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End Of Fox Animation 249

Posted by Hemos from the it's-closin'-time dept.
RobM writes: "I've found on the New York Times (registration required) that Fox Animation has been shut down after Titan A.E. flopped. What do you think of this film and the reasoning in the article '2D sucks, 3DCGI is the way to go'?"
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End of Fox Animation More

End of Fox Animation

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  • Re:Hardly surprising... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not really. I wouldn't say animation is cold. But animation done the way anastasia (Disney wannabe with even lame musical scenes) and Titan AE sure is soulless and cold. I guess you guys should have a look of what is being done in japan. Just that most of that stuff wouldn't be politically correct to be shown on TV in the US (Heck, they have gays, blurred sense of good and evil and the bad guys are often americans). Problem is, I think you guys are overprotective to kids and just ruin stories and artwork to be sure not to move them or make them think too much. Sadly the end result is that it sucks. I'm going to see Blood: The last vampire next week. I don't expect it to be anything like Titan AE. But it's not pitched as a kids movie.

  • It's like Krusty the Clown once said (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Gosh, this really isn't a 2-D vs 3-D thing, this is just about very poor story telling. As Krusty the Clown once said

    I could have pulled a better cartoon out of my a. . whoa ha hey, kids!


  • People just don't believe me when I tell them it's a good movie. I think the marketing on this one really killed it - I don't think the studio spent enough on advertising (I know, just what we need, more annoying ads) and I don't think they were able to figure out a target audience.

    That's the problem - the movie really could have appeallead to a wide audience but I don't think the previews and ad campaign made that clear. I went to see it because of all the good reviews, and was VERY impressed. Any studio thinking of making another (non-Disney type singing and dancing) animated film should watch Iron Giant and take notes.

    Just to add to your points - besides the great writing, the movie just looked beautiful! It's kind of like Futurama in that I don't really think about "oh, here's the 3d part, and here's the 2d part". The integration (as you mentioned) is seamless enough to allow you to ignore it and just enjoy the visuals.

    I think I'll pop on down and rent the DVD to see it again!

    -------
  • Well, this looks to be the rant-on-the-movie thread, so I'll post my take on it here.

    I _did_ go to see the movie. I think it sucked. Really sucked. I didn't even have really high expectations. I only expected the backdrops and animation to be any good. And while I wasn't disappointed there everything else was really bad.

    The story. While the premise was alright (the exploding earth was really cool and realistic looking with all sorts of ejecta flying around) , the story just wasn't glued thogether. Too many little side plots, nothing really went anywhere.

    The music: huh? Whoever came up with the soundtrack (_especially_ for the trailer, eek!) deserves to be shot. The music just didn't fit in. It was pasted in, just like the characters. Someone mentioned it actually worked for one of the final scenes. OK, maybe.

    Everything was slow moving, uninteresting, despite the nice graphics (but very Quake-like, dark and brown and green) I was nearly asleep the whole show, and it wasn't even the late show.

  • Wrong title: I believe he meant The King And I [imdb.com].
  • I was disappointed, because this was supposed to be the movie where Don Bluth finally gives up on the cute talking animals. Unfortunately, all the aliens were rather unimaginative cute talking animals.

    There were a couple of good lines tho-
    "Great move, noone will ever think of looking for us in the air-shaft!"
    and
    "who would have thought, an intelligent guard!"

    My final comment is - planets blowing up have been done to death. If anyone out there is thinking of ever making a sci-fi movie at ANY point in your future, please consult a REAL astrophysicist on what a planet exploding would take, and what it would look like. PLEASE!
    Also, there was this guy named Newton. . .

    if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
  • I think South Park stole from Wizards:

    "They shot Fritz! Those dirty stinkin commie fairy bastards!"

    On the technical side, what you are talking about is "rotoscoping", and it's almost universally reviled in the animation world. It's just not well liked, even though the technique dates back to IIRC Disney's Snow White.

    Other decent Ralph Bakshi movies; Heavy Traffic (semi-porn, like Fritz the Cat) and duh- Lord of the Rings.



    if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
  • listen; they're not that stupid. They know that good entertainment sells, but they also know that bad entertainment sells enough, and with enough hype, it sells great, and even eclipses good entertainment, even the great.

    So like the stock-trader who goes around looking for a $5 sure-bet stock to invest in, these guys go around looking for projects that are "good-enough" that they won't have to invest too terribly much into the production, and still get a decent return at the box office. It's not really all that complicated; but it's a game that's not really playable until you get a good chokehold on distribution (like the MPAA has), then you pretty much make sure that the consumers don't have a choice, and start churnin out the garbage. Do you decide to spend tons more to make truly great stuff to snuff out your competition? Hell no, that would eat your profit margin, and eventually put you into a position that makes you an inviting antitrust target.

    if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
  • That's what I don't understand about MI:2. Wasn't it directed by John Woo? His other movies have been great? But I'm having a hard time characterizing why that movie sucked so bad - but I was really squirming in my seat through that one. Some of the conflict-scenes (gunfights, chase scenes) were signature John Woo-beautiful, but gawd, the dialog, that plot, the continuity, were just fuggin awful! I don't want to blame the direction, but there definately are other culprits at work there. . .

    if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
  • I do believe that CGI has a place, and currently, it's being abused to give traditional hand-drawn animation a little more pizazz and flash. Personally, I think it's more appropriate to use CGI to substitute for visual effects in live-action, but in animation, you're establishing a visual style, and CGI almost invariably breaks it in an ugly, ugly, way. I don't think I can find one good example of the tasteful blending of CGI and hand-drawn animation, (except for MAYBE Akira, because it was used VERY minimally).

    If it were used, say, as a shortcut to overcome the prohibitively expensive hand-calculation of proper visual perpective, I could see a use for that, give the artist a wire-frame to rotoscope off of. But you hadn't ought to use computer rendering in the final product.

    if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
  • Oh yeah, I forgot. Iron Giant actually WAS pretty cool. And I would have to cite this as an excellent example of a good way to blend CGI and hand-drawn animation.

    if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
  • 3D animation is not going away any time soon.
    And I disagree about it being cold and soulless...

    Watch a veggie [veggietales.com] video if you disagree.

    It is full of warmth and fun.

    Also, many other videos benifit from the 3D for f/x, such as Stuart Little. 3D is a strong and growing industry.

    But as mant have said, you must have a strong story. If the story is weak, people will grow tired of the neato graphics.

  • You know, I have Wings of H., and I can lend it to you.

    :-P

  • I wanted to see it. The only nearby theatre showing the friggin' thing was the Union Square theatre... and it was only playing at 11am. Well, i work, so that was out of the question. I live in NYC, and the only reason i didn't see the movie is that no nearby theatre was showing it at a reasonable hour.

