> But Hollywood is a strange business. Certain decisions get made based on the buzzwords or slogans going around the corporate offices that day. If it sounds good, and it appears to help the bottom line, even a myth can become common sense.
That's not strange at all. It's not rational, exactly, but it's business as usual.
The collapse of American 2D animation is so sad. 3D animation has its place and charms too, I’m not knocking it, but 2D animation has a certain magic that’s incredibly difficult to replicate in 3D. It’s a beautiful art form that deserves better.
One worry of mine is that it won’t make a comeback before the masters who worked at Disney, WB, Cartoon Network, etc all pass away and all of that knowledge and expertise will be lost.
TL;DR is that good storytelling (via plot and character development) is what matters.
Pixar was successful because they mastered that via a culture that wanted to make the best of a new technology for movies. It’s the same for Studio Ghibli with traditional animation.
The issue with “Hollywood” (and American business in general) is that accountants seem to eventually take over and they don’t see the forest for the trees.
The brain is 2-D and 3-D is imposed on it from our technology. Hochberg called this 3-D embedded in 2-D pictorialization and it's inherently more fun than the sterility of enforced, computed 3-D.
CGI and 3-D were simply off-ramps to nowhere.
"Human vision is fundamentally a two-dimensional process where the retinas in our eyes capture flat, 2D images. The perception of three dimensions, or depth, is a complex mental construct, really an illusion, created by the brain using stereoscopic vision, which compares slight differences between the two 2D images from each eye, and other visual cues like shadows, motion parallax, and relative size."
I've noticed recently that a lot of the 3D movies have been doing more to steal the look and feel of hand-drawn animation. More smudging, better textures, variable frame rates, more clever character design, etc. Obviously the Spiderverse movies were a love letter to traditional animation, but even kids movies like the Bad Guys and the most recent Puss in Boots look amazing.
It's no replacement for hand-drawn and animated movies. But on the other hand (pun semi-intended) our ability to draw by hand these movies will never go away, and we have the ability to make new ones anytime in the future that someone has the passion and energy to do it (commercial success be damned!). The important thing is that all of the tricks, shorthand, and other collective learnings of a century of animation has not gone unappreciated, and is being absorbed into the new medium. That's pretty neat!
“It’s the story stupid.” seems like a good mantra from hollywood execs to internalize.
Toy Story, Shrek and their ilk were partially successful because of the new fresh medium but mostly successful because they told stories that resonated with people with well thought out and relatable characters. Of course not to say esthetics don’t play a part, but all secondary to story.
not being fair to 3d artists when i say this but the loss of american ability to produce high quality animated movies feels like it plays into our inability to build maglev trains or non-highway transit
It's OK, we'll sh*t out 5 more sequels to Shrek with a few celeb cameos and maybe another 20 fast n furious' and the hollywood economy will be just fine.
As much as artists see generative AI as a goddamned abomination for a variety of good reasons, classical animation is a place where it can do a lot, such as inbetweening or providing alternative backgrounds to an existing scene.
Imho the big failure of AI for real artists (besides IP rights concerns and the fact that it automates art instead of tedium) is mostly a UI one right now. The first studio to figure a good workflow for doing inbetweening using AI or the ability to feed character sheet and storyboards to get back rough keyframes will have a total game changer.
I think the author meant "mostly 2D animation" when they say "hand-drawn", in contrast to the fully 3D rendered movies such as Toy Story. They mentioned Suzume as a hand-drawn movie, even though it was a mix of 2D animation and 3D CG.
There is a thriving cult following of 2d animation on Youtube, but like many things this has a fractured audience, no longer a unified pop culture. Sparklehorse has Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss. Glitch Productions has The Amazing Digital Circus which is retro-3d, but seems to also be producing the former Disney Owl House creator to make Knights of Guinevere.
> There’s no doubt that Sinbad, Home on the Range and other projects did poorly in theaters during the ‘00s — or that CG films (even some that critics panned) did well. The numbers tell the tale.
If even the poorly reviewed CG films do well, of course the executives only funded that. People, unsurprisingly, prefer a guarantee of making money to a chance of making money.
Focusing on theatrical releases creates a bit of a false impression. There are clearly still cartoons in production, it's just that it's intended for TV or streaming. I suppose Spongebob Squarepants getting a 15th season isn't very romantic, but I'm sure the artists working on it appreciate the work.
Only a matter of time before talented keyframe artists can get AI to slop the inbetweens into nice vector formats and build out an efficient workflow. I feel like the floor for hybrid traditional animation is going to get dramatically lower than 3D pipeline.
Even Hollywood's 3DCG doesn't compare to China's Nezha (2019) & Nezha (2025). Problem is that Hollywood's animation is so expensive that it has to appeal to everyone while japan is ok with anime for niche markets like CITY and My Dress-up Darling.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 51.4 ms ] threadThat's not strange at all. It's not rational, exactly, but it's business as usual.
One worry of mine is that it won’t make a comeback before the masters who worked at Disney, WB, Cartoon Network, etc all pass away and all of that knowledge and expertise will be lost.
Pixar was successful because they mastered that via a culture that wanted to make the best of a new technology for movies. It’s the same for Studio Ghibli with traditional animation.
The issue with “Hollywood” (and American business in general) is that accountants seem to eventually take over and they don’t see the forest for the trees.
CGI and 3-D were simply off-ramps to nowhere.
"Human vision is fundamentally a two-dimensional process where the retinas in our eyes capture flat, 2D images. The perception of three dimensions, or depth, is a complex mental construct, really an illusion, created by the brain using stereoscopic vision, which compares slight differences between the two 2D images from each eye, and other visual cues like shadows, motion parallax, and relative size."
It's no replacement for hand-drawn and animated movies. But on the other hand (pun semi-intended) our ability to draw by hand these movies will never go away, and we have the ability to make new ones anytime in the future that someone has the passion and energy to do it (commercial success be damned!). The important thing is that all of the tricks, shorthand, and other collective learnings of a century of animation has not gone unappreciated, and is being absorbed into the new medium. That's pretty neat!
0 Hits.
Opinion discarded.
I haven't watched any of that trash in about 10 years and I don't feel like I missed anything.
All other filmmaking studios outside of Hollywood (hand rubbing sounds) are putting out great pieces, many of them consistently.
Imho the big failure of AI for real artists (besides IP rights concerns and the fact that it automates art instead of tedium) is mostly a UI one right now. The first studio to figure a good workflow for doing inbetweening using AI or the ability to feed character sheet and storyboards to get back rough keyframes will have a total game changer.
https://area.autodesk.jp/case/animation/suzume-no-tojimari/
If even the poorly reviewed CG films do well, of course the executives only funded that. People, unsurprisingly, prefer a guarantee of making money to a chance of making money.
Focusing on theatrical releases creates a bit of a false impression. There are clearly still cartoons in production, it's just that it's intended for TV or streaming. I suppose Spongebob Squarepants getting a 15th season isn't very romantic, but I'm sure the artists working on it appreciate the work.
1: https://www.polygon.com/24183308/mars-express-director-jerem...
https://youtu.be/l132u2nIpkI
https://youtu.be/o9GBZvI-U6o
Or Polish ones:
https://youtu.be/6O4sc7Gn0o8
https://youtu.be/wq8wfOp0PSM
Or Czech ones:
https://youtu.be/sVBrRv8s2jQ
https://youtu.be/vz5bw4EB0FQ
https://youtu.be/FwhROGiaGkc