Chicken Little!
What is it?
What's going on?
The sky is falling!
In 2005, Disney released Chicken Little.
It was their first fully computer animated film,
and that freaked a lot of people out at the time,
because the name Disney had been nearly synonymous
with the traditional art of hand-drawn 2D animation.
It felt like the sky was falling.
And it was.
Within a few years, the legendary studio
would put out its last traditionally animated films,
and the art itself would be allowed to wither
and left to die.
What are you doing?
Giving you your reward.
Your eternal reward.
But before we get into how it all went down,
why not take a moment to subscribe
to the Nerdstalgic channel.
When we speak of traditional animation,
we are generally referring to the process
of 2D movement achieved by drawing
each individual frame by hand.
And while 1906's "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces"
and 1908's "Fantasmagorie" took the first baby steps
in the development of the medium,
most people now consider 1914's "Gertie
the Dinosaur" to be the first proper foray
into traditional animation.
Over the early decades of the 20th century,
hand-drawn animation slowly grew into an extremely popular form
of entertainment and a big business for Hollywood.
During this period, most animated films
were created using a process called cel animation.
In a nutshell, the moving characters
are drawn or painted on transparent pieces
of celluloid, or cels, for short,
and then photographed over unmoving backgrounds.
The first feature length animated film
created with this technique was 1937's Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs, produced by Walt Disney Studios.
It's the style of animation Disney
used to produce 50 years worth of classics, including Bambi,
The Jungle Book, and The Lion King, and is probably the style
they're still most associated with.
The studio continued to use the technique all the way up
to the production of 1990's The Rescuers Down Under,
which marked the studio's changeover to a digital system.
Crazy Yanks.
They think they can do any fool thing without regard.
But the day that would change animation forever
was November 22, 1995, when a relatively little known studio
called Pixar released the world's first computer animated
feature, Toy Story.
Arriving in theaters with a 3D aesthetic
that was revolutionary to audiences at the time,
Toy Story also just happened to be an unmitigated triumph
of casting and storytelling.
Hey Ham!
Look!
I'm Picasso!
I don't get it.
You uncultured swine.
The movie's overwhelming success with both critics and audiences
surprised even Disney President Michael Eisner and Pixar boss
Steve Jobs.
Meanwhile, DreamWorks Animation run by Jeffrey Katzenberg,
the former Disney executive who had originally brought Pixar
to the studio's attention, was working on The Prince of Egypt,
which was scheduled for release in the fall of 1998.
The studio hoped the traditionally animated
film would make them a major competitor to Disney.
But through his friendship with Pixar's John Lassiter,
Katzenberg learned that Pixar was looking
to drop its sophomore effort--
A Bug's Life-- in the same time frame.
It's a bug eat bug world out there, Princess.
One of those circle of life kind of things.
Determined to get Pixar to move their release date,
DreamWorks partnered with computer animation studio PDI
on the similarly insect-centric Antz, which Katzenberg
threatened to release just before A Bug's Life
if Pixar didn't back off.
Long story short, Pixar didn't back off,
and The Prince of Egypt didn't go
anywhere near the kind of business DreamWorks
was hoping for.
But in the effort, Katzenberg had unwittingly
set up the medium of traditional animation for its demise.
While he was failing to make waves
in the traditional animation business,
Katzenberg was also trying to develop
an adaptation of William Steig's 1990 children's book Shrek.
I'm going to see this guy Farquaad right now
and get you all off my land and back where you came from.
Shrek, which was animated entirely with computers,
debuted to rave reviews and was a smash at the box office,
eventually going on to win the first ever Academy Award
for Best Animated Feature over Pixar's Monsters Inc.
But more importantly, Shrek proved
that Pixar wasn't the only studio who
could have a smash hit with a computer animated film.
The revelation inspired DreamWorks
to shift its strategy and start seeing itself
as a competitor for Pixar rather than Disney.