    So, it flopped? Gee, i wonder why....
  • I'm assuming you're not poor, since you have a computer and internet access. So just go to the local cineplex and spend $8, or even better, go to the mattine and save lots of money.
    I'm a lot more concerned with wasting the time than wasting the money. Between work and other things I need to do I budget my spare time on the things that bring me the most enjoyment. It's summer now and its been a pretty damned nice summer. To talk me out of hiking or biking as opposed to sitting on my butt for a couple of hours (ok, biking is sitting on my butt a couple of hours but you know what I mean) I need a pretty compelling argument. I'll see Titan A.E. when it comes out on video, probably in the not so nice months (I'm in Wisconsin, so thats pretty much anything after September till May)
  • Live action Gundam? Think power rangers...
  • Wasn't stellar stuff, but I'm actually surprised that it "flopped". What was the losses on that one? (BTW- I am not surprised that Bartok the Magnificent flopped; it was a cheesy attempt at making a for-video market movie akin to the Lion King sequel... It looked to be a piece of crap from the ads...)
  • The animation for Atlantis looks to be exceptionally good. It's reported that it's not a musical, which is good. (I like musicals, but not as much as Disney has for the past decade) The trailer looks great. The setting looks great, though I keep thinking of Gainax's excellent series Nadia.

    Unfortunately, it sounds as if the story is even worse than Titan AE. Bastards.

    If they hurry up and _fix_ the storyline, it could turn out to be really very good. Very, very good. But right now, don't worry too much about it. Hopefully Dreamworks can come up with something good. Pixar's upcoming Monsters, Inc. ought to be very good but that's not going to influence Disney all that much just yet.
  • I went to see it, and I liked it so much I've made plans to go again. Sure it isn't high art and the story isn't a sweeping saga that will echo through the vaults of history -- but so what. It was meant to be mind candy, and I found it entertaining.

    My biggest "complaint" is that the bad guys seemed to mirror the Beast aliens from Mainframe Entertainment's Shadow Wars (I believe you Americans know it as War Planets). I would sure like to see the list of colaborators on both projects and see where the intersection is!
    --

  • I'm not sure what the hell the other reply to this message is talking about 'Perfect Blue' is something entirely different. The movie "Blue Planet" is under works by Rainbow Studios [rainbowstudios.com], I'm not sure where they currently have the video you mentioned stored on the site, but their are a couple of images from the film in their Gallery [rainbowstudios.com] (the space/underwater shots).

    The movie hasn't been finished yet because they are still in story negotiations with the studio contracting the project. But it is still under works.

  • Yes, 2D totally sucks ass!

    (Screw you guys, I'm going to eat.)
  • 2D or CGI? They're only tools--you can make crap with either one and you can make a masterpiece with either one. But like someone else here said, "One of the many problems in Hollywood is that a studio will release something original, thoughtful, and creative, and that triggers a huge wave of "me too" copies."

    This happens everywhere; when DooM was released, everyone started working on FPS. Little did they realize that, although 3D environments were pretty neat, it was the design and thought behind the game that really sold. If the first FPS game had been crappy, someone good would have seen it and said, "That's a great idea; now what can I do to make it better?"

  • Titan AE could have been a good movie. But from what I could tell, half way through the thing they fired the writers and rewrote the last half of the story. The amusing tongue-in-cheek attitude ("Who would guess, a smart guard?") that the first half had was totally lost in the second half. The second half the characters started taking themselves way too seriously, and everything became very predictable. They got wrapped up in their own CGI and tried to pass it off as a story. (20 minute flight through hydrogen clouds) See, the problem is they managed to violate every known physical law in the course of the movie. (WHEN will hollywood start hiring science advisors?!?!) This is OK, if the movie maintains some kind of suspension of disbelief, or doesn't take itself seriously. Titan AE did neither. The bad guys were shallow unexplained glowing blobs. (why did they want to destroy the earth?) And creating a planet? Come on. Watch me pull a planet's worth of mass out of my ass. At least in Star Trek II they used an existing planet and transformed it.

    At any rate, it was a big disappointment. From now on I'll stick to Japanese animation for my sci-fi, because american movie houses just have no clue. (that is, until another 2001 comes along)

    --Bob (hey, at least they named the planet after me!)

  • Fox is a business and this was a business decision, plain and simple.

    Fox is a formula. Dash of famous actor. Smidgen of fancy 3d effects. Dollup of song by famous band. Stir. Presto, more money for Fox's pockets.

    Once upon a time movies were still considered art. Now they're a formula to line someone's pocketbook. Good riddance to this studio. Perhaps they should start hiring people to write plots that don't suck and characters that aren't shallow. The problem is not their animators. It's trying to turn a story into a formula. A good story would still be good in animation, 3d rendering, live action, or stop motion.

    These days there is maybe one movie a year I don't find terrible. Their formulas have gone to such an extreme. The movie exec's don't even realize that "good story" isn't in their formula, and they have no clue how to put it into their formula. It's not a formula thing.

    --Bob

  • it's not so much that 2D outright sucks, as it is that they put FLAT low quality 2D characters on top of beautifly rich 3D sets. The juxtaposition looked awful.
  • I concur in spades, Titan sucked because the characters and plot sucked, there was absolutely nothing to like about the movie except for the animation.

    They could have at least given the evil aliens some personality so there was a reason to hate them, not giving them a voice made them more likeable than the hero IMO.
  • I'm amazed that so many of the comments on /. (as well as in the article) focus on only 2 things:
    • Technology (2D hand-drawn vs. 3D CGI)
    • Money (expenditures and profits)

    Does nobody judge a film based on its content??!! Granted, part of the composition of a movie -- story, dialogue, visuals, music (soundtrack & songs) -- is affected by the technology used to create it, but what it boils down to are the creative elements that have been employed (along with judicious editting).

    People talk about the "success" of Disney in the late-80s/early-90s as a business artifact, as though Michael Eisner was responsible for crafting the gems that "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast" are. Come on! "Mermaid" and "B&tB" are the products of the genius of Alan Menken & Howard Ashman (largely Ashman story-wise, the team musically). Disney didn't magically go from "The Black Cauldron" and "The Great Mouse Detective" to "Mermaid" without a concerted creative effort.

    Pixar's films (I refuse to call them Disney, other than Disney-distributed) are eye-popping treats thanks not only to their talented computer animation team, but also to their story and design teams. Face it, no matter how visually gorgeous "A Bug's Life" was, if it had had a banal storyline or flat dialogue, it would not be the masterpiece that it is.

    Sadly, sometimes the bottom line does not correspond to artistic merit. "The Iron Giant" is one of the best movie's I have seen in the last decade; unfortunately, WB didn't have the guts to market it appropriately, and it was a box office failure.

    Ask yourself: how many of these films have you seen, and why is watching one a more fulfulling experience than the other? Examine the elements carefully.

    - Richie

  • The sad thing is that, from a marketing point of view, saying that *does* make sense: I'm sure many people will be interested in spending some bucks in a film that's "buzzword compliant", than in some more standard animation.

    Also, from the p.o.v. of the "failed animators" putting the thing that way is very handy: "look, it's not our fault, it's the 2D! Give us bucks to work with 3D!".

    For what it's worth, I like *STORY* and *GOOD CHARACHTERS*: seeing them in 3D, 2D or even 1D (as "the line" guy by Osvaldo Cavandoli) doesn't matter.

    Ciao,
    Rob!
  • Something to consider - Macromedia Shockwave and Flash uses the 2D format. Granted, the application borrows 3D techniques (interpolation, keyframes), but fundamentally, (IMHO) its still 2D... and very popular.
  • CGI=Computer Generated Imagery Graf
  • South Park is done using Softimage in order to recreate the cardboard cutout look. It has the advantage of being able to change the script at the last minute and just let the 'puter chug through the animation rather than having a team in korea rework it. That's part of the reason that SP manages to be so topical (the Elian episode was hilarious). There was a great interview with the SP tech guys a while ago, maybe it made it to /. I think they're just over in Marina Del Rey, I should go stalk them sometime...
  • (Screw you guys, I'm going to eat.)

