2D Animation: Role Of Disney In Killing 2D Animation In Film

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My thesis will be examining the topic of 2D animation and weather or not Disney has slowly killed 2D animation in film. As well as what triggered Disney to want to veer away from the 2D industry. I find that I have always come back to this topic to try and decipher what is happening and why. Just when I feel like I have covered all there is to this subject I keep on finding new news about if or if not it’s actually dying or not in the film industry as a whole. And what else might be blossoming in its place?

Walt Disney came to California with high hopes he had made a cartoon in Kansas about a little girl in a cartoon world and proposed the idea to a distributor and it was accepted on October 16th 1923 and this date became the start of the Disney studio. In 1927 Walt decided to move on to an all-cartoon based studio so he created Oswald the rabbit however after creating 26 Oswald the lucky rabbit cartoons Walt went to ask for additional fund but found that his distributor when and signed up most of the animators in the hopes of making the series in his own studio for cheaper and without Walt Disney.

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At first Disney studio was in the back half of a real estate office in Kingwell avenue in Hollywood but at some point, the place wasn’t big enough and they had to move out and at some point was able to move to a bigger studio in Hyperion avenue it was there that Disney new he had to come up with a new character after the loss of Oswald so he came up with Mickey mouse this time with fully synchronised sound steamboat Willy paved the path for watch success. After that Disney created the silly symphonies to go with the Mickey series Eventually the Silly Symphonies turned into the training ground for all Disney artists as they prepared for the advent of animated feature films. Flowers and Trees, a Silly Symphony and the first full-colour cartoon, won the Academy Award® for Best Cartoon for 1932, the first year that the Academy offered such a category. On Christmas in 1937 snow white and the seven dwarfs was released. It was a spectacular hit and became the highest-grossing film of all time. Now Disney was on a firm footing.

Then Disney released Pinocchio and Fantasia but with ww2 the budget for the films were too high especially with disney losing most of the foreign markets because of the war. Then with the release of Bambi Disney had to halt productions of feature films because of the expensive costs to make them so instead the studio focused on making propaganda and training films for the military in 1950 Disney’s found big success with the release of Cinderella and the first Disney television show at Christmas time. With all this success Disney was still not satisfied so he branched out and started building Disneyland which opened in 1955.

In 1964 Marry Poppins was released however Walt died in 1969 after the success of Disneyland it was only natural that Walt considers making another park so after his death a Disney Orlando project was announced and opened in 1971. Disney land Tokyo was opened in 1985 and in 1988 filmmaking hit a new height as Disney was in the top ranks of the box office gross with who framed roger rabbit. Their animation began reading newer heights with the release of the little mermaid which was topped by the beauty and the beast which was in turn topped by Aladdin. Disney released their first 3D animation in 2005 being chicken little and from then on they started to learn more about 3D animation. (D23, 2018) Disney, the creator of the first ever known animation with sound acknowledged worldwide “Steamboat Willy” as well as the creator of Fantasia, and the first-ever full length animated movie snow white and the seven dwarfs has reported that they do not have any further plans to do anymore traditional 2D animated films. When disney first started making animated films like snow white and the seven dwarfs he had a set style in mind very beautiful and picturesque, every frame looked like a painting that you could hand on the wall but then the 1950s came when Walt started working on Disney land he didn’t have as much an influence on how the directions of the film like he used to.

After the failure of sleeping beauty the team decided to take a different direction, John Lasseter, the former boss of Pixar who also became Disney’s chief creative officer reported that 2D has become a poor medium for storytelling saying the general idea was that it was because the audience did not want to see hand-drawn animation anymore, however, John doesn’t agree that that is the case. So to test it out he went and brought back some of the old Disney 2D animators and created 2009’s the princess and the frog which consequently didn’t do so well in the box office meanwhile their CG animated films grossed so much more compared to the princess and the frog even though they were released before set animation. (Ben Child, 2013) Shifting back to 1995 2D animation was still booming the period of what was known as Disney’s relevance age which was between 1989 all the way to 1999 the the box office hits that were released after Walt’s death where being shown like the lion king, Aladdin, beauty and the beast …etc. A major change happened toy story was released whilst 3D animation was still in its infancy.

The 3D film not only marked the beginning of a franchise but also paved the path for more feature films, marking the way of the future. Disney still had a monopoly over the box office releasing films that topped the ranks for a few more years to come. However, they slowly started to lose their interest in 2D animation in the early 2000’s when more and more of their films were coming up pretty short in the box office as hand-drawn animation began to become less and less appealing to them with each passing year. With the release of Shrek and how popular the movie was with people of all ages, people started to think that Disney 2D animations were aimed at kids (for little girls) than they were aimed at a broader audience so Disney too had been slowly giving up on hand-drawn animation, seeming all it did at that time was keep on handing them diminishing returns.

