hooo.

[kaigou]

Kifed this link from Tiercel, who had it posted awhile back but I'd never followed it...damn, I should've. You want Narnia? You want Disney doing Narnia? Here's your response, babe.

Cripes, they're doing a live-action version of Charlotte's Web...with Julia Roberts as Charlotte? Yegawdz.

Comments

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

While I have an abiding love of animation, and Disney animation is a large part of that, I now find I have to qualify that by limiting it to the shorts and films that are consistent with the vision of Walt Disney which pretty much eliminates just about all of the sequels to the classic features. The closing of the traditional animation division and the decisions right now to produce what is essentially nothing new or creative (i.e. sequel, sequel, sequel) is so completely opposite the philosophy of Walt, and simply reflects a company that has become driven solely by the bottom line on the annual report and not by creative vision.

Heh...sorry. Don't mean to get on a rant. As far as the "Narnia" movie goes, I'll wait and see how it turns out. Regarding the current crop of future animation offerings? I side with Walt and his legendary reply to the demand for "More pigs!"

"You can't top pigs with pigs."

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

No, I agree with your rant. Disney's nowhere near the powerhouse it was, once upon a time, and mostly because it seems to have run out of fairy tales and gone for sequels as a way to keep an audience...or something. I mean, really. A sequel to Sleeping Beauty? Shrek did it ten times better. A sequel to Mulan? Don't waste my time. What makes it worse is the production is always much, much lower on the sequels, too, which even if they were good stories, leaves a person feeling like they're watching something just churned out with no care for or attention to detail.

And from the animators I've met through my sister, working for Disney is pretty bad. It really is a horrible company, the way it treats its employees now -- even the skilled workers with animation degrees. (That is, the few ones left, after they ditched their animation studios.)

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

It's not even that they've run out of ideas, it's that the "story" is now being given to what's left of the creative team by people from the corporate side of the company. That legendary storyboarding process developed by Disney way back when—the one that regular live action directors are now using—is no longer part of the creative process at WDC because the 'suits' couldn't understand them, so now they use a script process and then the creative team can work out the visuals.

There was an excellent set of nine essays online under the title "Rise and Fall of Disney Animation" that was on the savedisney site, but seems to be offline now that the site is closed. (It closed when Eisner left Disney and Roy Disney was invited back on board). It described Eisner's desire to close the animation division from the beginning of his tenure, contending that animation was 'dead' and that it remained because Roy Disney asked to be given charge of it. It was never Eisner, nor even Jeffrey Katzenberg who revitalized the division, but rather Howard Ashman who knew what he and Alan Mencken could do with The Little Mermaid. And he was right about that, even though the test market drove the decision to change it to a happy ending. He convinced Eisner to let him produce it (he also produced Beauty and the Beast) as well as write the lyrics. Once Howard was gone, then Katzenberg and (even more to the point) Frank Wells, the creative side of Disney was in serious trouble. That included both the animation division and the imagineers.

As it stands now, Eisner finally succeeded in eliminating traditional animation as a division, what is left of 2-D animation is done overseas, and mostly to the standards for TV animation, thus the "direct-to-video" quality rather than feature film quality. New characters? What are they? New theme park concepts? Incorporate beloved characters, often in repetitious rides. (Any difference between the Dumbo ride and the Alladin ride is asthetic only). The 'newest attractions' for Disney World are one from Disneyland Paris and one from California Adventure. The brand new soon-to-be-opened Hong Kong Disney brings nothing new other than the location. There is no creativity within the company because that is rapidly squashed for the "branding" of the company name and the favorite characters. Which given Walt Disney's refusal to repeat himself and to keep pushing the envelope of what could be done, I fear his spinning might melt his cryogenic freeze. ;-)

Why yes, I do dislike Michael Eisner. Why do you ask?


(Deleted and reposted in the right thread. I blame LJ).

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I knew a lot of RISD grads in animation (via my sister) who were summarily out of a job, with one of the top animation degrees in the world...and I hear they're working overseas now. I'm sure there's a logic in there, somewhere. (Mostly that overseas animation companies still use traditional cel and therefore want good artists to do the cel and inbetweens.)