83
This is due to how hand-drawn animation used to be made. A static background was drawn only once, and the moving objects were drawn for each frame on a transparent cel. Then it was placed on the background, one frame was shot on film, then the cel was removed, and new one was placed on the same background, next frame was shot, and so on.
If an object wasn't ...
74
Here is a video of Fred Silverman, CBS' head of daytime programming back in 1969, discussing the creation of Scooby-Doo. Starting at about 1:40, he describes hearing "Strangers in the Night" while on a plane and conceiving the Scooby-Doo name on the spot:
On the plane, I couldn't sleep -- y'know, it was a Red-Eye, and I'm listening to music -- and as we'...
69
Where does this metaphor come from?
The term "bright" to mean "clever" seems to have originated/evolved in the 18th century..
By the mid 1700s, the term was being said to describe children who were clever or displayed an intelligence remarkable for their age. A hundred years on, the word meant a combination of all these, a meaning akin to our modern ...
68
The cartoon mouse holes are just rounded out versions of the real thing. Mice are rodents who are capable of gnawing through walls to make a cozy home within them. Here are a few real mouse holes:
46
Your daughter can rest easy; she's absolutely right. You are looking for The Seventh Dwarf (2014), a German 3D-animated film based on Sleeping Beauty that borrows characters from Snow White (and other fairy tales).
In the castle Fantabularasa there is a big celebration because of the 18th birthday of Princess Rose, who has been cursed by the evil ice ...
42
To make the Mickey symbol more recognizable, the more authentic depiction was abandoned. From Wikipedia:
Ub Iwerks designed Mickey's body out of circles in order to make the character simple to animate. Disney employees John Hench and Marc Davis believed that this design was part of Mickey's success as it made him more dynamic and appealing to audiences. ...
42
Not if we're counting videogames.
The game series Kingdom Hearts, an official Disney/Square Enix joint production, has 3D renders of your mentioned characters, along with almost every "official" Disney princess (and a few unofficial ones).
In your order:
Ariel:
Aurora:
Belle:
Cinderella:
Mulan:
Jasmine:
Snow White:
Interestingly enough, the only ...
39
After looking into it, I found this on wikipedia:
Bugs Bunny's nonchalant carrot-chewing standing position, as explained by Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Bob Clampett, originated in a scene in the film It Happened One Night, in which Clark Gable's character leans against a fence, eating carrots rapidly and talking with his mouth full to Claudette Colbert'...
39
Here's a Variety article on this very thing with 5 reasons:
“Lego” landed just one mention — in the song category for its infectious “Everything Is Awesome” anthem — but not in the animated feature category, where many were predicting that the toon blockbuster might win.
That oversight comes as a total shock to Oscar pundits — arguably the year’s ...
32
It may be that you have fallen for the classic effect called the Uncanny Valley.
The reason those humans seem creepy to you is that they indeed look pretty much like real humans and not like exaggerated caricatures of humans usually seen in other animated movies. This first sounds rather paradox, but when looking at arbitrary animated creatures (like toys, ...
28
Buy a coconut in the supermarket. What's the color?
The "nut" is most likely brown and hairy. Sure, it's not like they appear when still on the trees, but who knows?
IMO it's all about being recognizable (and also knowledge) to some extent.
In a similar way, if you see Bananas in a cartoon, they're yellow. Tomatoes are red, apples are typically red, etc. ...
25
From the South Park Studios interview with Matt Stone (where users were encouraged to ask questions):
j0l0n: from Henbob -> What made you think of the canadians having
those funny head and everything is square? its brilliant! cheers
MattStone: Well the idea came to us during a trip to Toronto. That's
just the way they all look up there...
In a ...
23
The (co-)Creator of Bugs Bunny, Tex Avery, once said:
We decided he was going to be a smart-aleck rabbit, but casual about it, and his opening line in the very first one was Eh, what's up, Doc? And, gee, it floored [the audience]!
They expected the rabbit to scream, or anything but make a casual remark--here's a guy with a gun in his face! It got ...
23
To represent Animal perspective.
The Tom and Jerry cartoon is about animals, they have to show their perspective. Humans are larger to them, they can't even see their full body together. So it's kept that way. Humans are not even a regular cast, so why to bother to make their faces when it isn't needed. It also helps to make the audience focus on Tom and ...
23
A few of the princesses also appeared in Disney Junior's animated show Sofia the First.
From Disney movie list:
Ariel, Aurora, Belle, Cinderella, Mulan, Jasmine and Snow White appeared in the series. Only Pocahontas has not been in the show.
