I'm currently watching "Robin Hood" and I recently watched "The Sword in the Stone". I gotta say, I miss that old animation. Maybe due to nostalgia reasons. I don't know. Dang I miss being a kid.
Grew up in the 80's btw!
"Hated by fools and fools to hate. Be that my motto and my fate."
I think you are a little older than I am, so you would remember the old disney animation better than me, but I still agree with you. I miss the old style disney, the new movies are complete crap. For so many reasons, including (for the most part) lack of creativity and original ideas, but the new cartoons really suck. They can't hold a candle to the good old ones.
sharei agree , disney films dont have original plots but end up being amazing anyway, with simple animation, good songs, and great characters :-)
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Robin Hood and Sword in the Stone are basically the two Disney films that I grew up on. Or at least the ones I remember the most. So I'm right there with you.
sharei miss it too. i think the old animation is much better then the crap they make these days. i love the old disneys the most. another one of my favorite disney movies is pinocchio.
shareAhhhh I forgot how much I loved the Disney's Pinnocchio. Man...I miss the old Disney channel too. I used to look forward to Sleepy Hollow every Halloween and those video like little segments (came on in between shows) with the old animation and some (at the time) current music layered on it. Don't know if I explained that well enough. *sigh*
"Hated by fools and fools to hate. Be that my motto and my fate."
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I'm currently watching "Robin Hood" and I recently watched "The Sword in the Stone". I gotta say, I miss that old animation. Maybe due to nostalgia reasons. I don't know. Dang I miss being a kid. Grew up in the 80's btw
i totally agree. i love that old style. it's just so sweet and honest looking. and the animators worked pretty damn hard on that stuff, too! not that they don't now. but they did all that stuff by hand, which is pretty amazing if you ask me. i like to draw myself, but jeez!
the Poet's day will come!
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Wow yeah. I like this movie too, but I would not consider it in the "old" style of animation. This movie is only 35 years old anyway! "Old" is like Pinocchio, Fantasia, Snow White, even Alice in Wonderland. The sixties and seventies are when the animation started to get commercialized and crappy. 101 Dalmations was the first to use xeroxing (for the spots), which i consider to be cheap and not legit animation.
shareDisney is coming out with a new film for Christmas called "The Frog Princess" which is a return to hand-drawn animation. It also marks the first black princess to ever be in a Disney film. I saw them talking about it on The View. Randy Newman's doing the music. I haven't see any clips yet but I just may go see this one. I miss the non-computerized animated full-length features.
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Sorry I smell like frosting.
I want to go to there.
The more they relied on computers, and other early mechanised techniques, the worse the animations got. Yes, in the period from 101 Dalmations up to, say, The Little Mermaid, they were clearly cutting corners. But this was most probably due to budgetary constraints.
They hit a real peak again in the early 90's but after The Lion King it became obvious the corners were being cut again...or a disastrous new 'modern' style was toyed with. I can only surmise a huge amount of money was being thrown at A Bugs Life, Toy Story etc.
That said, the stories during the 'crunch' periods more than made up for the slightly crude (by their standards) animation which is not something you can say for the Pocahontas and onwards period.
I'd love for Disney to recapture its 2D glory days but I can't see that ever happening. Ultimately the audience is made up of children and they're sadly more interested in collecting the merchandise than marvelling at the colours, detail and songs.
Not to bust anyone's bubble, but I am from '65 and actually grew up with Disney pics like Robin Hood, Aristocats, and I must confess I found them rather dreary affairs. They were nowhere as good as the 'real' classics like Snow White, Pinocchio and Alice in Wonderland.
The animation seems to be lacking in detail, and is rather crude and static. The movies have sort of a 'cheap' feel. It's obvious Disney was working on smaller budgets in the early seventies, where they didn't even refrain from re-using previous material in their movies. Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh84g8rC2oA&feature=fvst for rather shocking proof.
I was ready to give up on Disney until the release of The Little Mermaid, which was a triumphant comeback for them. Not everything after that was consistent in quality, but for me it sure beats the seventies releases.
voting history: http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=629013
You're not busting anyone's bubble...you're just stating your opinion..
"Hated by fools and fools to hate. Be that my motto and my fate."
You're right, bad choice of words on my part. Entirely my opinion, no worries :)
voting history: http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=629013
You're certainly entitled to it. Disney movies began acquiring the "scratchy" look in the early '60s, but personally I don't mind it so much.
Supermodels...spoiled stupid little stick figures mit poofy lips who sink only about zemselves.
I miss all classical cell animation -- not just Disney's. Warner Bros. and Don Bluth did some pretty extraordinary work, too.
I really don't care for CGI. To me, it all enters the Uncanny Valley, but that might just be because I'm an old fart. Forty years from now, children who grew up with the CGI aesthetic might find it more palatable than cell animation. There have been several classical-animation renaissances, the 'nineties being the last, but it could turn out that hand-drawn has taken its last gasp. There's a strange psychological factor involved in trying to recreate artistic styles from the past. The results inevitably seem to come off as stagey and retro: mawkishly self-conscious. If you've ever listened to latter-day attempts to bring back classic radio drama, you know exactly what I mean. It's like the creators know the notes, but they can't play the music.