    - Well, at least my model isn't on the cover of "Crack VRML Magazine".

  • It wasn't that the plot was horrible, or that our dialogue was borderline ridiculous, it's those finicky moviegoers wanting all that flashbang 3D animation stuff! Yeah! That's it! We couldn't possibly be producing garbage here.

    I think 'El Dorado' was successful, and not a bad movie. I think DreamWorks in general does good animation. In fact, I see them on purpose largely because they're not Disney and don't try to be.

  • South park , is the worst animation ever, a 3 year old child can do better and it is one of the most sucessful animated series on the planet. If your storyline/plot sucks big potatoes, no amount of technology/flashy tricks will save it (Judge Dredd anyone?) I just cant believe that a studio would sink that much money into a project wit a crappy/non-existant script.
  • ... and then give us your impression. But don't judge a movie by a trailer !

    I'm assuming you're not poor, since you have a computer and internet access. So just go to the local cineplex and spend $8, or even better, go to the mattine and save lots of money.

    Seriously, I'm all for looking around at reviews as to not waste money on stinkers, but if you're into sci-fi and animation, I don't see why you wouldn't want to give this movie a try. It got a 54% rating on rottentomatoes.com [rottentomatoes.com], and that's much better than "non-flops" like the Perfect Storm (38%) [rottentomatoes.com]. Now Battle Field Earth a 7% [rottentomatoes.com] ratings (93% negative), well, that I can understand not even wanting to rent it.
  • 2D sucks, 3DCGI is not the reason Fox Animation is going/has gone down.

    As far as the "2D vs 3D" debate. Who cares ? 2D Animation is not dead yet, and it's easy to see that by the success of the Disney films, Japanese Anime and other forms.

    We continue to see 2D art being mixed with 3D where it fits, and the results are great. Example of this are Tarzan, Hunchback , Lion King, and yes Titan A.E.

    For goodness sake, Chicken Run was clay animation !!! Look how succesfull that movie was, and they're going to make more movies !
  • The computer F/X industry in the 1980s came to
    nearly a standsill in the late 80s after cheese
    and failures in the mid 80s such as Tron and the
    Last Star Fighter. One F/X house even bought a
    top end super computer (Cray XMP) of the time
    and went bankrupt.

    1990s saw a renaisance in the Abyss creature
    (which was hard to tell it was a computer) and
    digital editing in Back to the Future II.

    Animation will come too.

  • Of course! This is the real reason why Toy Story and its sequel had such great success: they have <b>excellent</b> characters and a great storyline (not to mention a point! not to mention showing us something about our own humanity!). Meanwhile Titan A.E. with its carbon-copy cookie-cutter (I like that alliteration!) characters will go to the trash heap where it belongs.
  • This isn't about individual films being serious, but about the medium itself being taken seriously. The Japanese treat animation as another medium capable of doing anything that live action can do, and more -- Hollywood treats it as a vehicle for children's films only.

  • Plot.... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I saw Titan:AE on opening night and I too was dissappointed. They really were attempting to market it to both kids and older teens/sci-fi fans but I think it failed on both counts. The characters were mostly one-sided and the plot was too simplistic. The movie focused more on "non-stop action" at the expense of actually becoming interested in the characters or the plot.
    Some of the CGI was pretty impressive - like the ice crystal shots at the end. Most of the rest just didn't work. Heck Reboot kicked the S*&@ of the Draj-thingies CGI-wise!

    On the other hand I just caught "The Iron Giant" the other day on HBO, and I must say it was one of the best animated films I've ever seen! It had everything Titan:AE lacked:

    -Good plot

    -Interesting, realistic(for the most part) characters

    -Good CGI/2D integration

    and most importantly,

    -IT DIDN'T TALK DOWN TO KIDS OR ADULTS!!!

    TIG, had some really great 50's cold war nuclear culture references that kids would really not get, I mean, they had an absurd animated "Duck and Cover" film, in an animated movie! The movie was done well on almost all aspects, and it too was mostly ignored by the public, although it did get EXCELLENT reviews by the critics.

    I honestly don't think that American studios will produce the kind of animated movies that older folks will really like. They will usually be mass-market drivel (Disney) or uninspired fluff like Titan:AE. That's why I'll stick with Anime (Escaflowne and Key ROCK!) or perhaps some Canadian animation (Reboot).

    Sincerely,
    Kevin Christie
    kwchri@wm.edu

  • Hardly surprising... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm not too surprised that they closed Fox Animation - if we judge them on the quality of their product, then the whole company was a disaster from the outset. They produced two feature length animations - Anastasia (an indifferent piece of animation, based on the dullest storyline imaginable) and Titan AE (a piece of pseudo-Anime, which insulted the intelligence of anyone above the age of five). Even though these animations had very little inherent value, their lack of commercial and critical success demonstrates that the public has begun to tire of animation.

    Let's face it, traditional "pen and ink" animation has been stale for many years, and the foul stench of its rotting corpse is beginning to upset cinema goers. I also believe that computer generated animation will prove to be a short-lived fad, since this animation has a cold, soulless quality which doesn't endear it to the public. Ironically, the future for animation doesn't lie with animation itself - live action "animation", in the style of the "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers", which combines traditional cartoon humour and slapstick action together with real actors and heightened realism represents the future of animation. The spirit and values of traditional animation will survive in this form of "animation", but the tired old methods of traditional animation will finally be laid to (a well deserved) rest.

  • Considering all the 3D CGI movies this year have been unmitigated disasters (Dinosaur cost 200 million to make and only made $100 million at the box office, Rocky and Bullwinkle was a much-deserved bomb) I'd say studios should be _more_ wary of them than traditional animation.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • The problem with the perception that 2D sucks is that the only 2D stuff these people know of is 70s quality animation (like Titan AE). I was constantly amazed when people both on Slashdot and in the real world raved about the quality of the animation in Titan AE, despite the fact the characers were drawn in a 30 year old style and the 3D rendering was only average. Still, the quality of the animation didn't kill Titan AE, the quality (or lack thereof) of the story did.

    I don't think the moviegoing public is as dumb as most people seem to think. I think people really do prefer a movie where the plot stays together and doesn't feel the need to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator. I fully believe that if Fox animation wants to pull out of its slump, it needs to smarten up and convince its animators to update their style.
  • What 3 films did the Phoenix studio do?

