Cartoon vs. Animation

[Aethra]

So I was watching a couple old Disney movies with some friends tonight, and we started talking about how good they were. Of course, they were on VHS, so the quality was much below what we were used to, and it took us forever to remember how to use the VHS player, but once watching we all agreed that we wish Disney would go back to cartoon format instead of the computer animation they're stuck on now. Plus, the musical aspect of Disney movies seems to have been lost in the switch, and that's so fun! I mean, I do enjoy a good computer animation (Finding Nemo and WALL-E are favorites), but I love the oldschool cartoons too much. I was just wondering what you all thought.

 

[JollyApe]

I'm torn. The new Pixar stuff is brilliant, but it's so cynical.

Older Disney stuff was magical and fairytale like. The new stuff is bringing up an entire generation of cynics with it's dry humour. I don't know which is better to be honest. A little like apples and oranges I think.

 

[Aleris]

It's hard to compare.

Although the disney classics are still hits with kids (And adults, too) when viewed now ... if the Lion King (which I think was the best of the disneys) were to be released for the first time now, it would be a box office failure.
Kids like a different calibre of movie now.
To us, our childhood movies will always be fairly magical, but they will feel the same way about their childhood movies when they grow up and start seeing the next-gen of kids movies.

The disney classics, will remain timeless stories that you can always watch and enjoy, but the magic might be limited to those of us who grew up with them more than this generation are.

</2cents>

 

[white avenger]

Yeah, the old animated format was always my favorite too, but I think it's more a question of economics than quality. It's just way more economical to generate the whole thing on a computer than it is to have a couple of dozen illustraters drawing each indivigual frame by hand.

 

[Lindsey McDonald]

The computer animation just doesn't do it for me anymore. When things like Toy Story first started popping up, it was great, but now? I don't actually think it's the form that's the problem though (even though I like the Lion King from an artistic and aesthetic viewpoint an awful lot more than Finding Nemo et al). I think the problem is that they have all been sanitised. Kids films used to have a very dark undertone, like old fairy tales. That's what made them so engaging. They had to be able to make the kids afraid. Nowadays, that just doesn't happen. It was the dark edge and truly frightening villians that made the old Disney films appeal to adults as well as children. Nowadays to do that they just throw in some sex/70's jokes that the kids don't get. It's all to patronising for my tastes. Kids can handle dark. We all did.

 

[Bluebird]

I loved the animated movies so much more. I love the older ones like Dumbo and Pinocchio too and I know young kids who prefer these films to the newer CG stuff. The only Pixar films that I think truly equal these are the 1st Toy Story film and Finding Nemo. They had that same spark of magic that the animated films do.

I also happened to be the perfect age when the animated films of the late 80s early 90s became a huge success, so maybe all this talk of animated films being more magical is just my own nostalgia. Saying that, there's something about seeing a character come to life that has been drawn by hand that appeals to me so much more.

And I totally agree with Five by Five about the darkness in kids films. Love that stuff eg Pinocchio turning into the donkey and the weirdness of the pink elephants in Dumbo. Plus The Nightmare Before Christmas is an excellent dark kids film. (that still counts, right? Stop-motion animation😉)

 

[Lindsey McDonald]

I loved the animated movies so much more. I love the older ones like Dumbo and Pinocchio too and I know young kids who prefer these films to the newer CG stuff. The only Pixar films that I think truly equal these are the 1st Toy Story film and Finding Nemo. They had that same spark of magic that the animated films do.

I also happened to be the perfect age when the animated films of the late 80s early 90s became a huge success, so maybe all this talk of animated films being more magical is just my own nostalgia. Saying that, there's something about seeing a character come to life that has been drawn by hand that appeals to me so much more.

And I totally agree with Five by Five about the darkness in kids films. Love that stuff eg Pinocchio turning into the donkey and the weirdness of the pink elephants in Dumbo. Plus The Nightmare Before Christmas is an excellent dark kids film. (that still counts, right? Stop-motion animation😉)

I think stop motion has more in common with the old hand drawn animations since each frame is modeled individually. That means that an incredible amount of detail and dedecation goes into every individual frame that might be missing from a CG animation. It's interesting to note that the computer animations with the highest acclaim have always been the Pixar shorts. It's probably because with them they put that effort in, since it doesn't need to be sustained across 2 hours.

I would say that tNBC and The Corpse Bride belong to the old Disney style, which is ironic because Burton says the days he spent working there were the worst in his life! That reminds me of something else: has anyone seen Burton's first proper stop motion piece called Vincent, where the young boy wants to be Vincent Price? It is fantastic. I'd rather watch that for 10 minutes than something like Cars for 2 hours.

 

[Bluebird]

That reminds me of something else: has anyone seen Burton's first proper stop motion piece called Vincent, where the young boy wants to be Vincent Price? It is fantastic. I'd rather watch that for 10 minutes than something like Cars for 2 hours.

It is fantastic and the narration by Vincent Price is brilliant! I've never seen Cars but I'm pretty sure there's more magic and imagination in that single 10 minute piece than in that whole film.