Why has traditional animation died (in the states)?

[Fox12]

I'm curious why you think the medium is a dying art in America. Is it changing social trends? Are 2d art films simply more expensive then 3d? Or is it simply a case of follow the leader, where Pixar struck gold, and everyone else has been following suit, without actually understanding why the studio was successful in the first place.

I find the decline rather sad, given the breadth and range of what 2d animation can do, especially given modern advancements in the art. The only place where the tradition seems to survive is in Japan (obviously). But Japanese and American animators have always pushed one another, and seeing the art die out here seems like quite the waste.

I saw this, and it reignited my curiosity.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/disney-veterans-to-save-dying-art-of-2d-handdrawn-animation-with-new-film-hullabaloo-9710694.html
I'm somewhat skeptical about the films chances for success, but I would certainly love to see a second Renaissance in American animation.

 

[Rylot]

It died? Where the fuck was I when this happened? Are you only talking about movies? Because yeah it seems like everyone wants to jump on the 3D bandwagon these days but cartoons are alive and kicking at the moment. In fact as a nearly 30 year old adult I enjoy more cartoons now than I did growing up.

 

[Zontar]

It died? Where the fuck was I when this happened? Are you only talking about movies? Because yeah it seems like everyone wants to jump on the 3D bandwagon these days but cartoons are alive and kicking at the moment. In fact as a nearly 30 year old adult I enjoy more cartoons now than I did growing up.

On the big screen it has, in the West, pretty much died, and on the small screen there are a lot of CG based shows for some reason (despite traditional animation looking better and giving a better result for the same cost).

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

One of the reasons is that CGI animation can often be easier. When it comes down to it Pixar became a challenge so Dreamworks Animation went to 3D and immediately blew them straight out of the water. Pixar still can't catch up to Dreamworks for quality of image, or even in quality of story. But they're trying. Most other western studios are trying to catch Dreamworks and Pixar in the 3D arena because it is both cheaper and easier, but also because it's seen as "the future."

 

[Evonisia]

A few things. Because of Pixar I'm guessing, the 3D animation boom happened mostly because of them (though Dreamworks has enough hit films to warrant a mention).

Another damning strike was the underperformance of The Princess and the Frog in 2009. It made it's money, sure, but it didn't make anywhere near the same profits as the 3D films that followed it. When the company best known for putting out traditional animation chooses to shy away from it, I imagine everyone else just assumed that it was the logical step to avoid it.

 

[Frezzato]

Traditional hand-drawn animation has been dying out since before you were born (I'm guessing about your age). Somebody somewhere realized that CGI technology was more capable than what a human could produce with acetate and ink. One of the earliest examples that comes to mind is a scene from the movie Young Sherlock Holmes, where a

Spoiler: stained glass window comes to life.

stained glass window comes to life.

That was 1985 by the way.

Other examples might surprise you, like the truck scene from The Rescuers Down Under (1990) and sections of the ball room scene from Beauty and the Beast (1991). Both of those scenes used CGI judiciously in order to save on time, effort and cost.[footnote]Remember, everything has a deadline[/footnote] And those are just examples that I noticed on my own and then later confirmed with some behind-the-scenes footage.

I can't blame studio executives for thinking all people want to see CGI animated movies now. It's really up to animators to adapt to demand, not the other way around.

I say all this while admitting that I own an Artograph light box, an Epson high-speed scanner, and some round-hole pegbars from Lightfoot, Ltd. But I also downloaded Unity and some other things to play around with. I dabble in hand-drawn stuff because it's fun, not because I think there's a market out there for this stuff.

 

[SweetShark]

To be short and without a deeper knowledge about animation, 3D is cheaper, comfortable and faster than 2D animation.
But I digress, because it seems in Videogames 3D don't work with the same logic.
Example:

 

[SweetShark]

A few things. Because of Pixar I'm guessing, the 3D animation boom happened mostly because of them (though Dreamworks has enough hit films to warrant a mention).

Another damning strike was the underperformance of The Princess and the Frog in 2009. It made it's money, sure, but it didn't make anywhere near the same profits as the 3D films that followed it. When the company best known for putting out traditional animation chooses to shy away from it, I imagine everyone else just assumed that it was the logical step to avoid it.

Then the next step the companies must make sure to create 3D animated movies, but look like 2D.
In videogames it already happened [Guilty Gear xrd]. but in movie it would be very difficult. Except of course it already happened and I don't know about it.

 

[Grumpy Ginger]

A few things. Because of Pixar I'm guessing, the 3D animation boom happened mostly because of them (though Dreamworks has enough hit films to warrant a mention).

Another damning strike was the underperformance of The Princess and the Frog in 2009. It made it's money, sure, but it didn't make anywhere near the same profits as the 3D films that followed it. When the company best known for putting out traditional animation chooses to shy away from it, I imagine everyone else just assumed that it was the logical step to avoid it.

Then the next step the companies must make sure to create 3D animated movies, but look like 2D.
In videogames it already happened [Guilty Gear xrd]. but in movie it would be very difficult. Except of course it already happened and I don't know about it.

The japanese have released a few films kind of like that though partially cell shaded would be a better description such as the new berserk movies and the not so recent appleseed movie

 

[Dizchu]

To be short and without a deeper knowledge about animation, 3D is cheaper, comfortable and faster than 2D animation.

Ehh, I don't know about this. Sure, the process is more streamlined, but rendering 3D animated films requires render farms, you need 3D modellers, texture artists, often you'll also need motion capture performances, and all of these things are insanely costly.