    Anastasia (1997) [imdb.com]
    Bartok the Magnificent (1999) [imdb.com] [direct-to-video Anastasia prequel]
    Titan A.E. (2000) [imdb.com]

    -danimal

  • this could be equally described as creativity vs. non-creativity.

    anyway, the comment made by one of the artists - "i'm never going to sign away the rights of a character." that's very telling. if one looks at free software as an attempt by individual programmers to maintain control of their work, one wonders what other creative people will want to do with their work when they realise the power of the net for distribution.

    mp3 and other compressed music formats actually enable musicians to distribute their work without record companies. it's not perfect yet, something needs to be done to encourage people to pay for the music, the quality needs to be better and we need more bandwidth. however the seeds are there.

    online comics also have similar potential. recently chris baldwin, author of bruno [brunostrip.com] decided not to try for syndication of bruno and is trying to earn his keep from bruno directly.

    this could be said for a host of artists in a variety of media - even tangible media can be sold over the net.

    so what if these guys start drawing up animated shorts, mixing in some sort of slashdot style discussion boards on animation in general and maybe their work in particular. perhaps a forum for other animators to discuss their work, not just a place for consumers of it. i think they'd do rather well. their work would stay theirs, they would decide what to publish. they could sell better quality copies of the animation (or tapes/dvd's of it), shirts, merchandise, etc, as well as banner ads on the site itself.

    essentially the web allows for the *possibility* for creative people to build their careers directly with their audience. programmers have been first because we're most familiar with it. but we're not alone.
  • Titan A.E. (hackneyed story), while not being a masterpiece, was much more enjoyable than MI:2 (garbage directon). Chicken Run (well written/acted, funny) outshines both of them by leaps and bounds. It's a shame Titan A.E. didn't do better - it was the better film that weekend and I would like to see the animation evolve instead of be stymied by lack of dollars. I don't enjoy anime all that much (maybe I should watch more), so I like to see what non-Disney Hollywood pumps out in animation. Disney animation, while very well done, usually doesn't grab my attention story-wise.

    Hollywood has this stigma about the genre or catch of the film being reason to make another one of the same type (i.e., imitate). However, I doubt they fail to understand the elements that make the film good. They do know, however, that if you make another one, "they will come". People seem to fall for this all the time. The movies make money, so they keep making them. Some cast and crews put some real effort into them, so you get some gems. It's the way it goes.

    Woz
  • I did watch (and liked) Akira and Ghost in the Shell. I've seen a couple other ones, but I can't recall what they were. I also thought they were good. I guess I just can't get rabid about it, but I certainly have no serious complaints about it (like I do about MI:2). I'm probably turned off from it by the insane fans I hear that debunk anything that comes from Hollywood (animated or not) as pure crap and anything anime as an entertainment zenith. I guess typing that up makes my position seem kind of stupid.

    It's probably time to give it another shot. I will check out your suggestion. Thanks.

    Woz
  • The problem was Woo managed to cliche himself.

    He played up all the stylistic elements that made him an original director and made them looked hackneyed and stale. The fight scenes did look good, but when you slow them down, there is no action - and every "action" scene was slowed down, making for a slow movie. Essentially, nothing happened. By the time you got to the end (where something resembling action took place), you just didn't care.

    Movies like MI:2 are not known for their riveting storyline and in-depth character studies. They are simplistic and shallow. They require adrenaline to be made interesting. MI:2 did not have it. For that matter, neither did Titan A.E., but at least it looked a helluva lot better (visuals do matter in film, you know).

    Woz
  • The movie flooped because the story was bad. The plot did not bother me at all, but the dialogue and the fact that it went by quickly like a childrens movie did bug me. Things like a singular enemy in "a" ship, bad guy "pal" that flip-flopped on being good/bad and forming a planet in 15 seconds were very unrewarding intellectually (yeah, cartoon, but should have been made for adults).

    Visually the movie was stunning. I loved the 2D characters in a 3D environment.

    "That's just my opinion... I could be wrong." -Dennis Miller
  • I didn't see Anastasia, but I really liked Titan A.E. Great, great design work, and the plot wasn't as bad as people say. The mix of 2D and 3D worked for me. It was a LOT better than the last Trek movie. I'm sad it went out of theaters so fast: I wanted to see it again.
    Let's face it, traditional "pen and ink" animation has been stale for many years, and the foul stench of its rotting corpse is beginning to upset cinema goers.
    Odd, then, that attendance at anime conventions is growing by leaps and bounds. Odd that Disney is doing quite well, and branching out to release the Studio Ghibli movies. Odd that there are more animated TV shows than I can ever remember, and more movies coming out all the time.
    I also believe that computer generated animation will prove to be a short-lived fad, since this animation has a cold, soulless quality which doesn't endear it to the public. Ironically, the future for animation doesn't lie with animation itself - live action "animation", in the style of the "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers", which combines traditional cartoon humour and slapstick action together with real actors and heightened realism represents the future of animation. The spirit and values of traditional animation will survive in this form of "animation", but the tired old methods of traditional animation will finally be laid to (a well deserved) rest.
    Hello? Bueller? TRON came out, what, 20 years ago? Pixar has been going for about as long. Kind of a long-lived "short-lived fad," if you ask me.

    As for the rest of your pedantic rant, get a clue. Radio didn't kill the printed page, TV didn't kill radio, photography didn't kill painting, and traditional animation isn't dying either.

    Jon

  • Maybe you were betrayed by your expectations?

    All I know is, I went into the theater with a basically skeptical outlook, and ended up really enjoying myself. I'll be buying the DVD.

    Jon
  • I work in the 3D CG business, doing visual effects as opposed to animation.

    In 20 years of working with hundreds of 3D animators I've found that an absurd percentage of the best ones started out as 2D animators. I believe that nothing can teach motion, layout, action, and representation of emotion like painstaking 2D work -- when you draw every frame, or review every frame of other people's work you really see it in a way that you just can't see in CG.

    It will be interesting to see where we get our 3D animators twenty years from now if 2D is really dead. I guess Japan is the most likely place.

    thad

  • I'm really curious: at the Annecy International Animation Festival during the 'premiere' of Titan A.E. Bluth/Fox was giving away an 'animation magazine': the opening article was written by Bluth himself, and detailed quite well how he became involved with the Titan A.E. project (was asked to 'take over' the work of two other directors, that worked on the film for more than a year) and why he accepted even if he never worked for a sci-fi film ('Hollywood requires you to do these kind of thing", and thus it was a good thing for he to accept).

    By chance, isn't it that these two "Anonymous Directors" are/were working for Blue Skies studios? ;-)

    I'd be really glad if this turn out to be true.

    Ciao,
    Rob!
  • You can simply avoid movies, television and other forms of packaged entertainment. Surely if it's truly excrement, it's not worth watching or listening to.

    I haven't gone to a movie or watched TV in years. Can't say I miss it.

    D

    ----
  • You're right. I meant, The King and I.
  • But Disney's movies are all a financial success. And part of the reason for this is that they all share a high production quality. They look expensive. This is what I mean. There is no place for a low-budget, great script, innovative animation.

    But the American market for adult animation is also almost non-existent. Since Bakshi disappeared, no one has made any real effort in this direction. We get movies targeted at teens or children, never any higher.

    And if Fox makes four flops and one success, then eventually they'll have to declare animation as dead. The problem is not now, and never will be, animation itself. The problem is in the movies, not in the genre.

  • it has nothing to do with the form of animation. it's the quality of the story IMHO. Disney has been doing this for years and made a killing with it. I have never liked three dimensional animations. It doesn't feel right if you know what I mean. a good example is the new transformers vs. the old ones. 3D work is not expressive enough.
  • I'm not sure where you're at but just yesterday I saw both Cowboy Bebop and BLue Sub 6 on DVD at Fry's. You might want to check your local one to see if they have it. The one around here has a huge stock of movies on DVD including Zombie Grannies and Condorman.
  • and Japanese animation is proving it.

