By John
Canemaker
In
the 1960s, Walt Disney joked that one day he'd replace his elite corps
of
animators, known as the "Nine Old Men," and their slow, expensive way
of making hand-drawn movies, with Audio-Animatronic figures. At
the end of last month, Walt's joke came true. The studio bearing his
name
announced that, due to a "changing creative climate and economic
environment," it will be shutting DisneyToon Studios Australia next
year.
The studio, which turned out sequels (such as "Tarzan II," "The
Lion King II" and "Bambi II") was the company's last remaining
facility creating hand-drawn (or 2-D) traditional animation. To compete
in the
3-D computer-generated imagery (or CGI) arena, the house that a
hand-drawn
mouse built will become a pixels, rather than a paper-and-pencils,
place. As
the old animators often asked themselves, "What would Walt think?" The
decision was not entirely unexpected. In the past few years, Disney 2-D
facilities in Of
course, future Disney features will not be made by robots but by
skilled human
animators working with a different kind of tool. But the demise of
hand-drawn
animation at Disney is a sad and significant cultural watershed that
deserves a
proper mourning rather than a brief p.r. notice. For
it was at the Disney studio that hand-drawn personality animation -- an
indigenously American contribution to the international art form of
animation
-- soared to its greatest heights. For
nearly eight decades, the line was king at Disney. It could express
anything.
From the minds and hands of many artists sprang marvels of imagination:
In
addition to Mickey Mouse, there were three resourceful little pigs who
inspired
a Depression-era nation; balletic hippos, crocodiles and mushrooms; a
prince
slaying a fire-breathing dragon; a puppet wishing to become a real boy;
and a
rambunctious duck with a short fuse. The
magical drawn lines often coalesced into an emotional arrow that could
pierce
audiences' hearts as well as tickle their funny bones. Disney's
lines enchanted generations with screen moments that have become as
memorable
as those in live-action movies. For example, animated drawings of two
dogs
enjoying a night on the town and a pasta dinner became an icon of
romance.
There was also raw emotional power in the sensitive drawing of a baby
elephant
visiting his incarcerated mother; in the growing love affair between a
hideous
beast and a head-strong maiden; and, most heart-rending, in a fawn's
futile
search for his mother, who has been shot by hunters. Over
the years, Disney drawings became more and more expressive and better
able to
define delicate human emotions, sensibilities and personalities. "I
want
characters to be somebody," Walt said in 1927, one year before he begat
Mickey. "I don't want them just to be a drawing." He believed that
for drawings to connect with an audience's emotions, they must become
believable caricatures of reality. In
the beginning, Mickey's head and body were simple circle shapes and his
limbs
resembled rubber hoses, a design cloned from Felix the Cat, the
reigning toon
superstar of the 1920s. Soon Walt opened an on-site drawing school at
his "I
was plunged into this sea of drawing" at Disney in the 1930s, recalled
illustrator Martin Provensen to animation historian Michael Barrier in
1983.
"You really waded up to your neck in it . . . [and] you saw drawing as
a
way of talking and a way of feeling." Traditional
drawn animation is not dead, of course. It thrives in television series
and commercials,
in video games, and in some of the most admired of recent animated
features,
such as "Triplets of Belleville," "Spirited Away,"
"Howl's Moving Castle" and "Millennium Actress," which have
been marketed to older audiences. In
those animated features from American
animated features, such as DreamWorks' "Shrek," Fox's
"Robots," and all the Pixar blockbusters from "Toy Story"
through "The Incredibles," favor pure CGI. And Disney has decided to
follow this trend. There
are, of course, supposedly solid business reasons for this; there
always are.
But for me, as an animation historian, Disney's decision to eliminate
hand-drawn animation for its features is sad. It implies on the part of
management disrespect for the studio's history and a lamentable lack of
flexibility and vision. What
would Walt have made of all this? Considering the fact that the
then-new
technology of movie soundtracks put his studio on the map, and that he
constantly sought out and exploited innovations such as three-color
Technicolor,
the Multiplane Camera, stereophonic sound, television,
Audio-Animatronics and
lasers, I feel sure he would have embraced CGI animation. "Our business
has grown with and by technical achievements," he said in 1941. But
somehow I doubt he would have thrown the baby out with the bath water
by
abandoning hand-drawn animation. Walt was known to spend years trying
to find
the best way to deploy the talents of certain of his artists, and
perhaps he
would have found new ways to use the unique qualities of the hand-made
moving
image -- its inherent warmth; the happy accidents of the human touch;
the
immediate intuitive link between brain, hand and drawing instrument;
the
special flexibility and style that is so different from the
dimensionality,
essential coolness and realistic imagery of CGI. Ultimately,
Walt -- an instinctive showman -- knew that audiences are attracted not
by
technology alone, but by engaging stories and appealing characters. The
Disney
studio's recent string of expensive hand-drawn feature failures, such
as
"Treasure Planet," "Brother Bear" and "Home on the
Range," were the result of poor story choices and corporate meddling in
the creative process, not the wrong kind of animation. As
Disney's great admirer Steven Spielberg recently said, "If storytelling
becomes a byproduct of the digital revolution, then the medium itself
is
corrupted." --- Mr.
Canemaker is professor, director of the animation program at
August 9th 2005
The Wall Street Journal
(Copyright (c) 2005, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)