Glen Keane, Andreas Deja e il futuro del 2D

E' lo studio d'animazione più antico ma anche il più vitale. Tutto comincia da qui, e continua ancora oggi portando l'arte dell'animazione verso nuove frontiere. La mancanza di un nome riconoscibile ha portato per anni il grande pubblico a confonderne le opere con quelle delle altre filiali Disney, ma adesso tutto è cambiato. Benvenuti nel Canone Disney.
  • Da Animation Fascination un'intervista a Nik Ranieri a proposito del 2D e della CGI.
    Q: What is your take on the evolution of animation—specifically the turn most companies have made entirely to CG?

    Nik Ranieri: Is it evolution or just another style? Evolution supposes that the former dies out to make way for the new. Is hand-drawn animation dead? Was hand-drawn animation created because they didn’t have computers yet? Or is it an art form unto itself? Most people feel that, as with silent films to sound films, hand-drawn animation has been replaced with the more sophisticated CGI work. Maybe a better way to look at it is a comparison of black & white films to color. No one makes silent movies anymore but black & white films are produced once in a while. B&W has a different feel to it and a different look. It can set a different mood to that of color film. It’s a technique that’s still valid today and it is my hope that hand-drawn animation will be thought of in the same way.

    Q: What major strides do you think CG has made toward believability? What pitfalls do you still see it falling into?

    Nik Ranieri: The amount of detail is incredible. Movement can get so subtle that even slight eye darts are possible. Unfortunately, I feel that the exaggeration and caricature of traditional animation is abandoned in favor of realism. In some cases, the “magic” and fun are lost.

    Q: Personally, I think the characters (girls specifically) in ‘Tangled’ and ‘Frozen’ could have been so much more, well, animated if they’d been done in hand-drawn. This is largely based on Glen [Keane]’s gorgeous concept art and sketches, not to mention some elements in sequences like “Let It Go” that I found somewhat boring and lifeless. What’s your take on those films specifically and maybe Disney Animation generally?

    Nik Ranieri: Both drawings and computers have a place in film. There are positives and negatives to both CGI and traditional. It all depends on your preference. I don’t think these films would have been better in hand-drawn. They just would have been different. I heard some people say certain hand-drawn films would have looked amazing in CG. They might have. Hey, “Casablanca” would have looked amazing in color….or maybe not. Maybe black & white suited the tone of the film better.

    Q: When can we open up our own traditional animation company?

    Nik Ranieri: Two words: Mega Millions
  • Io temo che con il mega-successo ottenuto da Frozen per il 2D si siano davvero perse le speranze... È l'unica cosa che mi rattrista di un film che ho amato, ma credo che ormai ci sia ben poco, almeno a breve termine, da aspettarsi in alternativa alla CGI. Al limite la sfida sarà riguardo quale tipo di CGI si evolverà, e perlomeno in questo caso la strada dei WDAS sembra essere rosea. Una CGI così vicina al 2D non l'avevo mai vista, e probabilmente si può perfino migliorare.

    Piuttosto, tante incertezze anche per il Meander. Moana se non sbaglio è stato convertito in 3D anch'esso. Anche se leggevo qualche tempo fa, non ricordo dove, che vorrebbero utilizzare un tipo di rendering ancor più pittorico.
    For now I've lost everything,
    I give to you my soul.
    The meaning of all that I believed before
    escapes me in this world of none.
    I miss you more

    (Genesis, Afterglow)
  • Q: I feel [2D animation] is getting lost. To me, that is the Disney brand. It is unique. No one else can do that. […] Is there going to be the tradition of the 2D movies, the animation, even if it’s shorts? I know 2D is expensive but to me and to a lot of people that is the Disney unique brand.

    Robert Iger: First of all, on the movie side, we just try to make great movies; tell great stories [with] memorable characters, [set in] worlds that are created that people believe could actually exist or people want to visit. I can’t think of a better example than Frozen. I think when people watch Frozen, they don’t think 2D or 3D, they just really engage with the storytelling and the characters. I think it proves the point that it doesn’t matter what the genre is or the type of technology that we use to create or tell the story; it’s about how good the story is, really.

