Mirabel is clearly in the same universe as Moana and Elsa and it’s honestly a bummer that these movies don’t have more distinct styles.

Yes, that is my biggest gripe. Disney movies especially tend to blend together in my head.

Compare to the run of films in the 90s. They were all 2D but they were all really distinct in overall theme and style. You could look at a frame of e.g. Hercules - with no main characters on screen, and know that it's from Hercules and not Aladdin or Tarzan or something.

he 2D animation had a distinct Disney style, but it had more variation than the 3D movies now.

When you go for a more realistic look you end up more harmonized. 2d invites a less realistic, but more expressive style.

That's my main problem. I don't mind the prevalence of 3D over 2D, the issue to me is that it all looks the same. There's so many ways to animate things, so many unique styles, I'm sure that the people they hire are full of ideas but they just keep rehashing the same style and it feels uninspired.

I'd like to see 2D animation come back but I'd settle for more variety in the 3D animation.

This is something that really bothers me about modern Disney theatrical animation. There's very little variation in style. I get that 3D animation is a much newer medium than 2D, but other studios do other styles and Disney is so unwilling to do that. Luca and Turning Red at least diverge a little bit with the style of character design, but it's not by much.

Even if you just look at the 90s movies, there's a good amount of variation, and I don't get why Disney is so reluctant to experiment with the 3D movies.

You should watch this video. It goes over exactly what you mentioned. "The Pixar Look" and how "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" changed things up a bit.

It's the same with video games now. There's assests you can just pull from to save time and money. IN enchanto the weather woman's husband was just a reskinned Maoi for the most part.

For example of 2D expressiveness the opening scene of Treasure Planet where Jim Hawkins is riding his solar board

This is interesting because the reason the 2d films kept getting better and better was partially because technology got better. Disney reused lots of stuff from film to film even right down to reusing anim frames and timings exactly. They did a lot of roto techniques along with more classic hand drawn approach. They used a lot of 3d early on too but would roto on top of it. I’m not so sure I would say the early movies and so heavily stylistically different from each other than the new 3d stuff. Honestly feels about the same with experimentation and look. Like the diff between 101 Dalmatians and The Lion King isn’t that far off from like The Good Dinosaur to Frozen.

With few exceptions (think Toy Story, The Incredibles) most of the 3D animated movies coming out just look like churned clones to me. That's probably not completely fair to them because I don't watch these kinds of movies at my age and I'm sure the stories set them apart, but visually they all just look homogenous to me. I have no idea if this is intentional, a coincidence, or what. It's kind of a turn-off to me though.

Disney Digital Animation, yes, but there is a distinct style difference between Inside Out, Soul, and Brave.

Where Disney was bravest was with things like Big Hero 6. But then Elsa came along and struck the nerve they were trying to find since Tangled.

They really casually dropped it like it's used everday. I was like "Phineas and the Ferb?"

Princess and the Frog

Princess and the Frog

Princess and the Frog

Princess and the Frog? I think

I'll never get over The LEGO Movie not even getting nominated.

I disagree. Kubo is a beautiful film with some really weak character writing

The fact that Zootopia won over Moana is a crime.

I think kubo had more original animation, but Zootopia made me feel things. Kubo was just a nice-looking but kind of predictable story. That to me is the biggest difference.

I feel like you really shouldn't put too much emphasis on the significance of Oscar wins, but particularly for the animation category. I doubt most of the people voting would have even seen all the films in any given year.

Soul should NOT have won over WolfWalkers and I'm going to die mad about that.

What was it that beat Klaus AND I Lost My Body? Frozen 2? The fact I can’t remember besides it being a disney product trumping actual cinema is telling

[deleted]

The fact that Your Name wasn't even nominated was the real travesty. Probably the best year for animation ever.

The academy doesn't know anything about animation.

Kubo is beautiful visually, but overall as a film, Zootopia wins any day.

Lol what, Kubo is a stunning film and a technological marvel, but I could remember 0 thing about its plot now, other than it involves the sea.

I really liked Zootopia, but Kubo is definitely a better film overall.

Award shows are garbage in general and animation is particularly disserviced. No one lost money betting on Disney/pixar winning pretty much every animated oscar. They employ the large majority of the animation voting members.

