You'll commonly see people attribute cost to why big studios in the US don't make traditional animation anymore and it has always really annoyed me. US CG animated movie budgets ballooned to insane figures, and as you laid out here they are not all financial slam dunks. And of course, even if you doubled the budgets of the average Japanese/European budgets, they still don't even get close to what Disney/Dreamworks/etc. are putting up for these movies.
I'm just rambling but and I love a lot of CG movies, I just want to see some traditional features please!!!
For sure -- it would be great to see more Hollywood features trying out different styles! If something as stylistically out-there as Across the Spider-Verse can appeal to a wide audience, it just seems like a waste not to give stuff like 2D movies a chance again. Pixar is working on a stop-motion short right now which is an interesting sign.
Something underrated in the whole "2D animation is expensive" debate is that the big studios weren't *really* making pure 2D animation back in the '90s and 2000s: films like Treasure Planet and Princess and the Frog have a huge 3D component. You see it as far back as Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. CG was already adding a lot to the cost and difficulty of these films, which is a key reason they got as expensive as they did. In that sense, it's no surprise that things only got more extreme as the major studios went to fully 3D films.
Very true. I'm sure it's common knowledge among a certain crowd, but I was shocked to see (some actually not bad looking) CG in Char's Counterattack from the 80s!
Movies like Tarzan and Treasure Planet were some of the highest budget animated movies of their time, but you're right that it doesn't need to be that way, and CG is typically more expensive. Or at least it's harder to make cheap CG look ok
“Lilo and Stick” was, indeed, a masterpiece on the cheap. It was produced for a miniscule budget, at least miniscule for the Mouse House: $80 million. And according to the oral history at Vulture, was very much an artist-led picture, being produced at the Florida studio, an entire continent away from the big bosses in Burbank. If you loved the movie as I did, reading the article is a half hour well spent. https://www.vulture.com/2022/10/an-oral-history-of-lilo-and-stitch-a-hand-drawn-miracle.html
Thanks for sending this our way! It's an incredible story. The fact that they hid an entire feature production from Michael Eisner until it was done is such a wild thing to read, and it really helps to explain why this film turned out the way it did.
Funny how that works. I think one of the best movies to come out of Disney's second golden age was "101 Dalmations". Walt himself didn't like the modern design, was apparently only minimally involved in the production, and the film was produced on a shoestring budget -- using xerography to scan pencil drawings on to cells and even using a 3D process where physical models of cars and trucks were painted white and outlined in black, filmed, then transferred frame by frame to animation cells. Like both Dumbo, another inexpensively produced film, and Lilo and Stitch, the story team was small. In fact, it was just one guy who did all the boards: future children's book author Bill Peet. (I'm guessing the big studios will tell you that getting many inputs makes for a better film, but I think it also gives those films a subtle homogenization. Not bad enough to kill the film, but enough to make it less human and endearing.) And without the big bosses' input, the team made artistic decisions that were pretty risky. Dalmation had almost UPA-like abstract backgrounds, and construction lines flicker every now and then in the character animation, things Walt hated but I think make the movie more daring and unique.
Great article as always but Kon’s comments strike me as deeply ironic. There was a time when American animation was a lot more efficient and set the global standard - and we now view that era as wrong and misguided because of the exploitative work practices that enabled it. Famously the more artistically minded anime studios are not so scrupulous about workers rights. And the R&D style mindset of Disney et al that sees projects go through years of development just to be scrapped is the very same thing that enabled the promethean accomplishments of Disney at its peak, which every animation artist and studio is forever indebted to (including and especially the anime world).
i truly think it’s less about budget and more about letting artists lead with their visions and actually getting to direct versus having to worry about marketing preemptively as they’re creating their work. tho it is true that in the states, the more budget you have the more likely you’re at the whims of powerful non-creatives
Definitely. The Hollywood system can be a difficult place to operate -- the extra money often brings extra executive notes and micromanagement. Not that every project starts out perfect and gets ruined by interference, but you do see the difference in a show like Scavengers Reign, where the artists had a good idea and then really got to make what they were trying to make.
