(Note: The Buzz Cut's Disney's Urban Legends series still has two remaining parts. Consider this a slight detour before the series continues to its end.)
Hot on the heels of Disney's new animation director, David Stainton, announcing the studio's efforts to refocus on the younger crowd, Stainton is making noise in the industry for a different reason. Stainton recently said that Disney's animation studio plans to move further away from hand-drawn features to concentrate more of its efforts toward computer-generated films. (Read the full report on the Buzz-Wire.)
It's obvious why the bottom-line conscious Stainton is making such a move. Computer-generated films are hot in mainstream America right now, typically doing monster business at the box office and on home video (Shrek grossed $267.6 million, Ice Age did $176.3 million and Monsters, Inc. pulled $255.8 million). By comparison, the traditionally-animated fare has done poorly ($38 million for Disney's recent Treasure Planet and $73.2 million for Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron).
While there's no doubt CG plays a part in moviegoers flocking to theaters, what lies at the heart of this matter is story. Stainton doesn't seem to understand that a large part of the longlasting appeal of the above CG flicks has to due with their entertaining scripts. Not many were thrilled with Spirit or Treasure Planet because they didn't seem fun enough for the general public—which won't ever take "cartoons" as seriously as films. Take a look at Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. That was a computer-generated feature that grossed a paltry $32 million, proving that CG doesn't automatically equate to success.
It's disheartening that studios are losing faith in hand-drawn animation. Lilo & Stitch's had a low budget compared to Disney films of the past and it garnered $145.7 million in theaters. But rather than studios seeing this as an example of a traditionally-animated film with a good story doing great numbers, they saw it as the last breath of a rapidly dying art form.
Disney is going to retrain its best paper-and-pencil animators to work on computers. What a shame.
