Sunday November 29, 2009
The human touch
By ROUWEN LIN
MANY pencils and sheets of paper were used in producing Disney’s newest animated movie, The Princess and the Frog. The decision to abandon computer-generated animation in favour of the hand-drawn technique for its 49th feature film has raised a few eyebrows in a world accustomed to the computer age.
But far from hand-drawn animation being considered outdated, traditional, and lacklustre (special effects only from computer-generated stuff, right?), enthusiasts beg to differ.
Academy Award-winning animator and historian John Canemaker wrote of hand-drawn animation: “... its inherent warmth; the happy accidents of the human touch; the immediate intuitive link between brain, hand and drawing instruments; the special flexibility and style that is so different from the dimensionality, essential coolness and realistic imagery of computer-generated imagery.”
Directors John Musker (left) and Ron Clements wanted an African-American lead character. – Reuters Disney had made the decision, about five years ago, to give up hand-drawn animation following a sequence of hand-drawn box-office disasters, including Treasure Planet in 2002, Brother Bear in 2003, and Home on the Range in 2004.
Special hand-animation workstations, with rotating drawing surfaces and backlight, were thrown out the window. Some of the animators were sent for computer-generated animation courses and the remainder left to find work elsewhere.
It was inevitable that the return to hand-drawn animation after these past years of being in cold storage would pose challenges, but Ron Clements and John Musker, directors of The Princess and the Frog, say that it wasn’t as difficult as they had expected it to be; animators from earlier years were thrilled to return to familiar territory.
“Hand-drawn animation came very close to dying out. If we had waited a few more years, it would probably be very, very difficult to pull together a hand-drawn animated film from scratch. When we started looking for animators for the film, we realised that many animators at Disney who used to do hand-drawn animation were still around. They were very good at it, really liked it, and really missed it,” says Musker.
“We also recruited many young new people who were passionate about hand-drawn animation,” he adds.
Clements says one of the plus points with hand-drawn animation is that it lends itself to imperfections more readily than computer-generated animation.
“Computer-generated animation does geometry well and you have to fight that if you want imperfection. I like being able to change the expression of a character with just a flick of a pencil instead of having to work controls. Hand-drawn seems a bit more intuitive to me,” he says, adding that human figures and organic settings (such as the bayou scenes in the film) warm to the richness of the medium.
Eric Goldberg, supervising animator of Louis the alligator, says that there are certain flights of fantasy that are easier to do in hand-drawn animation.
“Shape change, for instance,” he says, explaining that they had to do a lot of that with Louis.
“To distort a shape would be far more difficult to do on a computer model because it’s made to be pretty structured and 3D from every angle. All you have to do in hand-drawn animation is to draw it and animate it convincingly. Timing can sometimes be sharper with hand-drawn animation. There are also certain things you can do with weight and expression which would take a lot longer with the computer,” he says.
Bruce Smith, supervising animator of Dr Facilier, says: “As an animator, there is so much joy in picking up a pencil and be able to craft a performance. We are actors with pencils. If you can make someone laugh or cry with pieces of paper mushed together and flipped ... well, that’s really fun.”
With Disney’s plan to produce one hand-drawn animated film every two to three years, it might just prevent it being a casualty of the computer age.
“We felt like we were starting a new trend with The Princess and the Frog being in hand-drawn, 2D animation. Time to take off those 3D glasses and watch the film the old way,” grins John Lasseter, the man who, ironically, is a proponent of 3D animation.
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