    The creation of an Anime is usually very traditional. CG is usually used very little, and often it's hidden as much as possible (at least, most good shows do that). This doesn't make shows any worse, or any less successful (at least in Japan, here it's sadly another story).

    The problem is that animation fims are most of all stories. If the story sucks, the movie sucks. Plain and simple. Nobody is going to watch it, even if it has all the eye-candy in the world. Disney learnt the story. The Little Mermaid and the Beauty and the Beast are both reductions of hits centuries old, and The Lion King is a cheap Rip-off from Tezuka's "Jungle TaiTei" (I hope I got the title right). You just can't miss with titles like these. What does Fox retaliate with? Anastasia (which I still haven't had the change to watch, despite wanting to), and Titan, which I haven't seen and I'll pride myself not to see since I've gotten so bad reviews that it's not funny.
    The bottom line is: if you don't have a certain hit (and Disney sort of snagged all those), you have to be sure you have a damn good story, or it won't matter how much money you pump into a movie, it won't sell.

    Take Princess Mononoke for instance. When I went to see it, I was utterly moved by the beatiful backgrounds, the great animation, the wonderful story. There is no way that CG art can give me those kind of backgrounds, that essential yet immensely expressive way to draw characters, and the story has nothing to do with how you draw it.
    Photorealistic drawing is not what I want either: if I wanted that, I'd go watch a live movie. Aardman studios' works are great, or take the Muppets, or Barney (*heh, just kidding. There's not a chance in hell*). There is no CG in them, yet they're both good and they sell. CG in and by itself is irrelevant, if there is no story to tell, and I'm not surprised that many geeks (myself included) turn to Anime as a preferred form of entertainment.
  • IMHO the reason Titan didn't do so well is because they couldn't decide on their target audience. Was it designed for the young child/Disney group, a more intellectual teen group, or the scifi/animation/cgi fan? Some things were definately geared toward a more sophisticated set, and yet many elements remained for the kiddies. "It is a cartoon after all," I can hear Don Bluth saying. I personaly found it fun. I say bonus points to Fox for taking a step like that. I loved being able to see something a little edgier from a US animated movie. Titan and Anastatia were some of the best looking films I've seen. It would have been much better if they would cut the talking animal convention. I can't wait until the industry will stop thinking of animation as a lower art form and approach it the same way as a live action feature.
  • They never claimed that it was fox. They simply stated that after Toystory 2 did so well in the theater, fox cut back it's staff. In other words: Fox exec's saw the writing on the wall that 3D animation was what is selling in the theater and they couldn't compete with it.

    If Fox execs looked at Toy Story 2 and saw that it was 3D animation that was selling in the theater, then they're just a bunch of dumb yutzes. What made Toy Story and Toy Story 2 such wonderful movies was that they were really well-written and well-acted. If I had to condense this down to the simplest possible statement, of why Pixar's films are so good and other people's wannabe things are not, that would be:

    John Lasseter is a genius.

    If the Fox execs didn't realize that the problem was that Pixar has John Lasseter, and they have no answer to that, then they won't have learned anything.

  • Anna and the King [imdb.com] was not an animated movie. Are you thinking of Anastasia [imdb.com]? Anastasia was not that bad, or should I say no worse than anything Disney puts out.

    I disagree with your assertion that Disney has set the bar too high. I think that with animation in America, it has been successfully cast into niche status by Disney. Disney has successfully convinced everyone that they are the source of animation innovation in the world. They don't make bad movies, they're fine (if a little simple).

    Movies like Iron Giant [imdb.com] and Princess Mononoke [imdb.com] are truly excellent films, animation or not, but are still considered fringe, despite their excellent production.
  • guyver series, nge, macross II, ninja scroll and akira are SERIOUS?

    Come on, they are shoot-em-up action flicks. They are good, shoot-em-up action flicks, but they are NOT SERIOUS film

    If you want serious film look at films by noted directors, look at films which don't center around a giant special effects spectacular, ninjas, or giant robots.

    I love anime, but I wouldn't call it "serious".
  • Don Knuth is the CS guy.

    Don Bluth is the guy who did Dragon's Lair.
  • While I would take my kids to a viewing of The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, or Aladdin, I know that if I took them to the original Fantasia, they would be both bored and annoyed (or annoying..). The reasoning behind this is because children (and the vast majority of all adults and adolesents) today are media slobbering brain-washed babboons that not only don't want something better, they don't even realise that there COULD BE.

    Your kids are media slobbering brain-washed babboons? It's too bad that the vast intelligence required to know what the correct taste in media is isn't even genetic. How does this sound: could you write down a list of what you watch/read/listen to during the day, so us brain-washed babboons can understand what's "better"?
  • Funny you should bring up the Simpsons, since last night I saw a rerun of the Homer^3 episode, where Homer enters a 3-d world.

    His comment, while standing around picking his nose, is "Boy, this sure looks expensive."

    It's also a little ironic that you mentioned South Park. While that show was originally done with about as low-tech as you can get (cutting out construction paper, I heard,) it's now rendered on expensive machines with fancy software.

    Does anyone remember Ralph Bakshi's animation from the 70's? Some of them were "Fritz The Cat", "American Pop", and "Wizards". One of his techniques (used to great effect in "American Pop") was to shoot live actors, then trace over their images for his animation. It was sort of a low-tech motion-capture, but it gave the movies a very warm, mature feel.

    So Fox Animation Studios failed. That sucks for them, but then again, their movies sucked for us.

  • So true. That's exactly how I feel about american movies and television.

    Have you tried out japanese animation (anime), though? Imho, it is overall of much greater quality than the garbage that passes for TV around here. The good anime has deep, realistic characters, and a kind of overall creativity and artfulness that is really refreshing. I feel it's on par with what you get at (real) theaters.

    There was an Ask Slashdot [slashdot.org] a while ago asking for recommendations of good series. I recommend Neon Genesis Evangelion, a series which everyone likes and a lot of people are crazy about. The series is really intense, and once you're finished you still have hours of fun analyzing the psychology of the characters and finding all sorts of hidden meanings and interpretations to all the events (if you're into that sort of thing :). I'd like to see an american film where you can do that!

  • ...Long live the King.

    2D animation will die about the same day newspapers, libraries, brick-and-mortar businesses, peer-reviewed journals, and all the rest of the currently-fashionable-predicting-their-death ways of providing services and content goes the way of the dodo.

    I mean, hell, Katz has been predicting the death of everything not connected to the internet for how many years now? And when is he wrong...

    Anyways, for a glimpse of the future of 2D animation, check out the newly released teaser trailer for Atlantis [go.com], Disney's newest and quite possibly best effort since the Little Mermaid.

    For those who want something with an extra dimension, check out the also-newly released teaser for Final Fantasy [finalfantasy.com] the Movie.
  • Having grown up on Don Bluth films, as well as having played hours of Dragon's Lair and Space Ace on my Amiga and SegaCD, I was at TitanAE opening weekend. Visually, the movie has some beautiful CG work, but then again, what doesn't nowadays? Some of the most stupid commercials on television are utlising the same technology Titan used and yielding better results. So, what set this film apart from anything else?

    Absolutely nothing.

