Disney is Lazy

Sword in the Stone and Jungle Book




Winnie the Pooh and The Jungle Book:

:rofl:

That is rather disillusioning, but we have known that all along. They keep telling the same story over and over again.

Dead mother, orphaned hero facing adversity.

There is a reason Disney only made cartoons of old fairy-tales...they aren't copyright protected. Little Mermaid, Pinnochio, Cinderella -- all the old Hans Christian Anderson stuff...it was FREE to Disney. The Lion King was the first actual ORIGINAL story Disney produced. Think about that for a second, considering how long Disney Studios has been producing animated films. The Lion King was the first original script, that wasn't simply lifted from a royalty-free work. And most old fairy tales have the same basic plots. This shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone.

Until one understands how difficult producing a HAND DRAWN animated feature is, with 24 drawings required for ONE SECOND of animation, one shouldn't bitch much.

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It's also influenced heavily by Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'.

I wouldn't say 'The Lion King' is the first original story. You forget about the 1940's 'packaging films', which would combine 5 or 6 original shorts into one 'Classic'. Those were for a large part original stories. And for other films, like '101 Dalmatians', Disney did have to buy the rights to make it into a film.

... "The Little Mermaid"(H.C.Anderson), or "Pinocchio"(C.Collodi), or many of the other children's books Disney based its classic movies on? They essentially rewrote the stories to fit the "Disney formula". The books are almost invariably interesting, thoughtful stories where characters don't fall so neatly into the good-guy or bad-guy categories you see in the films.
I guess that's the main thing that bothers me about their films, they seem to underestimate children's ability to understand nuance, and in doing so butchered some great children's literature.

While hugely reworked, adding a happy end and adding comic 'sidekicks', it's definitely the most adult Disney animation I've ever seen. And that's because it's really nuanced and its villain is so down-to-earth realistic.

To be sure, Disney always takes lots of liberties with the stories. My point was merely that in the "olden days," acquiring rights or commissioning original work was too expensive, and Walt liked a lot more creative control. So they'd base most of their movies on public-domain stories (fairy tales). Lion King may have also been based on some other story, but it was the first feature Disney studios did which they actually "wrote" the material themselves instead of just picking up an old fairy tale and reworking it.

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Like 'Saludos Amigos', 'Melody Time' and the other packaging movies. And of course 'Jungle Book', where they only used Kipling's names of the characters, but they invented the storyline and personalities of the characters from scratch.

There are classic fairy tales (Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty). There are Broadway musicals (Little mermaid, Beauty and the Beast). There are stories based on children's book (The Rescuers, The Great Mouse Detective). And all of them are different.

There are surprisingly little storylines featuring "dead mothers and orphaned heroes". I don't know why you dislike Disney, nor do I care, but your statement is simply false fact-wise.

How the heck is Eisner these days anyway?

He cut all ties to Disney in 2005.

Unfortunately, he's now in charge of Topps.

If he hadn't put the Company back into good shape in the late 1980's and early 1990's, Disney would've been down the drain a looooong time ago.

i don't really care for them, and my friends who have worked in disney theme parks have all said their employee satisfaction record is the worst in the world, but even i can't deny the greatness of so many movies i loved growing up, like the love bug, mary poppins and bedknobs and broomsticks...

those three movies are some of the older ones

I hate Disney.

I like pie.

:thumbsup:

I'm not saying that Disney isn't often crapola, but those are some old, old films.

A better example of their laziness are their recent straight to video sequels. Jungle Book 2, 3 etc.

And even that will be outdated. Their new animation division head has stopped development of those.

I bet that bastard Disney took his carts back to the store, too!

But done at a time when animation was all drawn by hand. Shortcuts were probably desirable from time to time. I saw those films as a kid in the 60's and to tell the truth, I didn't notice the similarities.

At least that trick wasn't as cheap as the Hanna Barbera/Scooby Doo one of having the characters run endlessly down the same hall over and over in the chase scenes.

Interesting look at the films tho. Never saw frames of those movies juxtaposed.

the fine classic animation of Hannah-Barbera

lol

They didn't just steal characters and story line, they stole actual artwork.

Kimba the White Lion was an anime cartoon from the 60's. It was my favorite show as a toddler.

Hes a senior citzen by now.. (oh btw..how come hes never been chased by a cat like
in Tom and Jerry? Whats up with that??)

Hes lived a posh life... No wonder the people who work for him
are lazy..they don't give a rats.. (wait..can I say that?):think:

For 'Robin Hood', they lifted animation from many films and even from classics like 'Snow White'. The dance Little John and Lady Cluck are doing is exactly the same as the famous dance Baloo did with King Louie. Even character-design is alike: Sir Hiss is Kaa with clothes on, same as Little John is Baloo, only dressed up.

They used to do this to cut costs. They wouldn't have survived if they didn't. That's also why you first see it in '101 Dalmatians', and you'll never see it before that one. 'Sleeping Beauty' was the last film they inked and colored on cells. After that, they used xerox to get sketches directly on film. It just got too expensive.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua!

PER SECOND.

You do the math.

I am guessing the OP has no background -- or intimate knowledge -- of animation. It is very labor intensive. It often takes weeks or months to work out the drawings like the ones you've shown so that they look convincing.

The fact that you have to post side-by-side comparison pictures to point out to people that Disney (and EVERY animator) recycles images is, in fact, testament to how well Disney has made this practice work for them. It's not like millions of kids were sitting in theaters, horrified that the wolf in Jungle Book was the same as the dog in Sword In The Stone. No one notices, no one knows, no one cares. They're being entertained, which is the reason they're in the theater.

I'm an animator. I've got a half-done film posted on my web site. It took me SIX MONTHS to create SEVEN MINUTES of animation and sound. Then I gave up, because I wasn't getting paid for it. Animation is insanely labor intensive. If Disney (and every other studio) can shave some production time by calling upon solutions to already-solved problems, good for them.

Find something serious to worry about.

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...is that it's not like the actual drawings are being recycled. Only the angles and visual cues. Because that's what's so hard for animators to work out. They still had to re-draw and re-paint every frame, 24 frames per second. All they used the old footage for was reference.

For instance, for the film "Bambi," Disney brought in actual live deer and allowed them to roam around the studio while the artists sketched out their movements. So, next time Disney features a deer in a film they should do it all over again? Or maybe build on what they've already worked out?

This argument is absolutely ridiculous. Again, Disney didn't actually re-use artwork. Only the staging and framing (clearly shown in the side--by-sides). Big fucking deal.

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As an artist, I know that there is no substitute for a live model in life srawing. That fact has to be exponentially increased when dealing with animation.

Even if it was only one child acting as a model, both films looked authentic; the kids moved like, well, kids, not adults.

Amd even my untrained eye can see that those are split-second frames of 2 hour ANIMATED movies--I'd be surprised if there weren't similarities (especially since the animators for both were no doubt largely the same).

So disney made stuff for children--the work was damn brilliant anyhow and as a parent, I have an appreciation for Disney even now; there just isn't the stuff out there for kids like there is for adults.

Ub Iwerks.

Can you imagine that: drawing a 6 minute cartoon all by yourself? (Well, obviously, YOU can, 'cause you just said you did it yourself...)

Considering some of the artwork done in Disney's golden age, I think any one person expected to draw a big chunk of cartoon in a reasonable timeframe would just spontaneously combust.

I play around with CG animation now and then. It feels like cheating compared to the stuff hand animators do, and it's still really fiddly to say the least.

They only changed Kimba's name to Simba, then recolored his fur and---wallah---no copyright infringement!

It took me a month just to do a small 1 minute short. And that's without sound or color.