Ariel:
Aurora:
Belle:
Cinderella:
Mulan:
Jasmine:
Snow White:
20
Performance capture generally refers to the practice of capturing very subtle movements from real actors and using those in animation. Movies like Ice Age are fine without performance capture because the characters aren't realistic.
The problem you run into when trying to make realistic human animations is that the human brain is wired to detect very ...
20
According to this article from Creative Planet Network
"We have the technology, and our animators have the skills to do 3-D," says supervising producer Anne Garefino. "We don't want it to look computery,"agrees director of animation Eric Stough, who's been on board since the pilot. "We want it to look as crappy as possible."
20
Because the standard rules of physics don't apply for an animated movie.
More technically, if an animator tries too hard to get the physics to perfectly mirror the real world, you end up in the uncanny valley. There's a blog post at Fast Company Design that touches on this topic a little, where they talk about Disney's 12 Principles of Animation created in ...
18
I don't have the minute count for the film but the rules require:
An animated feature is defined by the academy as a film with a running time of more than 40 minutes in which characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, a significant number of the major characters are animated, and animation figures in no less than 75 percent of ...
18
X-Men are part of animated shows from 1966 but there are only three major X-men animated shows:
X-Men (1992–1997) ( aka X-Men: The Animated Series): This one was the first successful launch of X-Men in an animated medium and ran for 5 seasons and 76 episodes. The show also had crossover episodes with Spider-Man (1994 TV series) and was quite successful ...
17
Felix the Cat was the first to use the light bulb as a metaphor for a bright idea.
In the early twentieth century, Felix the Cat was the world’s favorite animated animal. (...) The anthropomorphic black cat, with his white eyes and a giant grin, was unable to speak because of the limitations of the medium, but Felix’s emotions and thoughts were projected ...
16
They do use 3D animation software. However, from the beginning the cut-out paper look is what they wanted to achieve with CG after finding out the difficulties of using real paper cut-outs.
The decision to stay with the paper cut-out look was made from the beginning, they want everything to look as cartoonish as possible, down to the movements and ...
13
The "Disney Princess™" is a relatively recent innovation in Disney's branding, dating back only to 2000 or so:
The rise of the Disney princesses reads like a fairy tale itself, with Andy Mooney, a former Nike executive, playing the part of prince, riding into the company on a metaphoric white horse in January 2000 to save a consumer-products division ...
13
Coconuts brown as they mature, so it's not always an inaccurate depiction.
Cartoons rely on a certain visual "shorthand" for many things that fly in the face of common knowledge, but are subconsciously accepted as part of the cartoon world or the larger entertainment or cultural zeitgeist. Most of us are aware that cars can't possibly operate like they do ...
13
So, I think it might be The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun.
In the synopsis of the movie, it states
Together they defeat and destroy Grunwald. Hilda, who had given her
magical "Medal of Life" to aid Horus, finds that she is still alive
without it, and rejoins Horus and the villagers.
I found it by looking through this list and looking ...
13
Albert Says... The Nature Knows Best
and
Albert Asks... What is Life?
Is this your bird? (Youtube link)
The main character Albert is a mythical creature that, according to the outside, like a combination of bird and hamster. Albert, although cheeky, but is characterized by curiosity and kindness, so that he gets along with all animals. His adventures ...
12
To be honest I don't think there is any real issue here regarding similar films from the two animation stables and disagree with anyone who thinks there are more than two comparable sets of films in the original question.
Firstly, we can eliminate two of your examples, as Dreamworks were not involved (The Wild, Robots), so perhaps the question could be made ...
12
'Uncanny Valley' isn't really a problem unless you're really trying to go for perfect human representations with CGI. It's where 99% feels real but that 1% is off like a weird lip movement or something (ie Rogue One).
In this case with Pixar stuff, they never aim for perfect reality so the 'Uncanny Valley' argument isn't necessary.
If you look at Toy Story, ...
12
It was Chuck Jones. You're looking for Raggedy Ann and Andy in The Great Santa Claus Caper (1978).
Inventor and efficiency expert Alexander Graham Wolf, who looks and sounds like Wile E. Coyote, is planning to take over Santa's workshop. Overhearing this, Comet, one of Santa's reindeer, asks Raggedy Ann, Raggedy Andy, and their dog Raggedy Arthur to help ...
11
I don't know the answer for sure, but my guess is that it was simply one of the preferred aesthetics of the era. The late 50s and early 60s were full of hand drawn art styles where the roughness of the line was embraced. Random examples:
I don't think there is a particular name for this style other than '50s/60s illustration' (era) or 'pen and ink' (medium)....
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