The Walt Disney Company, the entertainment powerhouse that began more than seventy years ago with a little cartoon character named Mickey Mouse, is getting out of the traditional cartoon business. The company is closing one of its legendary animation studios in Orlando, Florida, laying off most of its once 2,000-strong army of artists, and relocating the rest to company headquarters in Burbank, California. The move reflects the growing dominance of computer-based digital animation over the painstaking hand-drawn animation methods that Disney studios pioneered. But some of Disney's traditional animators aren't ready to hang up their pens and brushes. A group of them has decided to form a new company, one that that will work exclusively with "hand-drawn" animation techniques.
In 1937, audiences were enthralled by Walt Disney's the first-ever full-length animated feature. The film's exquisite artistry, the product of thousands of hours of work by teams of skilled artists and animators, set the standard for the many Disney animated feature films that followed over the next four decades. But in the early 1980s - the fledgling technology of computer-generated animation began to find its way into cartoons and special effects. With a touch of button, artists could animate graphic images with a stunning new degree of realism.
"Even the great traditional animators such as Nick Ranieri and Glen Keane and Mark Henn are all learning how to animate on the computer animation platform. And from the best of my knowledge there's no desire at this point to go back to hand-drawn animation," explains Eddie Pittman, the founder and director of Legacy Animation Studios, which opened last month (January) in Florida. He and his staff are credited with animating more than 25 feature films, including Disney's and Mr. Pittman believes hand-rawn animation connects with viewers' emotions more powerfully than computer-generated art.
"We all can make some scribbles on a piece of paper," he explains. "And to imagine that those scribbles can come to life and act, emote, is just amazing - it's magic. But when we watch computer animation, it's so slick, it's so flawless in many ways, visually, surface-wise, that I think we don't know how it's done. So we don't think someone actually did touch it or make it."
"Because you're dealing with three dimensional sets and three dimensional characters, they are closer to live action," says Charles Solomon, a film critic and contributor to newspaper. "Actually, in many ways, computer animation is similar to puppet animation. Because you have questions of how they're lit and just their dimensionality adds something to that world. In two-dimensional animation, you have a chance for much greater fantasy and charicature."
Disney Studio's 1994 hit, earned more money at the box office than any other animated film before it. But its success was eclipsed by last year's a computer-animated film that, like was as appealing to adults as it was to children. Legacy Studios director Eddie Pittman says some Hollywood executives believe that hand-animation has become "old fashioned."
"Hollywood is quick to jump on trends," he says. "They did this after and thought people love to see animated movies. But the truth was, people love to see good stories, no matter how that story is delivered. was a really good story, same as was a really good story. But from the response I've gotten from Disney fans all over the world - I've received over a thousand e-mails now supporting us in pursuing traditional animation - people love hand-drawn animation and they don't think it's old fashioned. Otherwise, there are two of the three films nominated for Best Animated Feature this year are hand-drawn animated films. So I don't think that it's an old-fashioned art I think it's a very viable form of entertainment."
Legacy Studios director Eddie Pittman acknowledges there are some great computer-animated films being made and gives special credit to Pixar Animation Studios, which produced Pixar, which is headed by Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs recently (Feb 1) broke off its longstanding partnership with the Walt Disney Company because of disagreements over distribution of its films. Mr. Pittman says the break-up reflects the changing focus of the Walt Disney company.