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They are still being being painted by hand. On a graphics tablet, for example.
Exactly, it’s not the medium. It’s like saying movies like Up aren’t beautiful because of CG.
Yep.
Those older movies are beautiful achievements for sure. But it’s disingenuous to say that there isn’t a plethora of movies and shows today that rival and surpass those older examples visually. Not to speak of just how much more fluent animation has become.
Many of the people who worked on those older masterpieces are still in animation today, and have only become better at their art.
The older movies are more atractive because of the flaws, you see the pencil strokes changing between frames. Today IMO they are too flawless.
That’s actually a really good point. The flaws make the beauty more human the same way music recorded reel to reel back in the 70s was very human because of the limitations of the day. And it is beautiful.
Not that a flawless thing can’t be beautiful. I just have a bias towards the humanness (pencil strokes, tape flutter) of the older stuff because that’s what I grew up with.
I’ve been listening to an album of 20’s and 30’s music. So good and so relevant. You have to find live music to hear that now for sure.
I don’t think it actually looks very good. The computer generated look is pretty fugly. Story is a different matte
Yeah, Up was a weird example for me, too, but as someone who has watched Moana two dozen times, it’s always beautiful. The people are aged, with deep lines, the sand and the water and the straw, all the textures, all beautiful, and the setting is of course gorgeous.
Lilo and Stitch is a similar background, also so so beautiful, but it doesn’t make Moana ugly or useless in comparison.
Fugly? De gustibus, I guess…
Interestingly enough, 101 Dalmatians was the first Disney film to adopt the process of Xeroxing the animators’ drawings directly to cels, rather than hand-tracing them. It’s still a beautiful movie of course, but it’s also an advance in animation technology that often gets over-looked!
My kid got into Lady and the Tramp, so I watched it about a dozen times in a row, and Holeee shiiit is that thing beautifully animated. The backgrounds are needlessly lavish, and look at this…
I’m in awe of the work done on Tramp’s ears. The expressiveness, and the subtle balance of flexibility and internal structure is exquisite. You can find other examples of masterfully-done materials all throughout the movie.
Other movies might get more attention, but Lady and the Tramp is worth looking at for some peak Disney animation.
It’s one of my favourites!
So how many frames is this, do we think, just for this clip…
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While true, with hand drawn animation it’s slightly different as not every frame is drawn (usually). Disney films looked so good because they were done “on the two’s” instead of the industry standard of “on the three’s” - meaning that Disney films had a drawn frame for every 2 fps instead of every 3, or 12 drawn frames per second instead of the normal 8. Your brain interpolates the rest of the between frames, but this is why Disney looks so much more smooth.
Another great example is Akira, which was done on the 1’s and 2’s. That it has 12 to 24 hand drawn frames per second makes the visual quality difference really visible when compared to other movies.
24fps, nearly 3 seconds long, so somewhere near 72 frames total, BUT… these animations were done on 2’s - meaning every other frame. https://businessofanimation.com/why-animation-studios-are-animating-on-2s/
It was the only Disney movie that I liked as a child.
I totally agree, Disney’s Robin Hood from 1973 is peak hand-drawn cartoon
Eeeeeeh… Maybe not. It’s pretty good, but there is so much recycled animation that you might aswell call the Jungle book the best aswell.
Forgot about Fantasia?
Lion king?
Don bluth cartoons?
Anything made by Miyazaki.
I’m with you on the studio Ghibli stuff; and the Lion King while a better movie is very polished and to me lacks the hand made feel of Robin Hood
but robin hood isn’t entirely hand-made, most of it is copied from other films. that’s why there are so many visible roughs in the animation.
…but the Lion king was hand made.
I’m aware it’s hand-made, I meant how polished and ‘perfect’ it is - like it was redrawn 100 times from the original sketch - it just lacks a certain je ne sais quoi of Robin Hood
You dropped this -> /s
I don’t think they did…
That gif better not awaken something in me.
Ah yes, Maid Marian. The first time I was like “why dis animal girl so hot?”
My confused seven year old ass was like “I would like to hold hands with both Robin Hood and Maid Marian ver much”
I still do
That was the video cassette I actually watched so much I wore it out as a child!!
