A possible return to 2D animation would be a good move for Walt Disney Animation Studios. According to Disney Animation mainstay Eric Goldberg, who has worked on everything from Aladdin to The Princess and the Frog, Disney is returning to the style that made them famous – 2D animation. Disney began as an animation studio almost 100 years ago, with Walt Disney himself at the helm creating iconic characters like Mickey Mouse. 2D animated hits ruled the Disney Golden Age and even carried the studio through the 80s and 90s during the Disney Renaissance, with hits like The Lion King that have become cultural mainstays. While 3D or computer-generated animation have been the dominant force since the mid-2000s, a return to 2D could serve the studio well.
Originally, Disney’s animation studio stuck to 2D, hand-drawn animation while – after entering a collaborative relationship in the 90s, culminating in a full takeover in 2006 – its sister studio Pixar created most of the 3D animated films that Disney distributed. Gradually, Walt Disney Animation Studios transitioned away from 2D animation, starting with 2005’s Chicken Little. After The Princess and the Frog was released in 2009, the hand-drawn style fell out of fashion and Disney finally left the style behind with their last 2D animated film Winnie the Pooh, which was released in 2011. Recent Disney films like Encanto use the 3D animation style. Computer-generated animation has pushed the genre forward, with advancements that allow animated movies to create hyper-realistic details like hair that moves like real hair down to the individual strand and water that looks and behaves the way water does in real life. However, the charm of hand-drawn animation is hard to replicate with a computer alone.
2D animation is still a valuable artform for Disney, which rose to prominence on hand-drawn cartoons and princess films like Cinderella. Aside from nostalgia alone, the 2D animation style has benefits that could make it an appealing option for Disney to return to. For one thing, it doesn’t make sense for Disney to try to do what Pixar does, especially when Pixar is already a branch of Disney. Both studios doing CG animation causes unnecessary confusion between the two. 2D animation is also actually a cheaper option, most of the time. Computer animation can be expensive and time-consuming, with each detail needing to be mapped out in the software before any scene can be completed. Animation software can be helpful even in a 2D process, but with 2D animation, there is also an animator putting together the details. Returning to 2D would set Disney Animation apart from Pixar again and show that it is proud of the artform that it helped to popularize in the 20th century.
Animation studios jumped the gun by moving exclusively to CG in the past decade or so, and Disney’s plan to return to the hand-drawn style suggests that they realize their mistake. Veteran Disney animator Eric Goldberg, who was the lead animator for Genie in the 1994 classic Aladdin, described 2D animation as “part of the [Disney] legacy.” In an interview with IndieWire, he revealed that Disney is “training up a new generation” of 2D animators and that Walt Disney Animation Studios has plans for features and TV projects that use hand-drawn animation. Goldberg is right about 2D animation being Disney’s legacy. Instead of just relegating it to TV, Disney should absolutely bring 2D animation back to the forefront of what its animation studio produces, perhaps incorporating the use of CG. Mixing hand-drawn and GC elements in one project is likely to be the future of animation.
It only makes sense for Walt Disney Animation Studios to return to the legacy of hand-drawn animation that Walt Disney started all those years ago. If any studio is going to lead the charge in the renaissance of 2D animation, it should be the very studio that made animation a viable and respected filmmaking style in the first place. Hand-drawn animation is an art that is worth preserving, and though computer animation has its merits, there was never a real reason for traditional animation to be abandoned.