I can't believe Tokyo Godfathers was done for that little. To be honest, it's concerning about how the staff must have been treated.
Also, was the Wish tweet thread deleted? I'd be interested to read about that, because my assumption is that WDFA in it's current state is basically just not a good creative environment. I doubt that they're lacking creative people, but how they're allowed to perform is holding them back.
It's true about Tokyo Godfathers. We haven't read that it was particularly bad by anime production standards, but none of Kon's films came easy -- the fact that they exist at all is impressive in itself.
As for the Wish thread, it was unfortunately deleted -- we read it at the time and it was luckily preserved in part by news articles. From what we know, Disney Animation has plenty of people who feel similarly to the writer of that thread and want to make movies that connect in the way Zootopia, Lilo & Stitch and Snow White once did. A lot of things have disrupted their environment (the pandemic, changing CEOs, uncertain direction at the company, risk-averse leadership and more) and the effects have shown in the last few big movies. But Disney's animated feature artists tend to take a lot of pride in their work and want to make great films, so the chance that they bounce back from here seems high.
Very interesting post. Budgeting and securing funding for animations, especially shorts, are always challenging. Realizing a proper and easy distribution is difficult, making it hard to reach a wider audience. Last year, I worked on a short film titled "We Even Trapped Water." Despite its success in numerous film festivals and winning awards, the producer faced challenges in securing distribution. Consequently, they opted to share it on YouTube and social media platforms. I also shared it here to expand its viewership. I have never had a big budget for any of my animations. Many were self-produced, followed by the typical film festival circuit and social media sharing. I can only imagine what could be achieved with a team and a budget! Dreams! Dreams! Over the last few years, I've encountered numerous indie producers and animators, contributing to a vast underground world. However, bringing it into the spotlight seems challenging. What are your thoughts on this? :) Hugs from Durham, UK.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Andrea! This is something we think about a lot -- how do you bridge the gap between the network of underground animation talent and the wider public? We haven't found any simple answers yet. Even an official distribution channel (like one of the streaming platforms) doesn't guarantee that your film will be seen by tons of people.
Some lesser-known indie shorts unexpectedly blow up on YouTube (see Drone by Sean Buckelew last year), while others fall between the cracks for seemingly no reason (see Pilar by Boley/Epping/van Houten). It doesn't necessarily have to do with the content of the film itself. We shared a clip from Pilar on Twitter last year that got over 100,000 views, more than 30x what it did on YouTube. Some underground animation doesn't resonate widely by nature, because it's too rough or raw or difficult, but that's just not the case with everything. Sometimes, success seems random.
Our best advice won't work for everyone, but the thing we've seen correlate the most with popular success for indies is doing more, smaller projects and aiming for the social media market. Working shorter and faster allows you to develop and adapt quickly -- and figure out what flies on social media and what doesn't. It also increases your chance of virality. If you think of internet success as a slot machine, the odds of winning (should) go up the more times you pull the lever. Some of the masters of this approach are vewn, Worthikids and Felix Colgrave, whose films we really respect. YouTube Shorts is a burgeoning platform for this kind of work.
Distributors and other big companies pay attention to virality because they themselves often struggle to get their work seen. They look for signs of a pre-existing audience before they invest. This is how Vivienne Medrano got picked up to do her Amazon/A24 series (Hazbin).
Again, though, that's not for everyone. And some people (again, see Sean) have huge success without doing the "social media slot machine" route. Getting seen in the internet age is a hard problem for animators and we wish there were more straightforward answers we could give. Wishing you the best!
Thank you so much for your reply; it's indeed interesting. There's no formula, that's for sure. I embarked on my animation journey long ago when I decided to breathe life into my paintings and visionary worlds. The success of my short animation films started with this peculiar connection: art exhibitions, especially in museums, that also screened the films. However, this was in my home country, Italy, a very limited and narrow market....reason why I moved to the UK, freedom :) Now, I am contemplating translating the most important ones into English to reach a much larger audience.
