Credit: Sony Pictures2023 has been an interesting year for animation. Disney, DreamWorks, and more have had highs and lows, but audiences might be looking down the business end of a significant culture change in the medium. As modern techniques blur together with the influx of CGI animation, evidence shows it might be time to get back to basics.
Some of the biggest names in the industry, like Disney and DreamWorks, have been flopping at the box office. With both Elemental and Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken both having abysmal opening weekends, things are looking bleak for animation.
Back to the Drawing Board with Traditional Animation
@babbity.kate Replying to @RjTok He might have to wake her up wirh a fist bump or something tho #disneyprincess #disney #sleepingbeauty #aurora #animation
In her video above, @babbity.kate goes into incredible detail about how Sleeping Beauty was Disney’s feminist masterpiece, but the way she addresses the film’s animation style raises an interesting point. There is indeed an audience for traditional animation, and it might be making a comeback sooner than we think.
The user states,
“One of the many things that the Spider-Verse movies are showing us is that people are starved for animated movies that don’t look like a carbon copy of every single other animated movie that has come out in the last ten years…”
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While studios like Disney and Pixar tread water, Sony Animation Studios has gone back to traditional techniques in their partnership with Marvel for the very successful Across the Spider-Verse. There’s even talks of the saga of Miles Morales being nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, an honor only previously held by Walt Disney Pictures.
The Spider-Verse series is quickly becoming one of the most popular animated projects on the market, and to say its visual style isn’t a major factor would be untrue. The reignited interest in traditional animation methods is how it maintains the look of a classic comic book, and it wouldn’t be the same experience without it. Additionally, Sony isn’t the only studio taking the hint.
Hardcore Disney fans have been pleading with the studio to return to the traditional hand-drawn animated movies for the past decade, and it looks like they might be getting exactly that as Wish returns to the studio’s roots. As one of the industry’s biggest players returns to traditional methods, how long will it be before the tried-and-true practices officially come back to the forefront of the medium?
How do you like your animated movies, hand-drawn or CGI? Tell Inside the Magic in the comments below!