I never thought that something could actually ruin my childhood once I was out of it, like those short shorts from the 80's that my parents thought I should wear, but it appears that certain elements were not filled with the full measure of creativity that I had once imagined. On the flip side, perhaps the slacker creativity is all the more illustrious since apparently no one caught them until now...
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
The Lion King was a rip off
Exhibit C:
Many stills for comparison
The technical response:
"It's called rotoscoping. What they do, is film actors, then trace the film into drawings. It's likely they used the same stock footage over and over. A lot of disney movies are rotoscoped (like Sleeping Beauty for example) - not that they'd admit to it. Disney prefers to call it "video referencing", and insist they don't trace film. Of course, if Disney wanted to pretend they weren't rotoscoping, they should have been smart enough not to use the same footage all the time.
There's nothing wrong with rotoscoping - lots of animators use it, and it's also used in many music videos. Kanye West's music video for Heartless was rotoscoped. You can do it really easily in Flash or Photoshop. It's mostly used for really complex scenes, like dancing and fights. Those are really hard to animate, and there aren't many people who have learned to do it straight from brain to paper, because it involves a real understanding of human movement, the dynamics of a fight/dance and the synchronization between two rapidly moving characters. It's really hard to do with detailed animation."
The thought provoking response:
"The real point of interest to me is that the films that use copied animation were all made after Walt's death. Jungle Book being the first movie Disney made without Walt overseeing and being followed by Robin Hood, Aristocats, etc... Even up to Beauty and the Beast which I would actually call an "homage" to Cinderella more than cribbing the original animation."
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
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2 comments:
Ha, wow. People have spent some time compiling that stuff. The only thing I have a problem with is the Lion King story. I remember that controversy when it was released, and I was always surprised it didn't make the news more at the time, except that there was little "proof" at the time. Looks like more evidence has surfaced.
As for copy and paste, that's just a common sense efficiency thing. Why redraw when the image already exists? :-)
And with mimicked scenes, I think that was quite deliberate and one of those kinds of "gems" people can be excited to have noticed, not a lazy avoidance of reenacting the scenes. But...I can't deny it COULD be laziness, particularly if it was done during a tough time for the company when they were having to cut corners or something.
Still, I think it's part of the charm of Disney movies, that they pay homage to past films or carry common, recognizable, familiar elements throughout them. It's actually a great marketing ploy, if nothing else, to build a sense of familiarity with their viewers. And we all know Disney is a marketing MACHINE, to a fault, in my opinion.
That was fun. :-)
I'm not surprised by the films having the same footage, it makes it easier on the animators that had to do a LOT of work.
The Kimba thing, my husband just told me about, and while it didn't get much press in the US, it was a big deal here in Japan. My husband remembers thinking it was a rip off when he saw Lion King for the first time
p.s. this is Sister Ohler ;)
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