One of Disney’s 2D studios situated in Orlando was shut down in 2004 after the release of their last movie home on the range which as we all know was a flop in the box office only grossing in 103.9 million dollars when the project cost 110 million to make. The same thing happened with 2009’s princess and the frog as well as 2011’s Winnie the Pooh this was the last straw for Disney which chose to dismantle its 2D unit entirely in 2013. ( Brandon Smith, 2015) They say that studios have shifted from 2D to 3D because it costs cheaper to make a 3D animation than it is to make a 2D one however with computer technology 2D animation is actually cheaper and easier to make than it is with a 3D film with 2D its mostly just storyboarding scripting then animating and tweaking each scene and most of it can be done in one engine or software however with 3D animation after the storyboarding studio usually first go through the process of 2D animating scenes then they have to make a model and the environment then animate it. As with the case of tangled they even had to make a whole new software just to be able to make and animate Repansules hair. By comparing how much it cost to make tangled which was a 3D animated film released in 2010 to the princess and the frog which was 2D animated and released in 2009 the difference is huge the princess and the frog cost around 150 million dollars to make whilst tangled costed around 250 million dollars to make so the whole argument about how it’s cheaper to make a CG animated film compared to a 2D animated film is not really viable.

How did Disney kill off animation? It all started with the release of treasure planet it was the reason Disney stopped putting their time and effort into 2D animated films. The production of treasure planet was a bit different compared to the usual Disney 2D movie created before. There was no new technique, however, they used a lot of deep canvas to give it the beautiful visuals treasure planet had. Deep canvass is the use of 3D mapping of environments and or items that the characters interact with. So that you could get perspective and camera shot in a way one wouldn’t usually be able to get hand-drawn.

The hand-drawn animation is then put over the rendered scene overlayed with 2D texture which makes animating a scene with a panning or scaling movement much more easier and manageable. However, treasure planet wasn’t the first animation that used deep canvas it began with beauty and the beast were they had one or two scenes that used deep canvas in treasure planet they used it on almost every scene in treasure planet to give it the effect it has it was the reason Disney started to put a halt on 2D animation. The technique was needed with CGI to give it the sci-fi look and the depth it has as well as being able to make john silvers right leg and arm and the whole of B.E.N look as naturally robotic as possible. which in turn made the production of the film skyrocket to $140,000,000 but only made around $109,000,000 at the box office. Which begs the question why did the movie do so poorly at the box office, Disney usually is the best at marketing their products and reeling in their audience but somehow treasure planet was poorly marketed with trailers that either didn’t involve the story at all or out right spoiled the whole movie. It didn’t help that they released it on the same day as the highly anticipated Harry Potter movie. Which means it wasn’t able to complete at all with the other films at the box office With such poor marketing, it seems like Disney didn’t want the film to succeed. They didn’t even make the effort to boost marketing in any way, setting treasure planet up for failure. Even the directors of the film Ron Clements and John Musker believe that Disney kept postponing the release date so that they can release it with something it had no chance against.

The reason Disney went with this move was that they knew where the money was heading at this point. 3D animated films by Pixar and DreamWorks were at the top of box office. Making 3D animation seemed cheaper to them than hand-drawn animation with deep canvas and more profitable. So why waste so much money on a hand-drawn animation as detailed and rendered as treasure planet when you can spend less on a 3D film and in a shorter period of time. After the release of treasure planet, 2D animation dwindled from then on with every new release being released around the time of a big hit which slowly killed 2D films ending it all in 2011 with the release of Winnie the Pooh which was released in the same weekend as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 the consequence was that people saw made by Disney and instantly thought it was made for kids so they avoided it. Disney’s Winnie the Pooh was their final 2D film. Because of the release of the new harry potter movie and how anticipated it was nobody revisited their preconceived idea of what it was. People put 2D animated films in a preconceived bucket that lead Disney directors and animators to prefer and wanna do 3D animations. (sites. PSU, 2018)

