Comment Some problems and oversights.. (Score 2, Interesting) 337
The French Disney studio was closed because France was always too expensive to do animation in. The studio was only created to appease the French government to get Eurodisney through.
The Japanese studio closing is a sad thing. Disney don't have enough quality product to feed their studios, so it came down to Australia and Japan, and Japan got the arse for whatever reason. There is still an active studio in Australia producing 2D stuff, most of which goes direct to video but there is some film work. A lot of the crappier TV/direct to video stuff is done by contractors in the philipines. So 2D, hand drawn animation still does exist at Disney.
One of the biggest changes a move to an entirely computer based system presents is it takes away your training school for new animators. Traditionally, animators start out as inbetweeners, doing all the grunt work to get a film through. The inbetweeners with talent are soon picked up and moved through the various departments before they become proper animators and eventually senior animators if they are good enough. Moving to an entirely digital platform means the inbetweeners and cleanup artists suddenly don't exist anymore. Where do the animators come from in this new model? It's a pretty big change.
That said, most animation at Disney has been mostly computer based for years. While most of the 2D frames are still drawn on paper, they're scanned and painted and composited entirely on computer. It speeds the process up and improves the quality significantly, while still preserving the feel of hand drawn animation, which is a good thing imho.
The Japanese studio closing is a sad thing. Disney don't have enough quality product to feed their studios, so it came down to Australia and Japan, and Japan got the arse for whatever reason. There is still an active studio in Australia producing 2D stuff, most of which goes direct to video but there is some film work. A lot of the crappier TV/direct to video stuff is done by contractors in the philipines. So 2D, hand drawn animation still does exist at Disney.
One of the biggest changes a move to an entirely computer based system presents is it takes away your training school for new animators. Traditionally, animators start out as inbetweeners, doing all the grunt work to get a film through. The inbetweeners with talent are soon picked up and moved through the various departments before they become proper animators and eventually senior animators if they are good enough. Moving to an entirely digital platform means the inbetweeners and cleanup artists suddenly don't exist anymore. Where do the animators come from in this new model? It's a pretty big change.
That said, most animation at Disney has been mostly computer based for years. While most of the 2D frames are still drawn on paper, they're scanned and painted and composited entirely on computer. It speeds the process up and improves the quality significantly, while still preserving the feel of hand drawn animation, which is a good thing imho.