    The characters were typical Don Bluth-style characters, with generic features and shallow personalities. The premise was interesting, but hardly original, and in the end you can't help but ask yourself "where was the climax?" The voice actors weren't particularly great (I mean, c'mon, Bill Pullman?) and when they create an entire planet in the same time it takes for Slashdot to load, you're just like "yeah...sure".

    Being a huge fan of anime across the board, whether it be Japanese, Disney, or what not, I tend to give shows and movies a little slack. TitanAE was acceptable in that respect, but no less disappointing. At least a mediocre Manga-style anime is generally geared toward adults. They tried to play to both audiences with this movie, and they didn't succeed. They should've picked one or the other.
  • Now, had Disney decided to make the entire movie a classical music feast with cgi visuals, it would have been both innovative and amazing. The reason that they did this is very, very simple: you can't market class and good taste. A talking Dinosaur sells, a Classical music epic does not. While I would take my kids to a viewing of The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, or Aladdin, I know that if I took them to the original Fantasia, they would be both bored and annoyed (or annoying..). The reasoning behind this is because children (and the vast majority of all adults and adolesents) today are media slobbering brain-washed babboons that not only don't want something better, they don't even realise that there COULD BE.


    The problem isn't that the majority of people are slobbering idiots. The problem is that we are all idiots outside of the areas we know. The world is too big for a single mind to hold all of it. If you are going to make a movie (record, TV show, etc.) and are going to put a lot of money into it, you need to get a large audience to make back that investment. To do that, you can't aim at small niche markets. You aim for mainstream tastes. You eliminate elements that will alienate the larger audiences.

    One of the benefits of the networking of the world is that it reduces the cost of marketting and distributing to niche audiences. Geography is becoming much less relevant. Could copyleft.net [copyleft.net] have survived as a business before the Internet took off? Probably not. Not because there were fewer geeks, but because we were harder to reach. The Net helps us form virtual communities.

    As more people with a greater variety of interests get online we are seeing two trends. The first has already happened. The content of the Net shifted from being primarily geek-oriented to more mainstream a couple of years ago. The second is that communities with a variety of interests are growing. At one time they centered around Usenet groups and maybe a few BBS's and ftp sites. Now any niche group can have a web site and usually does.

    The big productions will always aim at large "least common denominator" markets. That is where they can recoup large production and marketting costs. But as entertainment moves online, it makes sense that there will be niche cultural products. There always have been. They are likely to become more diverse and easier to find.

  • well (Score:2)

    by moller ( 82888 )
    as a disclaimer, what I heard was that Titan AE was a very good movie. It's kind of depressing that the studio was shut down because the movie didn't perform as well as the bigwigs up top wanted. You know that if it had done well those same bigwigs would have been fighting over who would have gotten credit for the idea.

    Gene Siskel said that Titan AE was the movie that Battlefield: Earth wanted to be. And yet no one has (seriously) talked about John Travolta's career being finished. yet.

    Moller
  • What Cartoon Network shows is not good anime, because they mangle it through censoring and by showing dubs. The shows themselves are good, but by the time they're done with censoring them and by adding insult to injury by showing dubbed versions, they just suck.

    I'm not trying to be negative here, but there's nothing worse than a censored dub. :/
  • 2D animation sucks? I think you'd find quite a few otaku (anime fans) who would disagree with you. :)

    Yes, I realize that a million others have posted this before I did, but I still think it's worth a post.

    PS: Otaku, literally translated, is a derogatory term describing someone so obsessed with something that they shut themselves off from the outside world; however in America the term is usually used to describe a person that likes anime and/or manga a lot, and it doesn't have negative connotations as it does in Japan.
  • I'm not flaming here, but is 3D animation really the way to go? Look at what happened to Reboot. :/
  • While I may concede on the point of Fantasia (only to a point, my experience when I went to see the re-release a few years back was one of the worst movie experiences I have ever had the non-pleasure of enduring), I have to completely not understand any point that you tried to make with:


    Sounds like you're making the same assumptions the studios are, which is why we get so much crap. Self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps?


    This is NOT an assumption. My littler brother, who is now 13, used to watch AT LEAST 5 hours of TV a day. His grades suffered and so my mom took the TV away. His grades shot up, and all of a sudden, he could talk sensibly about a subject other than some show or commercial he saw. He reads more and understands now more that there are such things are developed characters and PLOT.

    My point is this: TV and cinema serve their purpose when utilized by people that want to say something.. not by people that are solely interested in making a quick buck.

    Interestinly enough, it is the movies that say something that usually stand out most in our minds.

    Rami James
    Guy with a crick in his neck.
    --
  • anonymity is garbage. come on, dude. you have to grow up. no real adult posts anomymous trolls. that shit is for pre-teens. as a teen, you should be busy getting a brain.
    --
  • Shortly after Gene Siskel mentioned that Titan AE was good, He said, "Brraaaaaiinns, I thirst for Braaaiiiiinnns."
  • The animation is done in the U.S., and then is sent to Taiwan to be colored in. The animation requires skilled work, while the coloring-in can be done by unskilled laborers who get Kathie Lee sweatshop wages. Ain't globalization grand? :-)

    Also, the guy above has it right. Much of Futurama is rendered in a combination of 2D and 3D computer graphics; when the show first came out, it got a lengthy spread in TV Guide complete with interviews, and in the interview Groening was talking about how hard they worked to get the right look for the show--they wanted to use new technologies and give the show a unique feel that couldn't be done with traditional animation, but they didn't want it to be visually jarring. Personally, I think they hit the nail on the head; the show definitely feels unique thanks to the fast-motion, 3D backgrounds, and other aspects of the CG animation, but the effects are subtle enough that it doesn't distract and make you start thinking about how computers did this or that or that this or that looks "fake."

    Now, the one wish I have for Futurama is that they find a guy who does a good Phil Hartman impersonation, and have him play Phil Hartman's Head in an episode. After all, if the heads of Pamela Anderson and Richard Nixon can make guest appearances, Phil's head would be a great tribute. Fry could recognize him as Troy McClure from The Simpsons or something. Cool...
  • It seems to me that a lot of people are critisizing Titan AE from two incompatible angles. On one hand I hear that Titan AE didn't break any new ground, while on the other that it failed to fall into a nice pre-defined category.

    Sounds to me like the real problem is that it did exactly the opposite: it assumed that kids could deal with some mature themes and adults could deal with some whimsical humor and fantasy. I don't see many other films in the US doing this. Did Titan succeed at it? I don't know, but I think Titan AE's failure is more about the average American being unable to mix genres and use their imagination than about Titan's own flaws. It's why foriegn films rarely succeed here.

    Was Titan perfect? No. Was it a masterpiece? Probably not. (Did I enjoy it? Immensely.) Was it the same old thing everyone else is doing? No.

    Is it sad that Fox is pulling the plug on this type of thing? Very much so. I would have liked to see where it would lead.

  • This story seems all the more ironic, considering that Disney has just started up the hype-machine on their next animated movie, Atlantis [go.com]. Heavy Flash warning. Also, there's a trailer, but it of course is QT only. Trust me when I say that this movie looks pretty good: definitely doesn't look like a typical "So much sugar it hurts your teeth" Disney fare.

    Still, it sucks that Fox won't be around to at least give them a run for thier money. Are there any other studio's doing studio-release quality, feature length animated movies?
  • Too bad all of Bakshi's movies stink on ice.

