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Eddie Pittman Much has been made of Disney's fall from grace in the animation field. Why is the studio once heralded as the best of the best churning out movies grossly inferior to the competition? For a while, it was thought to be because Disney's bread and butter—2D animation—was an aging genre, fading away in favor of the computer-generated fare seen in blockbusters such as Monsters, Inc. and Shrek. But the common perception today seems to be that, while 3D is a hot trend at the moment, it's the ho-hum stories that have cooled audiences on traditional animation. Mike Disa said 2D is not dying, it's simply shifted to lower-cost venues. But Eddie Pittman, a cartoonist and illustrator for more than 15 years who's worked on notable projects such as Mulan, Tarzan and Fantasia 2000, is concerned that if studios stop producing top-grade 2D animation, the art form could be lost. “I think there is a danger in [traditional animation] fading away,” says Pittman. He’s talking about feature animation on par with the Disney films such as Atlantis or The Lion King and recent DreamWorks movies such as Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and The Road to El Dorado. One can see the difference in quality between that and the cheaper animation found on TV shows such as Rugrats and The Powerpuff Girls. The point Pittman is making is that there is a distinction between 2D feature films and 2D TV shows. So while 2D might always be around on the small screen, the same can’t be said for the big screen. And therein lies the problem. Pittman argues that the more studios phase out 2D feature films due to the risk at the box-office, the more top animators in the field will leave traditional animation behind. The best animators will get jobs with the computer studios, he says, and the large group of support artists—the cleanup guys, the background artists—are going to move on in different areas such as illustration and comic books. “You’re not going to get them back into the industry,” Pittman says, "because it would be a liability for them. So if we wait too long here to bring this art form back, if we let it completely disappear, it’s going to be much more difficult to revitalize.” Pittman isn't about to watch traditional animation lose its luster. He is a founding member and manager of the recently opened Legacy Animation, a studio dedicated to preserving Walt Disney's legacy. Housed in Winter Garden, Fla., it was established by animators and artists who formerly worked at Disney's recently shuttered Florida studio. “Our goal is to try to save traditional animation," Pittman says. "We’ve got a lot of great talent here in Florida ... We’re trying to do what we can—small people with no names and shallow pockets to help keep this alive." What does Pittman have to say about the notion that 2D is simply too expensive for the box office? He thinks that, more than anything, it has to do with inefficiency in the production process. “There are a lot of redoes," he says. "There’s been a lot of downtime. We saw that a lot on Emperor’s New Groove. They had to completely stop the production at one point and take it back into story. There are several factors here. These creative executives who really don’t offer a lot to the process are getting paid exorbitant amounts of money which I don’t think they always earn.” Pittman continues: “The Disney films were produced in a very different way [a long time ago] where you would have supervising animators who would literally be supervisors of a section of animation. They were a lot more efficient at the time." Pittman doesn't think the cost-difference between 2D and 3D is that great, but he says one benefit of 3D is that it's easier to make changes after a scene has already been animated. Pittman explains: “[If] a producer says, ‘I don’t like the way this goes here, and I don’t like the dialogue, let’s change the dialogue,' it’s a lot easier [with computer animation] to go into that scene and change the lip sync on the dialogue, or even the acting, with a minimal amount of work. "[But] traditional animation is a lot cheaper in some respects because paper is cheap. Pencils are cheap. It becomes expensive if, in the middle of a production, or at the end of a production, you decide we’ve got to make a lot of changes. So the way you solve that is you tie your story down before you start your production." Pittman thinks the trend with studios bucking traditional animation is a phase. "I know that it's a pendulum that will swing back to traditional animation," he says. "My concern is that there's not going to be an industry left by the time that pendulum gets back. People are going to leave the industry. They're going to find other work. And they're not going to have the confidence to come back and do it if it ever comes back around. The big studios don't seem to want to support feature-length traditional animation at the moment, evidenced by Disney's decision to close its Orlando studio. "They think that the audiences only want to see computer-animated films now," Pittman says, "which is not the truth. I think movies like Dinosaur and Final Fantasy proved that. It takes a good story in order to get a good box office. "I think we're at a crossroads here and it could go either way. But I think time's running out." To that end, Legacy was formed for noble purposes. The studio recently began pre-production on its first project, an animated short,called Lucky. According to Legacy's official site, Lucky is about a four-leaf clover who is down on his luck, and as he passes through a small town, he brings good fortune to those he encounters. Legacy was formed for the love of the art form in traditional animation. Can this small studio buck trends and change the growing tide in the industry? A woman named Margaret Meade once said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." |
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Chris Douvalas |
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