I JUST CAN'T ACCEPT CG VERSIONS OF CELL-ANIMATED CHARACTERS (1 Viewer)

I love and have always loved cell animation. I was heartbroken when, although they made money, Disney decided to retire the process (again, this time maybe for good) after PRINCESS AND THE FROG and WINNIE THE POOH.

Now, we get computer generated versions of Yogi Bear and Bugs Bunny and Horton and...well, the list goes on, and will soon include the Peanuts characters.

Sure, CG gives them a more rounded, dimensional appearance, but it also gives them a weird, too-smooth and shiny look that somehow removes the personalities of the characters we loved as kids. Children growing up today don't mind, as they haven't the same memories and reference points we geezers have, but I still lament the loss of good hand-drawn animation in this everything-for-technology country. I love Pixar's and Dreamworks' films, but those consist of brand new stories and characters, which were born of computers. What I find offensive is all the revisionism.

Thank goodness for Studio Ghibli and a few other foreign studios who are keeping the process alive.

Me, I can't accept their constantly referring to Sherman as Mr. Peabody's "adopted son"(sic).

I'm right there with you, Dick. Peanuts is especially problematic, because the holiday specials always looked like Schulz's cartoon strips brought to life. The CG robs the animation of all of the character he put into every panel. And it's odd how the faces appear hand drawn on top of the 3D models, but Charlie Brown's characteristic one curl of hair is a 3D objection.All of the characters look a bit like Macy's Day Parade balloons that you could pop with a pin.

Kind of makes one appreciate Bill Watterson's refusal to allow Calvin and Hobbes to be animated.

RobertR said:

Kind of makes one appreciate Bill Watterson's refusal to allow Calvin and Hobbes to be animated.

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Not really, since they could have hand-animated those characters and made them look fairly close to his strip. However, I do respect the guy for not turning his characters into a marketing machine, unlike Jim Davis of "Garfield" fame. I also respect that he decided to retire the characters before they became empty shells of themselves, again, unlike Jim Davis, who has milked "Garfield" so much that the strip and character are drier than Death Valley.

Edwin-S said:

I also respect that he decided to retire the characters before they became empty shells of themselves, again, unlike Jim Davis, who has milked "Garfield" so much that the strip and character are drier than Death Valley.

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I feel the same way about Charles Schultz and Peanuts. It had long ceased to be funny or clever when his death finally ended it.

The series of recent bizarro CGI sequels to "The Swan Princess" have horrified me.

I was the biggest Garfield fan. Still have all my old books.

Refuse to watch the CG-crap fest they released a little while ago as movies.

Are you talking about turning 2D characters into full-fledged 3D CGI or using computers for 2D animation with high quality shading to give a more 3D appearance compared to old hand drawn 2D animation? Two very different things.

The Sherman and Peabodymovie was pretty good, retaining the wit of the original cartoons. But the Rocky and Bullwinkle show was less about animation and more about the humor.

I guess Katzenberg was right, that hand-drawn animation is the thing of the past. Kids today, will probably see it the same way as most people do with black and white movies or Atari video games. I know, a bitter pill to swallow.

But yeah, I hate seeing classic characters turned into CG. I never thought it looked right when "The Looney Tunes Show" had Wile E Coyote and Road Runner in CG. It just did not look or feel the same, as it would have been, had it been hand-drawn.

Walter C said:

I guess Katzenberg was right, that hand-drawn animation is the thing of the past.

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Huh? I thought he was just covering his weaselly rear about why Sinbad had flopped, was taken out of context ("I think the mix of hand-drawn characters and CGI backgrounds confused the audience; of the two, they might have responded better if I had gone with all CGI"), and then later jumped on the bandwagon when the analyst press screamed up the one explanation every studio had been searching for to explain why all the kiddy-cable movies had flopped.

Dick said:

I love and have always loved cell animation. I was heartbroken when, although they made money, Disney decided to retire the process (again, this time maybe for good) after PRINCESS AND THE FROG and WINNIE THE POOH.

Now, we get computer generated versions of Yogi Bear and Bugs Bunny and Horton and...well, the list goes on, and will soon include the Peanuts characters.