    Rotoscope Animation predates Bakshi's work by quite a long while... Disney used very similar to model the motion of the Dwarves in Snow White.

  • Now, had Disney decided to make the entire movie a classical music feast with cgi visuals, it would have been both innovative and amazing.

    They did. It was called Fantasia 2000 [imdb.com]. Hardly anybody went to it, though. Those who wanted to see a Disney picture went to Dinosaur instead.

  • They never claimed that it was fox. They simply stated that after Toystory 2 did so well in the theater, fox cut back it's staff. In other words: Fox exec's saw the writing on the wall that 3D animation was what is selling in the theater and they couldn't compete with it. Not to knock 2D or anything, because I'm a huge fan of classical animation, just not the crap that fox put out.
  • I'm rather glad Titan A.E. did as poorly as it did. Gave me a chance to experience something i've never experienced at the movies. Empty theatre... girl... well you fill in the blanks. From what I could tell the movie had a few good one liners here and there, but other than that I didn't catch much. And as for that post about a single episode of Gundam Wing having a better story? Wow, you really hit the nail on the head. I've seen the japanese versions (subtitled) and the American versions of both GW and DB/DBZ/DBGT and that sort of 2D, action filled animation certainly fills a void on your TV, but I don't know how well it'd come out if they were to transfer that to the big screen. God forbid we have another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fiasco... of course, that was live action and rubber suits. Can't really imagine live action DBZ or Gundam :)
  • Entertainement is based on these three cornerstones and, of the three, technology tends to be the least important. Just see "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". Its technology is several centuries old, but its marketing is fenomenal.
    I haven't seen "Titan" to judge the story, but I can't tell you its marketing is bad. Kids won't want to watch a violent sci-fi movie, and teenagers won't risk being seen going to the movies to see an animated cartoon if they can spend all their money watching "X-Men" over and over again.
    Technology is only important when the field is still in its early ages and it is so bad that it hinders the suspension of disbelief.(black and white films, sprite-based games, monoaural radios)
  • This Wasn't a completely CGI flick to those of you out there that have threaded such information. All characters were still done by hand, but thats irrelevent.

    The movie itself was visually stunning.... at least for the first half of the movie. Pulling into the later second half (namely on New Earth and the inside Titan shots), we were showed both a lack of quality and time taken towards the development of this film. Did anyone not notice how our new earth looked like something out of Bryce? And that they were panning hand painted backgrounds in the Titan shots?

    All that shows is that the studio was running out of both time and money for this movie... hell- I remember seeing a very short trailer for it in theaters two years before its release. How much production time is behind this film is unknown to me.

    But even so- this movie's lack of plot, quick movement, undeveloped characters, and storybook attitude made up for a very dissapointing movie. Especially when it was intended for the teen, not 5-10 year old market. I have also come to conclusion that FOX studio's noticed this recently because it was just yesterday I saw the first cheap children's toy add on T.V. Instead of the next morning after the debut of the movie.

    But all in all.. I just like to bitch about this movie... I had got my hopes up to see it (I have plans to go into 3d and or just animation as a career)... and they were crushed by the simple feeling and execution of what could have been an awesome flick. (With about 45 minutes more movie... alot of things could have been rectified).

    -f0rge
    He who rules the penguins, rules the world...

  • I was going to see Titan A.E. (Score:3)

    by substrate ( 2628 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @02:03AM (#911020)
    When I first saw the teasers for Titan A.E. on television it looked like it was going to be awesome. It looked like it was going to be closer to anime than the typical american movie: an actual plot, character development, deep story and characters as opposed to the typical saturday morning cartoon action hero with the a somewhat typical plot and two dimensional characters.

    When they showed the trailers I felt robbed. It looked more akin to Lion King than what I was expecting. I was half expecting the characters to break out in song. To my eye they geared this thing at the same people who religiously watch Disney cartoons (not that there's anything wrong with that, but its not what I'm interested in) who may not really be into science fiction.

    I didn't see it, but I had every intention of seeing it prior to seeing the trailer. Good marketing that, changing somebodies mind 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

    I don't know where the fault lies, but it just didn't seem like a very compelling movie to win 8 bucks and a couple hours of my time. Maybe the studio forced there hand in the animation and story department. I don't think animation is dead, nor do I think two dimensional animation is dead. It just looked like a single episode of Gundam Wing could involve me more than a full movie of Titan A.E. would.

    I don't even know if what cartoon network shows is supposed to be good anime, but I do know I like it more than what I've seen coming out of the U.S.

  • 2D sucks? (Score:3)

    by Rob Kaper ( 5960 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @02:05AM (#911021) Homepage
    Yeah right.

    And what about The Simpsons?
    Southpark anyone?

  • Remember folks, this ain't Japan where animation is considered a highly respectable, serious artform that all ages appreciate.

    Too true. What's worse is that generally, when good anime does make it to the American market, its American distributors dumb it down and strip out all of the "naughty bits" so that American parents won't be scandalized by boobs when they take their kids to see a film in a genre that is defined for them by Disney. (The peculiar American delusion that nipples are somehow a threat to civilization is a rant for another occasion.)

    I didn't see Titan A.E. It wasn't on account of the trailers, as some have said, since I stopped watching TV more than a decade ago and it's hard to get me to go spend money for two hours of passive low-brow entertainment. It was because everyone I know who is an avid animation fan said it sucked. I have no idea how the animation was -- most of my acquaintances' venom was reserved for the purportedly awful plot and characterization. I was actually planning to see it up until then.

    There's plenty of room for 2D animation, especially for parents like me who are tired of seeing Disney recycle the same three plots twice a year. (Anyone ever notice how all Disney films since Walt died revolve around orphans and dead or absent parents? What's up with that?) I'm actually less likely to go see a 3D CGI film, because -- excepting Pixar -- computer animation has only started to outgrow its gimmicky gee-whiz phase.

  • Thye're all wrong. (Score:3)

    by A Big Gnu Thrush ( 12795 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @03:13AM (#911023)
    Don Bluth: "Computer-generated animation, it's the flavor of the month"

    How wrong can one person be? CGI is no more the flavor of the month, than sound or color. It has changed the movie industry as a whole and revolutionized animation.

    That said. There's no reason that traditional animation studios can't succeed. Disney does it. I didn't see Titan A.E., so I can't comment, but Quest for Camelot and Anna and the King were awful. QfC had a mid-grade Saturday morning quality to it. My daughter, who can sit through just about any movie, walked out on this one after 30 minutes.

    No one in the industry really knows why some movies do great and others fail. The secret starts with a good script, and add quality on top of that. With animation, though, it has to look expensive, and most of the time that means it has to be expensive. There isn't much room for dog crap cartoons. Disney has set the bar too high.

  • Toy Story 2 is Pixar, not Fox...

  • The Bogie factor (Score:3)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @04:45AM (#911025) Homepage Journal
    I don't think Casablanca was anything like state of the art in terms of production values for its day. Look at Gone with the Wind or some other contemporary blockbuster.

    Under the old studio system, they used to churn out films like this like Hormel puts out spam. They didn't have much budget to do spectacular scenes, so they were a bit claustrophobic. To make up for the workman like but mediocre production values they had to have a cracking good yarn. By in large the studios aimed for steady small successes with these movies, but every so often they'd hit the jackpot.