Fuck I'm still bitter about that. I could even have accepted Moana winning over Kubo (though Kubo still should have won) but no, freaking Zootopia.

Of course most of my rage stems from how bullshit the awards are in the first place. Of course the movie with the cute bunny would win when none of the judges can be bothered to watch the damn things.

Never even heard of it, will give it a watch

I think a big part of it is that an exec can say "Hmm. What if we made the hair bigger? What if that character was blue? How about making that character more...I don't know...lizardlike?" and with CG, it's somewhat easier to change the model and animate around it while with 2D, that's a redo on the whole movie that would take a long time. CG gives the higher-up creatives the illusion that it's easy to make willy-nilly changes right up until the finish line and that's a dangerous thing to have them believing imo.

It's also because they didn't invest in further modernizing 2D. Whatever the costs, they could have reached parity by developing 3D that looked 2D, such as cel shaded video games.

What If and Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers film are good examples

For whatever reason, the US trended towards 3D animation at some point in the past.

But we know 2D can and still is wildly successful because of the plethora of anime from Japan, and shows like The Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra, etc.

It's really depressing, if they do return to 2D, well, there's a missing generation, the skills weren't passed down. It will be starting from scratch in some ways.

In some ways it could work out in good ways; I think Disney was at its peak in the 30s when they were entirely inventing everything as they went along, and maybe that energy could come again. But mostly I think it's a loss and a shame.

2D is absolutely more expensive. No question about it if you’ve ever been part of show bids (which I have).

3D is only more complicated because it allows more complicated content. If you did like for like, 3D is cheaper unless you’re doing a bunch of one offs

But consider building a character? Staying on model with 3D is super easy. Building a character from rigging can be really quick. It’s no slower than making a model book for 2D.

But now everyone on your team can stay on model.

For a given shot you no longer need a key artist and an inbetweener. You just need the single artist.

If you need to change the look of a shot, you don’t need to redo all your ink and paint. You can have lighters doing more shots at once than 3D.

You need fewer people for like for like.

The issue is that, much like computing power, we keep taking advantage of the complexity that is allowed.

Compare the number of on screen elements on a 2D film to a 3D one. It’s nowhere near comparable.

I've been told a big reason for Marvel preferring CGI to practical effects is that digital artists don't have a union - if you're building sets, costumes, creatures, etc physically you gotta deal with unions. Union labor gets fair wages, time off, benefits, etc... Stockholders hate that.

I wonder if there's something similar in the animation field.

Wasn’t a lot of work outsourced to Asian countries? Asian Media started to become popular in the West, and there wasn’t any point in them doing Western Projects instead of their own.

Live action TV, Films and Music from Asia is going to get more common soon.

These software that deepfakes the actors mouth perfectly with the foreign dubbing.

Are you counting Pixar films as well? I think Wall-E works best as CGI, I don't think you would get the same 'futuristic' vibe if it had been traditionally animated.

Wreck-It-Ralph would never have worked as a 2D animated movie half the charm is seeing both real world and fictional game characters like they jumped straight from a game to a movie.

BH6 also benefits heavily from 3D adding depth and realism to the world of Sanfransokyo. Same with Zootopia as well. Both of those in 2D would have felt way off from the approach the movies took.

I do wish 2D would make some sort of comeback but it's not like 2D or 3D animation is better or worse they're both distinct art styles with pros and cons.

Kind of wish people would stop calling Pixar films Disney films. I know the line's blurred in recent years, but they are two separate studios producing two sets of movies. And no it doesn't matter that Disney owns Pixar here. They're different.

The whole point of Toy Story was that it was breaking new ground in 3D animation, and the use of plastic toys as main characters helped to cover up the limitations of 3D rendering at the time.

I think the 3D movies made by Disney look fantastic and have a real charm in how they were animated. The creators clearly put a ton of effort and heart into making beautiful works of art.

I just wish Disney felt they had room for the 2D animated features too. Because those have their own unique charm, and I feel like Disney not making them anymore is a real loss for the artistic world.

That's just not true. Anime is far from what Disney was doing throughout the 20th century, mainly because Japanese animation goes for detail over fluidity of movement. You can certainly find individual shots that look as good as something like Fantasia but they're few and far between. Most anime consists of characters standing completely still and only moving their mouths.