    There are currently no plans in place to make another 2D film. The last one we did was The Princess and the Frog. There are plenty of activities in the company for other forms of hand-drawn animation. We recently released a number of Mickey shorts, for instance, that are basically derived from hand-drawn animation style. We’ll continue to look at opportunities like that but it’s unlikely, at least in the near-term particularly since we don’t have anything in development, that you’ll see a hand-drawn or 2D animated feature-film from Disney.
    Affermazione fatta all'ultimo meeting degli investitori, dove ha annunciato i nuovi sequel Pixar. A parte che si è scordato che Tiana non è affatto l'ultimo 2D WDAS, non sembra star dando molte speranze.

    Dal forum di dvdizzy l'utente Sotiris ha abbozzato una lista di animatori 2D ancora presenti allo studio:
    After last April layoffs very few 2D animators are left anyway. As far as I know, there are only 8 animators left at the studio who still animate in 2D. These are:

    • Mark Henn
    • Eric Goldberg
    • Alex Kupershmidt
    • Randy Haycock
    • Dale Baer
    • Anthony de Rosa
    • Rachel Bibb
    • Jin Kim (as a character designer)

    There are more 2D animators there but they moved on to CG animation. That includes both veterans like Kathy Zielinski and Bert Klein as well as younger ones like Andrew Chesworth, Jennifer Hager, Mario Furmanczyk, Hyun Min Lee.
  • Oh quindi la Zielinski è tornata! Ottima cosa...

    Per il 2D... il problema non è la volontà di fare o meno film in 2D (a maggior ragione caro Iger se dici che alla gente non interessa se è 2D o 3D ma solo memorabili personaggi e storie...), il problema secondo me sono i costi, e non solo quelli relativi alla singola pellicola 2D. Dopo che è stato smantellato tutto il settore 2D rimetterlo in piedi probabilmente costa parecchio.
    Però uffa un film 2D ogni 4 anni si può fare. Anche se significherebbe assumere metà della crew a progetto, e fare come funziona qui in Italia dove gli artisti vengono assunti e licenziati di continuo.

    O semplicemente non vogliono rischiare, nel senso che non vogliono sprecare un buon film con una tecnica che sanno a priori incasserà, anche se non poco, senza dubbio meno di un eventuale corrispettivo in 3D. Insomma Iger, hai detto fregnacce!
  • Ecco una cosa bella che ha detto Chris Buck sulla 2dosità di Frozen:
    Despite being computer generated Frozen remains grounded in the tradition of hand-draw animation. “It’s Disney’s legacy,” observes Chris Buck. “We still have quite a few of our hand-drawn animators there and CG guys. I come from hand-drawn too. In the animation dailies room we would stop on a frame when a CG animator was showing his scene and Mark [Empey] would go over it and give a wonderful hand-drawn appeal to the poses. There’s the combination of that in all of the animation where you get that feeling of the hand-drawn and then we do have some hand-drawn effects that are in the movie too. It’s a nice blend in the whole thing.”
    http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2014/03/s ... about.html
  • Mark Henn descrive meglio il suo ruolo per Frozen:
    Q: What was your role with Frozen?

    Mark Henn: Well, I was kind of asked to come on board as kind of a mentor/coach/cheerleader for the young animators and artists. I physically would sit in on dailies. We have a computer system here that allows me as their scenes come up on the screen that I can make a drawing on a computer tablet and say "I think this might be a stronger pose" or "this might be a stronger expression." So, I spent my time touching all the scenes and all the characters throughout the film at one point or another and working with the animators to improve the animation by bringing my years of experience as a hand-drawn animator. I did one computer film, so I do have experience with computer-generated animation so I understand a little of where they're coming from and their frustrations. I was there to encourage them and to help them develop and maintain their themes not only with their drawings, but I might just throw out ideas. I was just part of the crew. I was able to make drawings and kick in ideas and to just be a resource for the animators.
    http://theindependentcritic.com/an_inte ... _mark_henn
  • Ed Catmull dal suo libro Creativity Inc.
    When The Princess and the Frog was released, we believed we had made a good film, the reviews confirmed that belief, and people who saw it loved it. However, we would soon learn that we had made a serious mistake—one that was only compounded by the fact that our movie opened nationwide just five days before James Cameron’s science fiction fantasy Avatar. This scheduling only encouraged moviegoers to take one look at a film with the word princess in the title and think: That’s for little girls only. To say that we are making a great film but not listen to the input of experienced colleagues within the company imperiled the quality we were so proud of. Quality meant that every aspect—not just the rendering and the storytelling but also the positioning and the marketing—needed to be done well, which meant being open to reasoned opinions, even when they contradicted our own. The movie had come in under budget, which is the rarest of achievements in the entertainment business. The quality of its animation rivaled the best ever done by the studio. The film was profitable, as we’d kept costs down, but it just didn’t make enough to convince anyone at the studio that we should pour more resources into hand-drawn films.