You're a monster.
Now tell me.
Where are the others?
Eat me.
But where Disney had a near chokehold
over the artistic pipeline required
to do traditional animation, computers
allowed animation to be done at a much faster rate and lower
price, and that meant anyone could get into the game.
DreamWorks had let the CGI genie out of the bottle,
and the result was going to be more competition
in the animation industry.
I mean, what chance does a toy like me
have against a Buzz Lightyear action figure?
During this period, Disney relied
on its partnership with Pixar to stay relevant in the computer
animation market, but that partnership
was due to expire in 2006.
And making the situation more dire
was that Disney's traditionally animated fare was also
seeing diminishing returns.
Movies like Pocahontas, Hercules, and Mulan
were well received and successful,
but not to the degree that The Little Mermaid, Beauty
and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King had been.
This, in addition to the increasing competition
from DreamWorks and Pixar, forced Michael Eisner
to begin pivoting Disney to producing
computer animated films.
It was horrible to come to this conclusion
that only 3D was going to be our future.
The first result of the shift was Chicken Little.
Although it's been largely forgotten now,
the movie debuted at number one and was
a modest financial success.
But it struck out with critics and certainly
didn't resonate with audiences the way any of Pixar's movies
did.
If Chicken Little had been a hit,
Disney might very well have parted ways with Pixar
when their deal expired.
But it was pretty clear that the House of Mouse
wasn't quite ready to compete at a Disney-worthy level
in the computer animated film market yet.
So in 2006, Disney bought Pixar.
The acquisition, however, did not
stop them from continuing to develop
their own non-Pixar animated films.
And in all fairness, they did get better than Chicken Little.
In fact, Disney's non-Pixar computer animated catalog
now includes iconic films like Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, Moana,
and Encanto.
Well, how about we just take that medal
and give it to Ralph for once?
Would that be the end of the world, Gene?
Now you're just being ridiculous.
But back in the late aughts, the writing
was on the wall for traditional 2D
animation, and 2009's The Princess and the Frog
and 2011's Winnie the Pooh would mark Disney's final forays
into the form that made them a household name.
It remains, as of this moment, the last fully traditional
animated feature film Disney ever made.
But traditional animation fans can take heart in the fact
that all hope for the art isn't lost.
In 2021, Disney Animation announced
they were starting a hand-drawn 2D animation trainee program
led by veteran Disney artists.
And in 2022, Disney+ released Chippendale Rescue Rangers,
which featured a hybrid of 2D and 3D animation.
You remember that weird animation style
in the early 2000s where everything looked
real but nothing looked right?
Oh Yeah.
That stuff was creepy.
To celebrate its 100th anniversary,
Disney is also releasing a short film
titled "Once Upon a Studio."
Like Rescue Rangers, the short, which one long time
Disney animator called a love letter
to traditional animation, features
traditional hand-drawn 2D animation mixed with CGI
and live action footage.
It all seems to have been leading up to 2023's Wish,
which although still partially computer animated,
will be the first Disney theatrical feature
to include traditional hand-drawn 2D animation
since Winnie the Pooh.
And while the nod to the past is nice
and the trend is encouraging for fans of traditional 2D,
it only highlights how completely computer animation
remade the animated feature industry.
Led by a new generation of animators,
the ever increasing possibilities
of computer animation have been reflected
in the success of more experimental films
like Sony's hit Spider-Verse movies
and Nickelodeon's new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant
Mayhem.
The price of these adventurous new visions,
however, shouldn't be the life of a beloved and powerful art
form.
Traditional 2D animation offers creators and audiences
a unique aesthetic and experience
that draws on over 100 years of our collective cultural
memories.
For everything else computer animation can do,
it can't do that.
So what do you think?
Do you miss traditional hand-drawn animation?
And what's your favorite animated movie?
Let us know down in the comments below.
And if you enjoyed this video, you'll
definitely find others you like if you check out
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