Animation is simply an amazing art form! I particularly enjoy blending 2D stop motion with references to magic lanterns and shadow theatre—very specific, indeed. I love experimenting; in London, I refined a technique I invented to create on the spot and screen animations for theatre shows. Pure...fun :)
thanks again.I love your posts, very inspirational :)
This one especially hit home. I love the journey you took past the towering pyramids of big business and through the swamps of artistic creation. It can get bloody and ugly, but this is the path we're forced to take should we want to express the unsaid. Kudos to you and all the heroes you mentioned here for sticking to their guns. Wonderful piece.
I'm most impressed by those who make a little go a long way. It's like a sort of magic trick, and really inspiring. Of course, anime really is the gold standard here - I wish there was a course out there on how they do it. Their artistic choices are so, so smart and something I wish I knew as a student filmmaker (and am still discovering now!)
There's a real art to it -- it's something that fascinates us as well. You see a film like Jin-Roh that looks expensive and polished, and yet so much of it is on 3s or 4s, or drawings are held in these super economical ways. The Summit of the Gods is animated similarly in many respects. Really cool.
That was really our hope with including it -- thinking about how much Kon and his peers achieved in such a small and challenging environment, it's incredible.
Great article. This reminds me of the song "Big and Loud" in CATS DON'T DANCE, which poked fun at Disney et al. Not everything has to be big. Now it seems like the only things any Hollywood studio does "small" is meant to be obvious Oscar bait, and there's no room for small in animation at all.
Thank you! The Cats Don't Dance reference does seem fitting here -- you have to wonder what might happen if the budget for one $200 million movie got split up into 10 $20 million movies. A24 has figured out that formula in live action. It really seems like it could work in American animation again, too.
You'll commonly see people attribute cost to why big studios in the US don't make traditional animation anymore and it has always really annoyed me. US CG animated movie budgets ballooned to insane figures, and as you laid out here they are not all financial slam dunks. And of course, even if you doubled the budgets of the average Japanese/European budgets, they still don't even get close to what Disney/Dreamworks/etc. are putting up for these movies.
I'm just rambling but and I love a lot of CG movies, I just want to see some traditional features please!!!
For sure -- it would be great to see more Hollywood features trying out different styles! If something as stylistically out-there as Across the Spider-Verse can appeal to a wide audience, it just seems like a waste not to give stuff like 2D movies a chance again. Pixar is working on a stop-motion short right now which is an interesting sign.
Something underrated in the whole "2D animation is expensive" debate is that the big studios weren't *really* making pure 2D animation back in the '90s and 2000s: films like Treasure Planet and Princess and the Frog have a huge 3D component. You see it as far back as Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. CG was already adding a lot to the cost and difficulty of these films, which is a key reason they got as expensive as they did. In that sense, it's no surprise that things only got more extreme as the major studios went to fully 3D films.
Very true. I'm sure it's common knowledge among a certain crowd, but I was shocked to see (some actually not bad looking) CG in Char's Counterattack from the 80s!
Movies like Tarzan and Treasure Planet were some of the highest budget animated movies of their time, but you're right that it doesn't need to be that way, and CG is typically more expensive. Or at least it's harder to make cheap CG look ok
“Lilo and Stick” was, indeed, a masterpiece on the cheap. It was produced for a miniscule budget, at least miniscule for the Mouse House: $80 million. And according to the oral history at Vulture, was very much an artist-led picture, being produced at the Florida studio, an entire continent away from the big bosses in Burbank. If you loved the movie as I did, reading the article is a half hour well spent. https://www.vulture.com/2022/10/an-oral-history-of-lilo-and-stitch-a-hand-drawn-miracle.html
Thanks for sending this our way! It's an incredible story. The fact that they hid an entire feature production from Michael Eisner until it was done is such a wild thing to read, and it really helps to explain why this film turned out the way it did.