    While we’d had high hopes that the film would prove that 2D could rise again, our narrow vision and poor decision-making made it seem like the opposite was true. While we thought then—and still think today—that hand-drawn animation is a wonderfully expressive medium, I realize now that I got carried away by my childhood memories of the Disney Animation I’d once so enjoyed. I’d liked the idea of celebrating, right out of the box, the art form that Walt Disney himself pioneered.

    After The Princess and the Frog’s somewhat lackluster opening, I knew we had to rethink what we were doing. Around that time, Andrew Millstein pulled me aside and pointed out that our double-barreled approach—reviving 2D while also championing 3D—was confusing the people within the studio we fundamentally wanted to encourage to focus on the future. The issue with 2D was not the validity of the time-honored art form but that Disney’s directors needed and wanted to engage with the new. In the aftermath of the merger, many people had asked me whether we were going to have Disney do 2D and Pixar 3D. They were expecting Disney to do the old stuff and Pixar to do the new. In the wake of The Princess and the Frog, I realized how important it was to nip this toxic way of thinking in the bud. The truth was, Disney’s directors respected the studio’s heritage, but they wanted to build on it—and in order to do that, they had to be free to forge their own path.
  • Scaricabarile.
    Q: In your book, you talk about your efforts to bring back hand-drawn animation at Disney. Is that still part of your agenda? Are there plans for Disney Animation to produce any more 2D-animated features or does the studio focus solely on CG films now?

    Ed Catmull: Hand-drawn animation had basically been shut down at Disney when we arrived so we worked hard to bring back hand-drawn animation and we created The Princess and the Frog which was critically very well reviewed. The difficulty we have is that most of the directors now want to work in 3D and while John and I deeply love hand-drawn animation, we have to respect the desires of our current diretors because we're not trying to impose a particular style on them. So, it's just recognising currently what their artistic desires are! We continue to make some shorts because we have some remarkably talented people within hand-drawn animation and it is our hope to keep the artform alive. We don't have any feature-length projects planned at this time.
  • Ok gente, qui c'è il corto realizzato da Glen prodotto da Google con tecnologie fantasmagoriche che tra qualche mese ci permetteranno di vederlo su mobile con la possibilità di muoverci nella scena, una fruizione dell'opera del tutto nuova (se ho capito bene).
    Credo sia l'Animazione più fluida mai vista, anche perché (sempre se ho capito bene, guardate il making of e confermate/smentite) dovrebbero essere 60 i frame al secondo...

    Il corto




    Il making of
  • @Disney: magnalammerda, ricagala e pulisciti il culo con le locandine di Ralph e Frozen. Tzè!
  • Oh, ma sto corto è una meraviglia.
  • Laika has made a name for themselves with their hand-crafted stop-motion animated feature films like Coraline, ParaNorman and the upcoming movie Boxtrolls. But the Portland-based animation studio wants to help hand-drawn animation make a comeback. During the Boxtrolls Hall H presentation at 2014 San Diego Comic Con International, Laika head Travis Knight would like to do a 2D hand-drawn animated feature film. He says that every one of the Laika stop-motion movies feature small bits of hand-drawn animation composites, but he would like to one day do a whole movie in the medium. It seems like they don’t have any definite plans but you could tell from his tone that it’s something he’s been considering for a while now.
    http://www.slashfilm.com/laika-hand-drawn-animation/


    Sniff, c'è ancora ci pensa...
  • http://taughtbyapro.com/episode-1-the-b ... n-podcast/

    I Bancroft dicono la verità sulle intenzioni della Disney di riprendere il 2d:
    Tony Bancroft: A lot of people ask us at conventions and other places how is 2D animation going to come back again. Is it going to come back again? I've always said I don’t know that it will in any kind of huge way but if it does it’s probably going to come from a smaller studio. It’s probably going to come from Europe; it’s probably going to come back from somebody like Laika.

