mess for myself. I also noticed The Aristocats title card displays the title as "The AristocRats" (you know, the shot before Toulouse removes the R).
But no, you're not an ass. You just care more about accuracy, layout and presentation more than Disney themselves.
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Jules
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Re: The Walt Disney Animation Studios Website
OMG how did I miss that!? Must. Punish. Myself.Mooky wrote:
I read your post and had to see the mess for myself. I also noticed The Aristocats title card displays the title as "The AristocRats" (you know, the shot before Toulouse removes the R).
Glad to see I'm not the only one to feel this way.
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Disney's Divinity
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Re: The Walt Disney Animation Studios Website
This was really beautiful! I was surprised they didn't use Ariel's tail-flip in the climactic part at the end, since they always use that piece of animation in these kinds of things. It made me tear up a little, too, starting with the Mulan dialogue; I liked how they showed Ray's death during Mufasa talking about the stars. They picked so many great pieces of dialogue, too. Tiana's father, Megara, Sebastian, Jumba, Quasi, Grandmother Willow (spliced with Jim Hawkins, it was perfect). They used a lot of the lesser beloved films more than I'd have expected, too, like TP and TBC.blackcauldron85 wrote:Walt Disney Animation Studios | A Magical Journey by Slyfer2812
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd_drC1JC_c
This made me cry, it made me smile. Sorry if this isn't the appropriate thread for it but it does deal with WDAS!
Listening to most often lately:
Ariana Grande ~ "we can't be friends (wait for your love)"
Ariana Grande ~ "imperfect for you"
Kacey Musgraves ~ "The Architect"
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blackcauldron85
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Re: The Walt Disney Animation Studios Website
Thanks for posting! It was really interesting and enjoyable. I had read about things like the underground tunnels that connect the different buildings at the old studio lot, but I hadn't actually seen them before. And it's incredible how they managed to restore Walt's office and leave it exactly as it was when he died.blackcauldron85 wrote:A really neat Studios tour!
Walt Disney Studios Lot Full Tour
https://youtu.be/X9xDEjCKNRc
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Sotiris
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Re: The Walt Disney Animation Studios Website
The website for WDAS has been nominated for a Webby Award. Disney has been nominated for a total of nine Webbys this year. Update: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel won the Webby Award while Walt Disney Animation Studios won the People's Voice Award.
Source: https://www.webbyawards.com/press/press ... announced/General Websites and Mobile Sites (Television & Film)
ESPN — House of ’98 — R/GA
Huluween — The Screamlands — Hulu
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel — Hello Design
Netflix FYSEE 360 — Subvrsive
Walt Disney Animation Studios — Walt Disney Animation Studios
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Disney Duster
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Re: The Walt Disney Animation Studios Website
Wow! That was a really beautiful and amazing video! It was so good I thought Disney officially made it themselves at first!blackcauldron85 wrote:Walt Disney Animation Studios | A Magical Journey by Slyfer2812
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd_drC1JC_c
This made me cry, it made me smile. Sorry if this isn't the appropriate thread for it but it does deal with WDAS!
Julian, that sucks about the WDAS web site. You aren't being an ass at all, you just actually care! What did you mean The Rescuers award was denoted by a comma? Oh, wait. I checked it! They just have a comma where the award should go!