Funny how that works. I think one of the best movies to come out of Disney's second golden age was "101 Dalmations". Walt himself didn't like the modern design, was apparently only minimally involved in the production, and the film was produced on a shoestring budget -- using xerography to scan pencil drawings on to cells and even using a 3D process where physical models of cars and trucks were painted white and outlined in black, filmed, then transferred frame by frame to animation cells. Like both Dumbo, another inexpensively produced film, and Lilo and Stitch, the story team was small. In fact, it was just one guy who did all the boards: future children's book author Bill Peet. (I'm guessing the big studios will tell you that getting many inputs makes for a better film, but I think it also gives those films a subtle homogenization. Not bad enough to kill the film, but enough to make it less human and endearing.) And without the big bosses' input, the team made artistic decisions that were pretty risky. Dalmation had almost UPA-like abstract backgrounds, and construction lines flicker every now and then in the character animation, things Walt hated but I think make the movie more daring and unique.
Great article as always but Kon’s comments strike me as deeply ironic. There was a time when American animation was a lot more efficient and set the global standard - and we now view that era as wrong and misguided because of the exploitative work practices that enabled it. Famously the more artistically minded anime studios are not so scrupulous about workers rights. And the R&D style mindset of Disney et al that sees projects go through years of development just to be scrapped is the very same thing that enabled the promethean accomplishments of Disney at its peak, which every animation artist and studio is forever indebted to (including and especially the anime world).
i truly think it’s less about budget and more about letting artists lead with their visions and actually getting to direct versus having to worry about marketing preemptively as they’re creating their work. tho it is true that in the states, the more budget you have the more likely you’re at the whims of powerful non-creatives
Definitely. The Hollywood system can be a difficult place to operate -- the extra money often brings extra executive notes and micromanagement. Not that every project starts out perfect and gets ruined by interference, but you do see the difference in a show like Scavengers Reign, where the artists had a good idea and then really got to make what they were trying to make.
I can't believe Tokyo Godfathers was done for that little. To be honest, it's concerning about how the staff must have been treated.
Also, was the Wish tweet thread deleted? I'd be interested to read about that, because my assumption is that WDFA in it's current state is basically just not a good creative environment. I doubt that they're lacking creative people, but how they're allowed to perform is holding them back.
It's true about Tokyo Godfathers. We haven't read that it was particularly bad by anime production standards, but none of Kon's films came easy -- the fact that they exist at all is impressive in itself.
As for the Wish thread, it was unfortunately deleted -- we read it at the time and it was luckily preserved in part by news articles. From what we know, Disney Animation has plenty of people who feel similarly to the writer of that thread and want to make movies that connect in the way Zootopia, Lilo & Stitch and Snow White once did. A lot of things have disrupted their environment (the pandemic, changing CEOs, uncertain direction at the company, risk-averse leadership and more) and the effects have shown in the last few big movies. But Disney's animated feature artists tend to take a lot of pride in their work and want to make great films, so the chance that they bounce back from here seems high.
Very interesting post. Budgeting and securing funding for animations, especially shorts, are always challenging. Realizing a proper and easy distribution is difficult, making it hard to reach a wider audience. Last year, I worked on a short film titled "We Even Trapped Water." Despite its success in numerous film festivals and winning awards, the producer faced challenges in securing distribution. Consequently, they opted to share it on YouTube and social media platforms. I also shared it here to expand its viewership. I have never had a big budget for any of my animations. Many were self-produced, followed by the typical film festival circuit and social media sharing. I can only imagine what could be achieved with a team and a budget! Dreams! Dreams! Over the last few years, I've encountered numerous indie producers and animators, contributing to a vast underground world. However, bringing it into the spotlight seems challenging. What are your thoughts on this? :) Hugs from Durham, UK.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Andrea! This is something we think about a lot -- how do you bridge the gap between the network of underground animation talent and the wider public? We haven't found any simple answers yet. Even an official distribution channel (like one of the streaming platforms) doesn't guarantee that your film will be seen by tons of people.
