Commodore Nicole's Blog: A Whole New World (- all over again).

Just when I was about to add a few things to my list of what "pisses me the hell off" I came across something that makes me take that much needed deep breath, relax, and fall back into my seat and know that the world will be (relatively) all right.

That something is - A new Disney movie! And not just a dorky computer animated movie but a new HAND - DRAWN - MUSICAL Disney film. I feel like I just did a shot of Dove Milk Chocolate with a marshmallow chaser.




From Wikipedia -

The film, which began production under the working title The Frog Princess, will be an American fairy tale, Broadway-style musical set in French Quarter of New Orleans. A prince named Naveen from the land of Maldonia, is transformed into a frog by the evil scheming voodoo magician Dr. Facilier. The frog prince asks Tiana to break the spell by kissing him. However, the kiss doesn't break the spell but rather makes Tiana a frog, as well. Together the two of them must reach the good voodoo priestess of the Bayou, Mama Odie, while befriending a trumpet playing alligator and a hopelessly romantic firefly along the way.

This will be the first Hand Animated movie from Disney since 2004's "Home on the Range". Whether it was the dismal reaction to the film, or Disney's desire to compete on a equal gameing screen with Pixar, the decision was made that it would be the last. I think they've been eating those words ever since. And when Pixar joined Disney guess who decided to start up the pencils again - John Lasseter.

...the artists on The Princess and the Frog will use traditional pencil and paper that is scanned into the computers. Although a new pipeline for hand-drawn animation has been developed at the studio, like digital coloring without CAPS, the actual animation process remains the same.

The former trend in Disney's hand-drawn features where the characters were influenced by a CGI-look has been abandoned. Andreas Deja says "I always thought that maybe we should distinguish ourselves to go back to what 2D is good at, which is focusing on what the line can do rather than volume, which is a CG kind of thing. So we are doing less extravagant Treasure Planet kind of treatments. You have to create a world but [we're doing it more simply]. What we're trying to do with Princess and the Frog is hook up with things that the old guys did earlier. It's not going to be graphic…". He also mentions that Lasseter is aiming for the Disney sculptural and dimensional look of the '50s. "He quoted all those things that were non graphic, which means go easy on the straight lines and have one volume flow into the other -- an organic feel to the drawing."

Not sure what you just read? Let me translate: We tried to compete with the young whipper snappers (that we fired) and their new fangeled technology and they still beat us. So we bought them and they took over. And then they made us go back to doing what we do best. Imagin that.

Huh, you know what I find funny. Disney's last 10ish years just played out like a Disney film. Except they were the villian.