Will 2D animation die?

[ShyViolet]

As much as I'd like to be optimistic about the film, it looks like "Care Bears" meets "Veggie Tales" for the Nick Jr. set. Yikes.

I still bought the book to support 2D and their effort to keep it alive

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According to Animation Nation there are major problems going on over at Miracle Studios...jobs lost, people not compensated, etc...

http://www.animationnation.com/ubb/ulti ... 011499;p=3

[Ben]

Well, there's a surprise.

It was pretty clear that the piece of animation they put up recently wasn't from the top drawer both artistically, musically or script content wise and that finding extra funding would be a problem.

Now it looks like it's gonna get ugly. Good luck to them, but you need to be aiming for a much wider audience if you want to break out and not be another one in the DTV crowd.

[PatrickvD]

Let's put it this way, Home on the Range was better than Chiken Little.

The animation was nice, sometimes great. The songs were good, short, but cute and suited the style of the film. The story was average. But the colorful characters made up for that.

I'd still pick it over a bunch of CGI films released this year. Including the horriblty overrated Ice Age: The Meltdown. What was that all about.

[Sullivan]

Let's put it this way, Home on the Range was better than Chicken Little.

Ouch. Now that hurts.

[Jake]

Let's put it this way, Home on the Range was better than Chiken Little.

Now that I would agree with.

[Meg]

I enjoyed HotR more, too (sorry, Sull).

[ShyViolet]

Haven't seen HOTR yet (will VERY soon ) but all I can say is that I thought there was some great stuff in Chicken Little. I thought his character was quite likable and that the relationship between him and Buck Cluck was very well fleshed out. Some jokes were kinda lame, but there were a lot of funny ones too. (especially fish out of water) And you know what else? I LIKED the cell phone joke...so there! (J/K)

The best thing about CL was the emotion of it. Some really sweet scenes.
Runt was funny too. And Joan Cusack did a great job as Ugly Duckling. They could have perhaps used some more character-driven jokes (as opposed to references) but I found it funny and engaging overall. Not to mention....it looked GREAT.

(Plus Don Knotts in one of his last roles (Turkey Lurkey) and Patrick Stewart as a fussy schoolteacher--who can say no to that? )

[Ben]

Have to chime in and vote for HOTR too.

While I loved Emperor's New Groove, I thought Dindal's direction on ChickLit was sporadic and one could tell way before checking out any deleted scenes on the eventual DVD that the film had been chopped up. It just felt bitty and the third emotional scenes brought the film to a stop. It was also too hyper for its own good, in a way that HOTR pulled off.

There was so much better stuff in HOTR (and in many of the post-CG features), also a film that felt pulled about a bit, but had a much more innocent sense of fun about it. Sure it lent on Disney cliches, but had more true heart than CL, which was all about its characters too much.

Actually, that's something I've felt for a while with these CG features. Everyone keeps going on about a great story, but I think these films are more memorable for their characters and not the actual plot.

That's something that has put me off Cars too - the characters seem fair enough, if not the usual bunch, but the story already feels old and hackneyed, and I haven't seen it yet!

[Sullivan]

Thanks Shy violet.

Thpthpthpthpthp to the rest of you.





Chicken Little is pretty funny.. I like it... I actually thought it was really warm and funny and a much better film than it got credit for. I think it's a warmer film than most animated jokefests today.

When you talk about how some great films were made hopefully to please the animators... Chicken Little had a lot of that in it. As a crew, I think more people who worked on the film loved it... not that it was brilliant, or the best movie ever or anything... but there was a pride in it. And that was, if not unique in my experience in making movies.. very VERY rare.


I also felt that Chicken Little was the beginning of an upswing for Feature Animation... coming off a downswing.... obviously a brutal one. So just when we were getting our landlegs back after being really rocked and decimated and all but wiped out... and we really soldier on and endeavor to make a film... you know...still trying to keep our heads up.

And we made a film... very small crew... budget constraints etc.. And it's not just a movie you're making... you have to put together an entirely new production apparatus because it's CG. You've got to retrain all these traditional people so that you retain as much talent as possible.. and you create these new tools so that they can be as expressive in CG as they were in 2d. Anyway, you make a film with a small crew under those conditions and you feel like you've accomplished something. You get a comraderie and a kind of in the trenches love for a crew. It just was a great, great crew.

And I have to say, Mark and Randy, the director and producer, were just beloved by the crew. Those two just had to be feeling the weight of the world on their shoulders... I mean really all of our jobs were in their hands. And yet they were an absolute dream. If this was a war, those guys took about a million and a half bullets to spare the crew.

So that explains somewhat my emotional attachment to that film. Someday someone will write the history of Feature Animation for that period, and folks maybe will come to know how important a film that was for many, many reasons.

[PatrickvD]

you know, words cannot express how much I wanted to like Chicken Little. I really, really, really wanted to like it. But when it was over I couldn't help but feel it was not great, not good... but mediocre at best.

I could just smell David Stainton's breath all over it. I love Emperor's New Groove, it's probaply one of the best animated films ever made, because it hits so many things right. But Chicken Little missed all marks for me. The one thing I liked was how well the handdrawn character designs transferred to CG. And the animation overall was surprisingly good for a CG debut.

[ShyViolet]

And I have to say, Mark and Randy, the director and producer, were just beloved by the crew. Those two just had to be feeling the weight of the world on their shoulders... I mean really all of our jobs were in their hands. And yet they were an absolute dream. If this was a war, those guys took about a million and a half bullets to spare the crew.

Aw, that's sweet. You guys did a really good job. I can't even imagine the kind of pressure you must have been under.

I kinda wish Mark Dindal had stayed at the Diz. I think Emperer's New Groove is in some ways an excellent film. Maybe if Disney goes back to 2d, he'll come back too.

[Ben]

He's a big live action movie director now!

I agree that ChickLit was done well considering the exec influences. But those influences killed it for me apart from some moments.

[ShyViolet]

Some people said CL was modled after David Stainton. Was that true, Sull?

[Christian]

I thought Chicken Little was a fun little movie. I don't really analyze it beyond that.

[Wonderlicious]

Some people said CL was modled after David Stainton. Was that true, Sull?

I'm not Sullivan, but let's analyse...





And for the record, I feel that Chicken Little was pretty mediocre, probably due to Stainton and chums' meddlings.