    Tom Bancroft: Laika's got rumors right now that they want to do a 2D film. Tony and I both know somebody that works internally there who is a 2D guy and he’s talked to them and backs that up. And says yeah, that’s a serious rumor. Whether or not they do it is totally different. There’s money involved and all that. But do they want to? I think we can all say yes, they definitely do.

    Tony Bancroft: They have that renegade attitude of ‘Why not? Let’s give it a go.’

    Tom Bancroft: If they have the right story, I think that they will.

    Tony Bancroft: Disney has said that. They've given it a lot of lip service. John Lasseter has come out in the past and said “Oh, we haven’t shut our doors to 2D animation as a medium and as a way of making these films. We just have to find the right story that yells ‘lets do it this way’ and so far we haven’t found that.” That’s not altogether true. I know that because I have people in the studio that I know. Tom knows people in the studio too. We've heard from multiple sources that 3D animation is the present and the future of Disney animation. They have no intention of doing a 2D animated film and they have no stories that they've ever even looked at as a possible 2D animated film. Even when the directors have designed it to be a 2D animated film, Lasseter or somebody else, usually Lasseter, will come in and say “I think we better make this 3D. I think this is better suited for 3D.”

    Tom Bancroft: Well, here’s the other part that most people don’t know. They really don’t even have the means at Disney to pull off a 2D film right now. A lot of people don’t know this but when they pretty much turned their back on 2D animation, they sold all of the animation desks, they gave them away to a lot of the art schools, hundreds and hundreds of them in California and Florida. They just got rid of them. Not only they don’t have the tools and the equipment but they don’t have the pipeline. They don’t even have the animators anymore. They have maybe two handfuls of 2D animators that are still there. Some are training in CG and could come back so maybe they get a half dozen but that’s about all they have.

    Tony Bancroft: They don’t even have the production people that remember how to make a 2D animated feature. Literally, from a pipeline standpoint of what comes first and how do we do this, and how do we get this person this stuff… It’s been so long and they've had so many transitions and changeovers in personnel, it would be starting over. It would be starting from scratch, if they tried to do it.

    Tom Bancroft: It would be a mammoth thing to take on at this point for Disney. Somebody would have to make a lot of money on a 2D feature film because they made it very inexpensively and put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into it and maybe then Disney would go ‘Oh, we should get back into that.’ Would it be making a feature film? I don’t know. Maybe it would be something else. They say they’re not out of 2D, ‘Oh, we still make the Mickey Mouse shorts. We do 2D. See?’ I think that’s why we have the Mickey Mouse shorts. It’s one of the gold wrappers on that. They can say ‘Oh, look! We haven’t given up on 2D’ and they can point to a couple of things. That’s one of the reasons those Mickey Mouse shorts exist, I believe.
  • http://www.rotoscopers.com/2015/02/27/f ... animation/

