So how did that first nomination influence the direction that you took your filmmaking moving forward? Was it a motivator?The only real lasting thing was that it was like a pat on the back from the Academy for going the independent route and kind of galvanized me to go ahead and try and make more films like that. It was a way of them saying, “We want to see more of this.” Prior that, I suppose, it’d always been in the back of my mind that at some point I’d go and get a real job, you know? [....] But once that happened you kind of feel like, “Okay, I can make a second go of this.” Of course, I had the pressure of making a second album with the first feature getting nominated for an Oscar and so… You don’t think you can ever live up to it. So it’s really wonderful to have a second nomination, and to say, “Well, maybe the first one wasn’t a fluke!” (Laughs.)
Is there something hand-drawn 2D art brings to the table that you prefer computer animation?I think hand-drawn has a lot still to do. I think it’s a medium that hasn’t really been fully used because for a long time, people working in hand-drawn were so influenced by Disney [that] they just copied Disney. And Disney’s look was limited by the technology of the time where they had to paint cels and layer the backgrounds and shoot them with a camera. You can only put so many cels underneath. You could only paint the characters flat.
Now we’ve got this wealth of opportunity because we can use the computer to really make a hybrid style where we hand draw, hand animate, use all the language of painting and art history. And at the same time we can do loads more techniques…
You can make films with much smaller teams, much more specialized rather than having this huge factory of two hundred people painting cels. We can focus on the organic side of it and then move to the computer to help us with stuff like coloring the characters and things like that.
I think that hand-drawn animation has an opportunity to reinvent itself and do whatever computer animation doesn’t really do well.
I think that hand-drawn animation has an opportunity to reinvent itself and do whatever computer animation doesn’t really do well. And that’s basically did when photography came in. I think hand-drawn animation has huge potential that way.
But just for me personally, I enjoy drawing. It’s the language that we’ve developed here in the studio – a certain visual language, a certain way of thinking. When we develop stories and films, especially the ones I’m going to direct, I think of something that’s going to take advantage of hand-drawn animation. Not to say that we wouldn’t try computer animation if it was the right story.
I was hanging out with the guys who did Big Hero 6 the other night, and you know – that’s a movie that makes sense in CG. (Laughs.) Superheroes and sci-fi tech. It doesn’t need to be hand-drawn watercolor painted; it doesn’t make sense. Different stories for different mediums.
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moviefaildid anyone watch song of the sea?? i need to see this