Disney or Pixar? Placing the blame only on Disney would be a bit unfair. First off without Pixar and the release of toy stories CG animation wouldn’t be where it is today. This would be a good reason to blame Pixar for the death of 2D animation. 2D animation didn’t just disappear overnight right after the toy story came out but gradually yes, however, it was the driving force of its death it was the spark that led to the gradual domino effect of other studios wanting to do CG animation. Disney caught wind of the success of CG animation and turned from “we can do that” to “we can only do that”. Setting their future plans in stone. All this because Pixar dared to tread into new territory and do what was considered impossible at that time. A full-length CG film that ended up single-handedly shifting the course of the animation industry. Making people think that 3D films seemed more realistic and more mature which made them think 2D was a kiddy thing. However is it really the medium that killed 2D animation or is it that Pixar had better story ideas to talk about compared to Disney’s constant stories about princesses or the life of cats and dogs. maybe the ideas started to become old and unoriginal compared to Pixar’s new polished ideas. Even before Pixar’s toy story came out Disney’s success was starting to slip with their repetitive story plots and them starting to lead more towards merchandising whilst Pixar was becoming more and more interested in telling a great story and giving the audience something new and fresh every time.

Disney, in turn, ended up buying Pixar because it seemed like Disney was heading downhill and needed something to help it regain its monopoly on the animated film industry. ( Brandon Smith, 2015) The future of 2D animation. Traditional 2D animation might have died in the hands of Disney but with Disney not having a monopoly on the industry smaller more independent studios are able to shine and grow. The only difference is that they don’t seem to have the power to do worldwide releases like Disney does however now with the internet with word of mouth more and more studios are able to be exposed and more known. Especially now with more streaming platforms like youtube, Vimeo, and other sites its becoming easier and easier for smaller and more independent studios to release content getting to a wider range of audience. (Charles Webb, 2013) on the other hand, disney was the cause of the sudden boom of animation in other countries like in Japan. Back when Japan was in war with America and in despair for losing so much disney animations became pretty popular. Which inspired them to copy the work and learn from it even with the racist caricatures disney used to portray you can see the similarities when you watch Japanese animation from that time period with little cultural advancements at that time in Japan, America began imposing itself which will soon end up finding popularity with the Japanese audience and beyond in 1951 Japanese and American style collided in a comic called mighty atom (now known as Astro boy) the style was inspired by Disney all drawn in a more rounded style.

In 1953 televisions was introduced to Japan before the war in 1926 the country had experimented with television technology and in 1939 television broadcasts began however a few months later world war two began and all available resources were given to military purposes. However, its use spread quickly and in 1955 it regained its output and began to grow without pause. At that time everyone wanted to watch Disney because at this point much of the tv programs came from America. At that time Japan had no hand in animation and the ones created during the war were sponsored by the Americans and were created for the proper gander. After the collapse of the stat animation studios, there had to be picked back together making a studio from scratch seemed pointless at this point because the demand for Disney animations was high wasn’t until 1956 that a studio attempted to challenge Disney. Toei company LTD took on the challenge and created a full length film using celluloid animation tools the same as the ones Disney used to make the same intercept scenes and even used the same method Disney used in storytelling by adapting an old tail the result was a film entitled the tail of the white serpent released in 1958 America seemed to view it as a lack lustred Disney release but this seemed to matter little for the progression of animation in Japan which had just received a full-length animation made in Japan and revolutionised the animation industry in Japan. (Fredrik Knudsen, 2017)

Summary

Disney the first known studio to revolutionise animation with them being the first to make an animated short with sound and a full length animated film has kept moving forward and finding more revolutionary ways to animate and captivate their audience. Disney has always stayed true to itself by sticking with 2D animation however since Pixar released toy story Disney had the urge to kill off 2D traditional films and move forward to 3D animation by releasing their 2D films alongside other highly popular highly anticipated films and marketing their products poorly. Slowly making people assume that 2D animation was for kids and veering away from it making it do badly at the box office. They felt it would be cheaper for them, in the long run, to make 3D animation compared to 3D and feared that 2D would no longer stay that appealing to the audience so they would no longer have much success with 2D so they forcibly gave it a reason to fail. But on the other hand Disney is what inspired Japan to expand on the animation industry and they have grown to the point that Japanese animation “known as anime” has become a world-known style and is booming anime is still holding strong with 2D traditional animation and won’t be changing that much anytime soon. Conclusion. Even though Disney has no plans of doing any 2D animation soon the directors will at some point was to go back and do more 2D work especially with the approach of mickey’s 90th birthday this year Disney has been releasing more and more merchandise in the 1920’s animated style trying to capture people’s attention with the whole back to the idea of the origin maybe at some point Disney will end up going back to its roots and going back to 2D animation, after all, that’s what started this great studios journey so the likelihood of them never coming back to its roots is a bit slim.

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