Reasonably so hahaha
The first time
I’m not a furry, I’m just a furry enjoyer
Oooo da lolly!
They used a lot of rotoscoping back in the day. Basically they filmed a scene normally with real people, then traced over every frame to give us those fantastic moments of fluid movement in things like Snow White, Mary Poppins, and Beauty and the Beast (which also used 3D by the way).
Fun fact, some of the more impressive examples from that era (like Mary Poppins) primarily used the sodium vapor process to get perfect mattes directly in-camera, no rotoscoping needed. It’s a fascinating and impressive bit of tech: https://www.historicmysteries.com/science/disney-prism/39484/
That is indeed a fun fact! I am somewhat obsessed with sodium vapor lights and the bandwidth of light they produce. I would love to have seen the original camera rig and their special prisms, but apparently they only made three and they’ve been lost.
High intensity discharge lamps are awesome, can confirm. I miss when streetlamps were still HPS/LPS and mercury vapor, the lighting felt a lot more comforting than the harsh LEDs used nowadays.
Rotoscoping is quite old, too. I think it even predates ww1.
Fun fact: 101 Dalmatians was the first Disney movie to be produced with the help of xerox. This was as a result of the financial flop that was Sleeping Beauty, that almost bankrupted the company and cut their budgets for future movies all the way from the 60s to the financial success of the little mermaid in 1989. This is why Disney movies within that time period has a rougher look when it comes to the characters’ lineart and the more simple backgrounds compared to the very detailed, painted backgrounds and colored lineart of all Disney movies up until 101 Dalmatians.
The xerox was a cost cutting method to save time and money and while it absolutely killed Walt Disney to have to compromise on the art, it also paved the way for a new look and feel that, especially in the case of 101 Dalmatians, created a timeless look that still looks as fresh and modern today as the day it was made.
Without the invention and utilization of the xerox, there most likely would have been no Disney company today.
The Disney corporation is a better person when it’s poor.
Not arguing with you there xD I have basically boycotted Disney. Last straw for me was their Mulan remake.
Didn’t watch it. Heard it was trash like all the other remakes, but the thing that did it for me was when I learned they had used actual concentration camp prisoners for free labor on the movie. That was it for me.
BuT nO! ReAl ArT uSeS nO sHoRtCuTsOrTecH!
Actual, handmade art and films are why so many of us look back on the 80’s nostalgically, whether it’s the Muppets, or Freddy’s handmade makeup and practical effects, or the Goonies’ crew building a whole-ass pirate ship on a soundstage. Practical effects will always be 100% better than CGI or some crap spat out by an LLM.
The reason why so many people look on the 80s nostalgically is because they were children or teens during the 80s.
And had virtually no responsibility, with tons of free time, and friends, and play.
This was 1961 which is definitely not the ‘80s. However, I get your point; practical effects may have been — and were often — jank, but it was real and tangible and I loved it, warts and all.
Sauce on that gif por favor?
The movie is called Deadly Friend. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend taking the time to watch the whole thing just for the gif moment. It is totally ‘80s cheese, if you are into that sort of thing.
Edit: I’m looking at what community I have posted in and realizing I probably could and should have picked literally any scene from Mary Poppins but I didn’t and now you all have to watch a watermelon in a wig explode.
My theory is that since practical effects ultimately rely on physics of the world we occupy, that despite their unpolished look, they feel more real. The hyper realistic, but completely reality breaking effects of today just hit the same way cartoons do.
Speaking of cartoons, I love finding the shortcuts that animators would take, there’s something so artistic about how they did it.
I am just so much more engaged when I can watch a movie while also trying to figure out how they pulled off an effect.
The line has blurred enough for make it difficult to draw a clean line between true practical effects and special effects. Visual effects studios can and do merge real photography with digital rendering or retouching. Over 20 years ago, Andy Serkis had to don a special motion capture suit to play Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies, but the advances since then now allow for more subtle (or less subtle) transformation of characters. The Mandalorian made extensive use of digitally rendered scenes actually projected on set so that the reflections and actor interactions feel more real in a computer-generated environment.
And of course, actual movie editing tricks have always been around, where cuts and multiple takes can create real footage presented in a fictional sequence: a single actor playing twins/doppelgangers by simply filming each side’s lines separately, and then editing them together. Plus things like costume design and wardrobe, set design, props, etc.
