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Comment by kjkjadksj | Hacker News Reader

It did die with Walt. They walked back a lot of his plans for the parks. They don’t make movies like they made in his era any longer. It is all CGI and live action lately. And after a certain point you have to wonder if there has been a significant loss of institutional knowledge on how to make a lot of those old hand made animations.

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Walt Disney died in 1966. There were less but still many notable traditionally animated films (or films which blended some modern technology with hand drawn cels) since then.

The Jungle Book - 1967

Little Mermaid - 1989

Beauty and the Beast - 1991

Aladdin - 1992

Lion King - 1994

It's likely more a question of what you grew up with. When I was a kid I remember heavily disliking many of the earliest Disney animated movies like Pinocchio/Dumbo/Bambi but I absolutely adored the animated Robin Hood, Sword in the Stone, etc.

Jungle Book - Walt Disney was involved with this, they started animating in 1965.

Rest of the films you mentioned - The Disney Renaissance the parent parent’s comment mentioned - starting with The Little Mermaid in 1989, and it seems generally accepted this lasted for 10 years?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle_Book_(1967_film)#...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Renaissance

That's skipping 30 years of Disney history. The company certainly went into a creative slump after Walt died, but they got back into form with what is generally called the Disney renaissance[1] in the late 80s starting The Little Mermaid.

The Lion King is pretty much a flawless film. And that came out 28 years after Walt Disney died.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Renaissance

It’s worth mentioning that boneheaded moves by Disney (defunding animation because computers exist) let to a mass exodus to Pixar, which did plenty of excellent work before Disney acquired it.

Makes you wonder what company of the years ahead will be assembled from those let go today in the name of AI.

Art-wise, that renaissance ended 25+ years ago.

> wonder if there has been a significant loss of institutional knowledge on how to make a lot of those old hand made animations

No need to wonder: there has been, and basically all Disney 2D animation, even what little they do for the cinema, is outsourced overseas.

Wasn't Cuphead done in the traditional hand-animated style, using many of the original techniques?

On the one hand, yes, but also consider that game animation is fundamentally different from cinematic animation. It often has to be modular and loopable, but that also means that much of it can be treated like anime's "sakuga" stock footage (high quality, because it's going to be seen a lot). Cuphead was also something of a passion project, and the studio insisted on studying and replicating the older techniques to the best of their ability.

Basically, reverse engineering that process is probably a more expensive undertaking than most studios are willing to take. Look also at the Cuphead animated series, which was animated like a modern production (sadly).

It's obviously not the same, but I totally disagree with "It did die with Walt". For example, I think Aladdin is one of the best movies of all time, period. Granted, a huge part of that is the genius of Robin Williams, but to create a film that has both parents and their kids doubled over in laughter is no easy feat. But it still had great animation, a great story, great songs, etc.

Robin Williams movies are in their own category. Disney doesn't get to take credit for his achievements IMHO.

Here's something i didn't know:

[producer and director] had written the role of the Genie for Robin Williams, but when met with resistance, created a reel of a Williams's stand-up animation of the Genie.

The directors asked Eric Goldberg, the Genie's supervising animator, to animate the character over one of Williams's old stand-up comedy routines to pitch the idea to the actor. The resulting test, in which Williams's stand-up about schizophrenia was translated to the Genie growing another head to argue with himself, made Williams "laugh his ass off", and convinced him to sign for the role.

Williams's appearance in Aladdin marked the beginning of a transition in animation to use celebrity voice actors rather than specifically trained voice actors

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