Sure, CG gives them a more rounded, dimensional appearance, but it also gives them a weird, too-smooth and shiny look that somehow removes the personalities of the characters we loved as kids. Children growing up today don't mind, as they haven't the same memories and reference points we geezers have, but I still lament the loss of good hand-drawn animation in this everything-for-technology country. I love Pixar's and Dreamworks' films, but those consist of brand new stories and characters, which were born of computers. What I find offensive is all the revisionism.

Thank goodness for Studio Ghibli and a few other foreign studios who are keeping the process alive.

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I'll take it even further. I was upset that THE INCREDIBLES wasn't 2-D. The animation style in that film should have looked like one of the old 4-color comic books, kind of like WATCHMEN did in comic book form. If INCREDIBLES had been done in 2-D, in that style, it would have been the film that Zack Snyder's WATCHMEN wanted to be. (Of course, it probably wouldn't have been anywhere near as popular.) I find it very hard to suspend disbelief with CGI-created characters. There's something about the way a single artist with a pen dipped in colored ink can bring life to a drawing that a team of computer artists would find difficult to replicate. Look at the way Chuck Jones and his crew brought those dog and kitten characters to expressive life in cartoons like "Feed the Kitty." Has any CGI crew done anything comparable?

Vic Pardo said:

Look at the way Chuck Jones and his crew brought those dog and kitten characters to expressive life in cartoons like "Feed the Kitty." Has any CGI crew done anything comparable?

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Okay, who's going to be the one to say it?

Vic Pardo said:

I'll take it even further. I was upset that THE INCREDIBLES wasn't 2-D. The animation style in that film should have looked like one of the old 4-color comic books, kind of like WATCHMEN did in comic book form. If INCREDIBLES had been done in 2-D, in that style, it would have been the film that Zack Snyder's WATCHMEN wanted to be. (Of course, it probably wouldn't have been anywhere near as popular.) I find it very hard to suspend disbelief with CGI-created characters. There's something about the way a single artist with a pen dipped in colored ink can bring life to a drawing that a team of computer artists would find difficult to replicate. Look at the way Chuck Jones and his crew brought those dog and kitten characters to expressive life in cartoons like "Feed the Kitty." Has any CGI crew done anything comparable?

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I'd argue that RATATOUILLE has plenty of expressive moments where the animators brought the characters to life. In fact, plenty of the animators on Pixar and Dreamworks computer animated films have managed to imbue life into the characters. I'd like to see more traditional 2D animation, but I am not going to be one to put down the quality of work that computer animators have managed to put out. Their work is not inferior to that of animators from previous generations.

RobertR said:

Kind of makes one appreciate Bill Watterson's refusal to allow Calvin and Hobbes to be animated.

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In it's own dark twisted way, the parody Robot Chicken did was pretty faithful to the source material.

RobertR said:

I feel the same way about Charles Schultz and Peanuts. It had long ceased to be funny or clever when his death finally ended it.

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Isn't it still syndicated in newspapers today as "reruns" of old strips?

SilverWook said:

Isn't it still syndicated in newspapers today as "reruns" of old strips?

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There still are a lot of papers that print his strips as "reruns". My local paper did for a few years, but they finally dumped it when they revamped their comics page. Unfortunately, what they replaced it with was not an improvement. I don't find "Pickles" very funny. About the best "new" strips I have seen have been "Pearls Before Swine" and "Get Fuzzy".

Heck, I'm still annoyed when South Park uses 3/4 profile views!

Truthfully, what matters to me with animated movies is not the form of the animation, but the script. For me, the script is the most important part of a movie, whether it's live-action or animation. I've seen horrible cel-animation movies and great CGI movies, and vice versa, but for me, it's never been about the visual style, although it's certainly nice to notice it...It's the script.

When I was younger, I liked the Spielberg/Warner Brothers shows like "Animaniacs" and "Tiny Toon Adventures", but it wasn't because of the animation...It was because of the dialogue, especially if it was written by my biggest influence, Sherri Stoner. It's still like that nowadays. "Frozen" could've been cel-animated, and I still would've enjoyed it, but that's because of the script. I'm all about the words.

Sincerely,

John Kilduff...

It's the same thing with songs. I pay a lot of attention to the lyrics, while almost everyone else pays attention to the music. It would be very uncomfortable to hear my Mom singing the old school funk music I liked when the lyrics were so sexual. There's plenty of people you want to imagine having sex...Your parents aren't among them.