the future of animation

From Reuters... (must put a quote function into the boards)

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The cartoon "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas" flopped at No. 6 with $6.8 million for the weekend and $10.0 million for the five days.

The film, released by privately held DreamWorks SKG, features the voices of such big names as Brad Pitt, Michelle Pfeiffer and Catherine Zeta-Jones, but was hampered by its use of traditional animation techniques rather than the computer-animated wizardry that has turned such films as "Shrek" and "Finding Nemo" into huge blockbusters.
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"Hampered by its use of traditional animation techniques"? In lieu of passing judgement on a movie I haven't seen (Sinbad), would "Finding Nemo" have been any less of a success had Pixar made a cel-shaded or "traditional animation" picture instead? Could Pixar make a cel-animated movie (even if they use computers to achieve this effect) and still please viewers?

The question of the day: Do traditional or traditional-looking animation techniques "hamper" a film?

jn

ps - To the producers of "Sinbad": does anyone in your target audience know who Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones are?

Two words "Spirited Away".
"Traditional Animation techniques- IE look, wins an Academy Award. And it was done with a computer.

Could it be that this Sinbad was just a poor adaptation of the story? Also I could go on about Disney making "cookie cutter" style movies. Maybe Disney tires the public of seeing the same formula animation movies.

Let us hope Disney funds more Japanese animation movies. But keeps their hands off the scripts!
IMHO

My very biased answer is (explective)- No.

I could go on and on talking about the success of Ghibli films due to story and detail, and not so much on design. I`ll save you from the boredom.

Of course a combination of great story and great "images" is what the majority of people may be looking for, but I do not think that is necessary counts for the sucess at the box office.

I think that people want to see something creative and cool. "Spirited Away", albeit digital, looks and feels like traditional anime and was a great success, at least at the Oscars. I think that alone would make one wonder what the writer/critic of that story, would use as a basis for such a ridiculous reason for a failing anime. It is almost to say that anime itself was failing before CG came along.

But mostly, my point is that it is the story that counts the most anyway. There are a lot of beautiful boring stuff that just sucks, and it has very little, if anything, to do with animation technique (sorry, but Final Fantasy is on my list of duds, and that is about as CG as you can get).

E

Whoever wrote that article is braindead...Did she/he forget what other movies it had to go up against? That played a big part Im sure in it's so called flop.

As far as CG vs traditional and traditional looking films, to me thats a mute point. I have seen older cel done movies and shows that look way better than some of the newer CG crap. It all depends on the artists. If they can make you feel like the visuals flow with the story then the art itself has done it's job. If the story is crappy then yeah, no matter how good the visuals are, it's gonna not do good.

Just friggan blah on whoever wrote that article...