The effectiveness of all these tricks do depend a lot on the skill and effort of the people involved, and that often means budget (including time). Rush jobs, or farming the work out to cheaper/less skilled workers, on any of these mean that corners will be cut and the end result will be less convincing, regardless of actual method.
Facts, it’s why the thing is still my favorite horror movie.
Same here. I occasionally look back at 80s stuff and even the limited animation stuff of the era still made me realize that a whole army of people had to draw all of these by hand. So even if some stuff was ‘bad’ due to time and budget constraints, the sheer effort they had to put in was incredible.
For me I use AI for one thing only: furry porn, and stupid furry porn at that. I did write stories and novels before the Trump gang fucked with my creativity in ways I dont want to talk about. Using AI for any serious creative purpose is insulting to me.
Regarding “CGI is bad” - pls watch this Video series, it’s not that simple. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo&t=2
Bunch of old people here in the comments
And young ones too. Also, the middle-aged.
I just recently rewatched 101 Dalmatians and actually cried multiple times just from really soaking it in. Just the way so much of it comes to life. The imperfections genuinely make it feel so much more alive.
Modern Hollywood animation is incredibly sterile and perfected. A major studio now would never imagine releasing something with visible sketch lines.
Sure it wasn’t nostalgia? Sounds like the same symptoms
I don’t think so. I’ve been watching a lot of classics from my childhood lately and most of them weren’t hitting me that hard. Maybe it’s that the actual story and the horror of it sunk in properly for the first time as an adult. Hadn’t seen it since I was young. The voice acting from the pups is just incredible. That probably didn’t help.
TBF it was also a time before the corporate entity realized maximum short term profit doesn’t come from perfected products.
A lot are still “painted by hand”, the use of vector graphics isn’t as prevalent in other cartoon producing countries as it is in the US
really?
I know of zero studios that are still doing any painting. they are all digital. sk, china, japan - no one uses paint filmed one cel at a time, or any of the old analog processes anymore. I’d be happy to be wrong, but I don’t know of anyone that’s still doing painted cels recorded on film.
Even Ghibli. https://www.dqindia.com/features/studio-ghibli-blending-tradition-and-technology-in-the-age-of-animation-8921913
“Ghibli’s selective integration of technology, primarily digital ink-and-paint techniques facilitated by software like OpenToonz, stands in stark contrast to the unbridled embrace of AI in the recent Ghibli-style art phenomenon.”
I didn’t say that they were painting on paper
Digital painting by hand is still qualifies as “painted by hand”
I didn’t say that they were painting on paper
tell me you don’t understand animation at all already… ffs, no one painted on paper. can’t really shine light through it lol. it was all cels man.
Digital painting by hand is still qualifies as “painted by hand”
ROFLS okay bud. Perhaps you weren’t born yet but there have been a few arguments about this… well, more than a few. LOTS. Like, animator holy war levels of arguments. And it wasn’t a one-and-done transition either, lots of productions went back and forth because of the requirements of the episode or availability.
Take a look at the simpsons to see a show that eschewed digital ink and paint until they went all in. when they did, they changed the aspect ratio of the show, knowing it was going to look so different that few would even notice the swap to 16x9 from old crt 4x3.
Somebody is really getting worked up.
aw, sorry, I didn’t realize I was supposed to ignore your ignorance. please, continue to lie about things you obviously know jack shit about.
yeap
Same with the OG Lilo and Stitch:
IIRC last film to use honest to god water colors. And it shows.
I think animation, when the animators care, has improved. Yes treasure planet looks better fight me. But I think the problem is that there is more shit animation now, and we have forgotten the shit animation of the past.
They were more interested in telling a memorable story than making a quick buck
Yeah I feel old too.
That behind said, I don’t think a modern drawing tool is inherently less capable than an older one to produce magic. Digital painting used to have limitations in comparison with traditional technics, but a good 2d illustrator can do gorgeous drawings with a tablet nowadays.
When I see magic in animated movies, its when people do things by love and passions, and not for seeking additional profit. Flow and Arcane are examples of animation with such ingredients.
