-( Peter Sciretta, Slashfilm) LAIKA chief wants to do hand-drawn animation This is going to be a hard slog and sell, but I think that it could be done (of course, they'll have to do some mainstream puppet features to pay the bills, but...) What do others think?
Absolutely a great idea. It's ridiculous the way studios assume everything has to be either CGI or stop motion these days. 2D hand animation is not an inferior technology, simply an alternative artistic style, like painting vs. sculpture. There should be abundant room for both. And lots of animators still clearly love 2D. The makers of Kung Fu Panda manage to keep it alive by including 2D dream or flashback sequences in the movies. John Lasseter of Pixar has talked about wanting to do a traditional animated feature. There's no reason not to, and plenty of filmmakers who want to. Maybe it's up to us as audiences to let the studios know we're not averse to it. Although the best way to do that would be with our box-office or DVD-rental/purchase dollars/euros/etc., and there are fewer 2D-animated features to spend money on every year. So it's a tricky proposition. To find 2D movies these days, we pretty much have to look outside Hollywood, to the likes of Studio Ghibli or Sylvain Chomet.
Actually, in North America, you can still see 2D cel pen and ink animation, but it's all DTV DVD/VOD movies like the DC Comics animated movies made by DC Comics and Warner Brothers, plus some animated TV shows. But the main reason why cel pen and ink animation isn't done a lot anymore (on TV) is because of time and cost, and in the movies because CGI can do more and show more (for me, that was evident when I saw Tangled and witnessed the detail given to body parts like bare feet and toes, skin tone, etc.) Plus, TV shows have to get made fast, and pen and ink takes time, which most companies don't have, so CGI rules the roost. At any rate, I hope that this succeeds, and works.
CGI has gotten so much better with fur over the years, what with the nemean lion in the recent Hercules movie. I have seen some mix between the two--with tracings over spacecraft designs IIRC
^I was really impressed by the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes scenes showing the chimps in the rain with wet fur. It was incredibly lifelike.