I guess studios just feel they need to deliver spectacle these days. I love 3D animation as much as 2D animation, but from what I can tell 2D films these days are generally under-marketed and therefore don't sell as well (and as a result, studios get the impression that people don't want to see them).

I recently watched the new Spongebob movie which I thought was fantastic, but it was sad that the marketing relied so heavily on showing the 3D/live action parts.

 

[Saetha]

A few things. Because of Pixar I'm guessing, the 3D animation boom happened mostly because of them (though Dreamworks has enough hit films to warrant a mention).

Another damning strike was the underperformance of The Princess and the Frog in 2009. It made it's money, sure, but it didn't make anywhere near the same profits as the 3D films that followed it. When the company best known for putting out traditional animation chooses to shy away from it, I imagine everyone else just assumed that it was the logical step to avoid it.

Then the next step the companies must make sure to create 3D animated movies, but look like 2D.
In videogames it already happened [Guilty Gear xrd]. but in movie it would be very difficult. Except of course it already happened and I don't know about it.

Western animators are working on it. Ever heard of Paperman? Here, this video stops at about the minute mark and they put a stupid comment box that you have to exit out of, but eh, it'll do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QAI4B_2Mfc

That's CGI.

It's made with Meander, an animation program that Disney's working on to mimic a 2D feel in 3D animation. It's got it's kinks still - Paperman's in black and white because Disney couldn' get the program to work well with color, and if you pay attention you can still see that things are too perfect to look truly hand-drawn. But it's a really cool step.

More recently they used it to make this as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-He01IQz9Y

 

[SweetShark]

A few things. Because of Pixar I'm guessing, the 3D animation boom happened mostly because of them (though Dreamworks has enough hit films to warrant a mention).

Another damning strike was the underperformance of The Princess and the Frog in 2009. It made it's money, sure, but it didn't make anywhere near the same profits as the 3D films that followed it. When the company best known for putting out traditional animation chooses to shy away from it, I imagine everyone else just assumed that it was the logical step to avoid it.

Then the next step the companies must make sure to create 3D animated movies, but look like 2D.
In videogames it already happened [Guilty Gear xrd]. but in movie it would be very difficult. Except of course it already happened and I don't know about it.

The japanese have released a few films kind of like that though partially cell shaded would be a better description such as the new berserk movies and the not so recent appleseed movie

I saw the first two Berserk movies and they are not even close to the illusion the Guilty Gear new game offer.
The 3D must fool the people to think it is a 3d movie.

 

[SweetShark]

Because kids have shit taste nowadays and 3-D has utterly dominated the market. At least you can rely on Europeans to keep it alive in the mainstream market...

Yes, because clearly the traditional 2D films are not sh*tty.

 

[L. Declis]

I thought it was simply because traditional animation is simply too slow and too costly to produce; CGI allows you to reuse models, meaning that it gets quicker on average the longer it is, which is a better investment on time.

Animation isn't completely dead; see Adult Swim and Newsground. But is it slowly being phrased out of the mainstream? Yeah.

 

[Grumpy Ginger]

A few things. Because of Pixar I'm guessing, the 3D animation boom happened mostly because of them (though Dreamworks has enough hit films to warrant a mention).

Another damning strike was the underperformance of The Princess and the Frog in 2009. It made it's money, sure, but it didn't make anywhere near the same profits as the 3D films that followed it. When the company best known for putting out traditional animation chooses to shy away from it, I imagine everyone else just assumed that it was the logical step to avoid it.

Then the next step the companies must make sure to create 3D animated movies, but look like 2D.
In videogames it already happened [Guilty Gear xrd]. but in movie it would be very difficult. Except of course it already happened and I don't know about it.

The japanese have released a few films kind of like that though partially cell shaded would be a better description such as the new berserk movies and the not so recent appleseed movie

I saw the first two Berserk movies and they are not even close to the illusion the Guilty Gear new game offer.
The 3D must fool the people to think it is a 3d movie.

As far as I know the third does some weird thing where the bodies are cg but the faces are traditionally animated

 

[MonsterCrit]

2d animation , even when computer animated takes more time and costs more. See you forget the thing with 3d... is that it's very easy to do things like re edit an action sequence or .. shift the camera angle so to speak. So from a directorial stand point it's much, much more flexible.

Granted it doesn't compare to handdraw cels... properly done. But thems be expensive.

 

[Jinjer]

I think 3D works fine for movies, but needs to stay out of TV series. With the smaller budget and longer runtime making a good 3D TV series is just not feasible IMHO. Just compare the How To Train Your Dragon movies to the TV series. The movies look great, but the TV series just looks... flat. Cheap textures and clunkier animation make it really jarring if you've watched the movies first.

 

[Gearhead mk2]

3D is just cheaper, easier and quicker. The thing about drawn 2D animation is that you have to double check every frame to make sure you've kept the proportions and colours and made sure everything that was in the shot a second ago is still there. In 3D CGI, all the models are there unless deliberately removed and because they're premade models you don't have to redraw them every time so you don't have to worry about being off-model. 2D animation is easier to change though, like if you wanted a character to go chibi or change colour just for a second as a joke. In 2D that's just a couple of frames drawn differently, but in 3D you have to come up with new textures and models that'll only be used for those few seconds. And on the consumer side, there's still the ignorance problem of lots of people thinking 2D is all childish and saccharine.