Some lesser-known indie shorts unexpectedly blow up on YouTube (see Drone by Sean Buckelew last year), while others fall between the cracks for seemingly no reason (see Pilar by Boley/Epping/van Houten). It doesn't necessarily have to do with the content of the film itself. We shared a clip from Pilar on Twitter last year that got over 100,000 views, more than 30x what it did on YouTube. Some underground animation doesn't resonate widely by nature, because it's too rough or raw or difficult, but that's just not the case with everything. Sometimes, success seems random.
Our best advice won't work for everyone, but the thing we've seen correlate the most with popular success for indies is doing more, smaller projects and aiming for the social media market. Working shorter and faster allows you to develop and adapt quickly -- and figure out what flies on social media and what doesn't. It also increases your chance of virality. If you think of internet success as a slot machine, the odds of winning (should) go up the more times you pull the lever. Some of the masters of this approach are vewn, Worthikids and Felix Colgrave, whose films we really respect. YouTube Shorts is a burgeoning platform for this kind of work.
Distributors and other big companies pay attention to virality because they themselves often struggle to get their work seen. They look for signs of a pre-existing audience before they invest. This is how Vivienne Medrano got picked up to do her Amazon/A24 series (Hazbin).
Again, though, that's not for everyone. And some people (again, see Sean) have huge success without doing the "social media slot machine" route. Getting seen in the internet age is a hard problem for animators and we wish there were more straightforward answers we could give. Wishing you the best!
Thank you so much for your reply; it's indeed interesting. There's no formula, that's for sure. I embarked on my animation journey long ago when I decided to breathe life into my paintings and visionary worlds. The success of my short animation films started with this peculiar connection: art exhibitions, especially in museums, that also screened the films. However, this was in my home country, Italy, a very limited and narrow market....reason why I moved to the UK, freedom :) Now, I am contemplating translating the most important ones into English to reach a much larger audience.
Animation is simply an amazing art form! I particularly enjoy blending 2D stop motion with references to magic lanterns and shadow theatre—very specific, indeed. I love experimenting; in London, I refined a technique I invented to create on the spot and screen animations for theatre shows. Pure...fun :)
thanks again.I love your posts, very inspirational :)
Andrea
This one especially hit home. I love the journey you took past the towering pyramids of big business and through the swamps of artistic creation. It can get bloody and ugly, but this is the path we're forced to take should we want to express the unsaid. Kudos to you and all the heroes you mentioned here for sticking to their guns. Wonderful piece.
Really appreciate the kind words! So glad this one resonated with you.
I'm most impressed by those who make a little go a long way. It's like a sort of magic trick, and really inspiring. Of course, anime really is the gold standard here - I wish there was a course out there on how they do it. Their artistic choices are so, so smart and something I wish I knew as a student filmmaker (and am still discovering now!)
There's a real art to it -- it's something that fascinates us as well. You see a film like Jin-Roh that looks expensive and polished, and yet so much of it is on 3s or 4s, or drawings are held in these super economical ways. The Summit of the Gods is animated similarly in many respects. Really cool.
I know he was being characteristically caustic but that Kon quote is genuinely motivating.
That was really our hope with including it -- thinking about how much Kon and his peers achieved in such a small and challenging environment, it's incredible.
Really really great article! You do the best animation reporting out there.
Thank you so much! This means a lot.
Great article. This reminds me of the song "Big and Loud" in CATS DON'T DANCE, which poked fun at Disney et al. Not everything has to be big. Now it seems like the only things any Hollywood studio does "small" is meant to be obvious Oscar bait, and there's no room for small in animation at all.
Thank you! The Cats Don't Dance reference does seem fitting here -- you have to wonder what might happen if the budget for one $200 million movie got split up into 10 $20 million movies. A24 has figured out that formula in live action. It really seems like it could work in American animation again, too.