I missed Wreck-It Ralph in theaters, so I hadn't seen Disney's new short Paperman until it went online recently.
Wow.
One of the knocks on some of the computer-generated movies is that the characters have a sort of sameness to them. Which one came from Pixar, which one came from DreamWorks, which one came from Disney itself...just by looking, it was impossible to tell. The movies themselves were often fantastic -- any Toy Story, Wall-E, The Incredibles and so on, but hand-drawn animation had a distinctness of style that the CGI lacked.
But to make Paperman, Disney developed a technology to blend hand-drawn style animation like that in its great films such as Snow White or Beauty and the Beast with the detail and background that a hand-drawn feature just didn't have the time to include.
Call me a fanboy, but I'm looking forward to what might come from this new process and idea. Which is kind of what Uncle Walt was supposed to be about a lot of the time himself, as I understand it.
I agree. This was one of the best shorts that Disney has done in a long time. Amazing art-craft and engaging story. It deserved the Academy award nomination.
ReplyDeleteIt made me actually care about who wins an Academy Award ;-)
ReplyDeleteKind of wish I'd seen it on a big screen. Not enough to have gone to Wreck-It Ralph (I was never a gamer), but still...