But hell, I'm fifty, and already way past my time. I find life in the 21st century as appalling as my WWII generation parents found the 'sixties. Actually, I hate everything about the present: political correctness, smoking bans, hideous tattoos, hip-hop music, a generation that's even more poorly educated than my own (and that's saying a LOT), CGI, and so on. However, I'm not in the audience that the global corporations who furnish our entertainment have in mind. They're not going to make any money off me anyway. I'm outmoded as an employee, too.
It's time to leave this world to the young, methinks. They might have a few good years before they hit the point where I am. They'll probably have fewer than I did, though. Things keep changing faster and faster, although human nature has not changed. It'll be harder for them to keep up.
This Global Corporatocracy was not designed for ordinary humans. It was designed for those 500 or so who really run the show, and the young people who buy most of their products.
Welcome to obsolescence.
Well aren't you the happy little ray of sunshine.
Supermodels...spoiled stupid little stick figures mit poofy lips who sink only about zemselves.
MetFanMac: "Well aren't you the happy little ray of sunshine."
Oh, I could be wrong, at least about classic cell animation being an art form with a limited lifespan. As a fifty-year-old with a greater-than-normal love of the form, I can't be an impartial judge. Those who are now buying tickets for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will ultimately decide what we see in the immediate future. Does that make you happier?
Maybe the Japanese won't give it up. They really don't show much sign of doing so. Heck, they've even preserved the art of paper puppets. They preserve everything.
Racroen - I'm only 32 but agree with you 100% The entertainment industry is all about lowest common denominators now and the chance of art ever infiltrating it is really bloody low. All across the spectrum it's business-minded, suited abominations talking about profit margins rather than producing anything of wonder or worth.
Thank the Lord for file-sharing - it's killing corporate profits first to ensure a future for independent art. It'll make it slightly more of a challenge to find your entertainment in future...but that's good, right? Why are so many people happy to accept the easy, mass-marketed options?
richie_patrese: "Why are so many people happy to accept the easy, mass-marketed options?"
Because their imaginations have been snuffed out, and they've been dumbed down and pumped full of Ritalin courtesy of Big Pharma and the rest of the Global Corporate Octopus. God forbid that our kids smoke, but doping them up with powerful drugs by order of the Public School System is perfectly all right. The brightest kids have to be drugged. They couldn't dumb down to the curricula otherwise.
Check out the newest Disney fare that's coming out later this month: G-Force -- hyper-realistic CGI guinea pigs with high-tech gadgets that spout potty humor and yesterdays "cool" catch phrases. Man, and people say Robin Hood was created during one of Disney's weak periods? I think they've topped themselves for weakness now. Worse, those CGI rodents obviously cost big bucks. Robin Hood was made when the studio didn't have much money. That was a lack of funding. This is a lack of talent and imagination.
I had never even heard of G-Force until I went on YouTube and saw a huge ad for it splashed across the top of the page. It showed the four CGI rodents (one with rather sexy eyes and full lips -- guess which one is the token female of the team) with some hip-hop guy standing in the center foreground.
I thought it a cultural milestone. Yes, friends, the era when Gangsta Rap was cool is officially over. When you see a black man in Gangsta paraphernalia standing in front of four CGI rodents, you know that hip-hop has jumped the shark.
It jumped it years ago, actually, but it'll still be years before the out-of-touch, middle-aged, unbelievably overpaid executives at Disney figure it out.
To blatantly steal and paraphrase a line from Roger Ebert's review of Freddy Got Fingered, U.S. culture doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. U.S. culture isn't the bottom of the barrel. U.S. culture isn't below the bottom of the barrel. U.S. culture doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.
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The older animation was certainly the best. They put their heart and soul into it. Now it's push a button here and there. If you've ever read up on Disney's Nine Old Men or Termite Alley, you get an education.
"Be sure you're right, then go ahead."
Davy Crockett
Today's animation is a trifle more complicated than that, but one must admit, seeing the spectacular results of yesterday's comparatively primitive animation tools is mind-blowing.
Supermodels...spoiled stupid little stick figures mit poofy lips who sink only about zemselves.
Regardless of the style of animation, be it traditional hand drawn cells to Renderman. The principles of story telling and creating memorable characters is still the essence of Pixar. Many of the Pixar directors and key animators received their education at Cal Arts (an institution created by Walt Disney) and learned directly from the 9 Old Men.
In my opinion, each style of animation has it's place in the annals of Disney. They have left a legacy of great family entertainment for all generations to cherish and enjoy, Pixar is no exception.
"Toto, I've [got] a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
They put their heart and soul into it. Now it's push a button here and there.