    Un articolo moooooolto interessante sulla questione.
  • Praticamente si dicono cose che già si sapevano da un pezzo: poca voglia di rischiare e sciupare tempo e soldi.
    A questo punto viene voglia di chiedersi se non esista più il 2D perchè ci sono meno scrittori che sappiano fare il proprio lavoro, cioè raggiungere una fetta di target il più trasversale possibile, e non perchè sia il pubblico a voler davvero solo il 3D. Certo, se continuano a sviluppare i film come fanno adesso, un segmento alla volta con decine di persone che esprimono le proprie idee, è ovvio che siano indecisi fino all'ultima settimana su come il film dovrà essere.
    Ecco perchè manca la figura di uno come Walt Disney: una persona cazzuta che sappia quel che vuole fin da subito, che sappia ciò che piace alla gente, e che sappia come ottenerlo dai suoi collaboratori.
    Per come siamo ridotti oggi, non c'è voglia, tempo e soprattutto soldi per rischiare. E tutto va in vacca. Schifo schifo e schifo.
    Suggerisco una buona dieta a base di ormoni. Sia mai che a qualcuno finalmente spuntino le palle.
  • brigo ha scritto:Praticamente si dicono cose che già si sapevano da un pezzo: poca voglia di rischiare e sciupare tempo e soldi.
    No, si ufficializza solo che non è questione di rischio, budget, pubblico etc. Ma di comodità produttiva.
    A questo punto viene voglia di chiedersi se non esista più il 2D perchè ci sono meno scrittori che sappiano fare il proprio lavoro, cioè raggiungere una fetta di target il più trasversale possibile
    Qui stai andando a campi.
    Ecco perchè manca la figura di uno come Walt Disney: una persona cazzuta che sappia quel che vuole fin da subito, che sappia ciò che piace alla gente, e che sappia come ottenerlo dai suoi collaboratori.
    Per come siamo ridotti oggi, non c'è voglia, tempo e soprattutto soldi per rischiare. E tutto va in vacca. Schifo schifo e schifo.
    Suggerisco una buona dieta a base di ormoni. Sia mai che a qualcuno finalmente spuntino le palle.
    Ovviamente stai facendo fantapolitica. Perché un Walt Disney è irripetibile. Non perché in giro non possano nascerne di persone come lui, ma perché qualora venissero a lavorare in Disney non sarebbe più la LORO AZIENDA da gestire a proprio piacimento, rispondendo a sé stessi dei propri rischi, ma dovrebbero rispondere ad un consiglio d'amministrazione collettivo. Le azioni della Company sono in mano a tante persone diverse, con le loro ansie, paure e voglie di guadagno, e qualsiasi decisione possano prendere gli ipotetici creativi illuminati verrà per forza frenata dalla necessità di non scontentarle.
  • Valerio ha scritto:
    brigo ha scritto:Praticamente si dicono cose che già si sapevano da un pezzo: poca voglia di rischiare e sciupare tempo e soldi.
    No, si ufficializza solo che non è questione di rischio, budget, pubblico etc. Ma di comodità produttiva.
    Be', comodità dettata dalle paure di cui parlo.
    Spendere poco (o il giusto) sapendo di far contenti molti, o di non perdere una fortuna se ciò non accadesse.
    Valerio ha scritto:
    brigo ha scritto:A questo punto viene voglia di chiedersi se non esista più il 2D perchè ci sono meno scrittori che sappiano fare il proprio lavoro, cioè raggiungere una fetta di target il più trasversale possibile
    Qui stai andando a campi.
    Puoi spiegarmi meglio per favore? Non c'è intento polemico, ma vorrei capire meglio ciò che intendi.
    Valerio ha scritto:
    brigo ha scritto:Ecco perchè manca la figura di uno come Walt Disney: una persona cazzuta che sappia quel che vuole fin da subito, che sappia ciò che piace alla gente, e che sappia come ottenerlo dai suoi collaboratori.
    Per come siamo ridotti oggi, non c'è voglia, tempo e soprattutto soldi per rischiare. E tutto va in vacca. Schifo schifo e schifo.
    Suggerisco una buona dieta a base di ormoni. Sia mai che a qualcuno finalmente spuntino le palle.
    Ovviamente stai facendo fantapolitica. Perché un Walt Disney è irripetibile. Non perché in giro non possano nascerne di persone come lui, ma perché qualora venissero a lavorare in Disney non sarebbe più la LORO AZIENDA da gestire a proprio piacimento, rispondendo a sé stessi dei propri rischi, ma dovrebbero rispondere ad un consiglio d'amministrazione collettivo. Le azioni della Company sono in mano a tante persone diverse, con le loro ansie, paure e voglie di guadagno, e qualsiasi decisione possano prendere gli ipotetici creativi illuminati verrà per forza frenata dalla necessità di non scontentarle.
    Sì, è fantapolitica. Ho gridato un mio sogno a voce alta, ne sono consapevole. E proprio perchè si tratta di un sogno non ci credo. Sono arrivato al punto in cui nemmeno la Disney riesce più a farmi sognare. Anzi, la Disney ©.
  • Per andare a campi intendevo che stai divagando, in quanto qualita della scrittura e procedimenti produttivi non hanno alcuna relazione in questo discorso.
  • Torna a “Walt Disney Animation Studios”