    I don't think Casablanca was viewed in its day with the kind of reverence it is today. It came roaring back in the 60s though, because it solved a very big cultural dilemma. To be cool, you have to be jaded, experienced, detached. On the other hand, in the sixties it was cool to stand for or to be against something. So, are you going to be a tough sophisticate or a sensitive idealist? Will it be James Bond or Dr. King today?

    Bogie showed us the way: you act cynical but hurt like hell inside.

    Nobody could do it like Bogie - to be one thing on the outside and another inside. He could laugh and make it cut like a scream of pain. My favorite Bogie movie was Key Largo. Bogie was low key in that one, but the question was who was going to be tougher in the end, Edward G's sadistic, treacherous gangster or Bogie's soft spoken WW II vetran? What makes it exciting is that there's no way Bogie should win -- the gangster has all the advantages and will stoop to anything to get his way. In the climactic scene, I always get the urge to jump up and shout "Don't trust him, Bogie! He's a goddamn lying snake!"

    You can't buy a sincere reaction like that. It takes genius.

    The Fox animation stuff I've seen is very well crafted, as good as anything that Disney puts out on a technical level and in some cases visually interesting and original. However, none of it has the creative spark that makes you want to get up and shout at the characters on the screen.

    The idea that there is a technical fix -- going to 3D or some such thing -- for creative deficiency is ridiculous.

  • Re:2D vs 3D (Score:3)

    by Grendel Drago ( 41496 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @04:20AM (#911026) Homepage
    Well...

    SoftImage|DS is a $150,000 editing studio that includes full cel-animation facilities. There's a program called ReTimer (NT/Irix only, I think) that does some kind of dense-field inbetweening that (in the ads) looks bloody *fantastic*. Most professional 3D programs (and even Blender has been able to do this from the get-go if you know how) include "ink 'n' paint" facilities to simulate 2D animation.

    But we all want volumetric 3D 4-billion-polygon eyecandy. Which has its place, see www.finalfantasy.com.

    Of course, I think that animation's problem lies in its content rather than method. If only they'd make, say, a Watchmen animated movie, with John Malkovich as Dr. Manhattan... mmm...

    -grendel drago

  • Some leave, some enter. (Score:3)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @06:56AM (#911027) Homepage
    Animation is a tough industry. Warner Animation is gone, and Fox is exiting. Sony Pictures Imageworks was saved by Stuart Little, but it was close.

    But look at the new players. Centropolis. Pixar. Aardman. Mainframe. Plus all the effects houses that don't do entire features.

    One of the most interesting efforts from an industry perspective is the Starship Troopers TV series. [flatearthproductions.com] Flat Earth Productions cranked out weekly half-hour episodes of this near-photorealistic animation with a budget and team comparable to that for a typical sitcom. This project is about two orders of magnitude cheaper per minute of content than most CG feature animation.

    We're going to see more work at that price point, and it will get better. This is where the action is. The high-end CG films with the $100 million and up costs can kill a studio if they aren't huge successes. That's what happened to Fox.

  • Newsflash: Crappy movies are crappy movies! (Score:4)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @03:05AM (#911028) Homepage Journal
    If a movie sucks, it doesn't matter if it's animated with cardboard paper, claymation, computers, or live action. It still sucks. Titan AE had no real clear market, no "core constituency" of people who'd see it, like it, and spread the word. It also had to go up against MI:2, which was essentially a cartoon done with live actors (a John Woo trademark), and that further sealed it's doom.

    One of the many problems in Hollywood is that a studio will release something original, thoughtful, and creative, and that triggers a huge wave of "me too" copies. Disney has success with animation? Let's all get into animation!

    Since "Chicken Run" was a hit, there'll probably be a huge wave of Claymation films coming up. Nobody understands why Chicken Run was a hit - they just understand that it made a lot of money. Duh.

    Remember this mentality when we complain about the utter lack of clues that groups like the RIAA show. This is how they think. They can't see any farther than the first dollar signs, and reflexively avoid doing anything different. As soon as someone stumbles across a way to make money using digital technology (like MP3), every studio will jump on board. And if they come up with a way to make money selling unencumbered DVD's, they'll all shift within days.

    In Hollywood, it's all about two things: not risking your job if possible, and, of course, the Benjamins!

    - -Josh Turiel

  • Do Holywood sheep dream of electric movies? (Score:4)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @01:57AM (#911029)
    '2D sucks, 3DCGI is the way to go'?"

    I'm sure many studios said 'Black and white sucks, colour is the way to go' but Highlander II is still a pile of crap and Casablanca is still a masterpiece.

    A good story well done will (normally) do well regardless of technical issues/methods.

    TWW

  • The real story (Score:5)

    by danimal ( 1712 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @02:12AM (#911030) Homepage
    Fox only closed the Phoenix facility. The New York based Blue Sky Studios [blueskystudios.com] is still open and working on a full length feature (I know, I work there).

    The reason the Phoenix facility was closed was that after 3 films the returns were just dissappointing. Fox is a business and this was a business decision, plain and simple.

    -danimal
    *disclaimer* these comments neither represent Fox or Blue Sky Studios, they are mine alone.

  • 2d, 3d is irrelevant. (Score:5)

    by Lonesmurf ( 88531 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @02:20AM (#911031) Homepage
    All animation is still just that: animation.

    The vast majority of all animated films that have come out in the last ten years have been a flop; with the glaring exceptions of some monumental Disney flicks.

    The newest cgi movie from Disney, Dinosaur, was technologically astounding but was an utter disgrace when it came to the acting and the story. I was almost crying it was so bad (no, not really).

    Now, had Disney decided to make the entire movie a classical music feast with cgi visuals, it would have been both innovative and amazing. The reason that they did this is very, very simple: you can't market class and good taste. A talking Dinosaur sells, a Classical music epic does not. While I would take my kids to a viewing of The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, or Aladdin, I know that if I took them to the original Fantasia, they would be both bored and annoyed (or annoying..). The reasoning behind this is because children (and the vast majority of all adults and adolesents) today are media slobbering brain-washed babboons that not only don't want something better, they don't even realise that there COULD BE.

    So, this isn't about the animation (plenty of good animation from toystory to wallace and grommit and back again) but about making bad pop-culture movies that have no story/plot and no intrigue to pull an audience in.

    Fox Studios doesn't seem to be able to make those kind of movies, I will not miss them.

    Rami James
    Guy who like cartoons.
    --
  • We've been raised for generations to believe that animation is for little kids and that live action somehow is for adults. Most of the kids at my high school (I'll be a senior this year) don't even for the most part respect anime thanks to the marketting bastards that have made many americans think "sailor moon/pokemon==anime".

    Most of americans won't even watch serious anime like the guyver series, nge, macross II, ninja scroll and akira. So I say that there isn't much hope for serious animation in general here in the US if most americans won't even willingly give some serious anime like the series listed above.

    Remember folks, this ain't Japan where animation is considered a highly respectable, serious artform that all ages appreciate. You can find R rated anime in theatres in Japan and it can do quite well if it is well done, but here in the US it will be lucky if it is successful in ANY form at all.

  • My opinion. (Score:5)

    by Kickasso ( 210195 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @01:53AM (#911033)
    "2D sucks, 3DCGI is the way to go" == "painting sucks, sculpture is the way to go"
    --

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