it’s kind of incredible how much pixar has backpedaled over the last couple of years, from the standpoint of character design
these were the kind of characters designs they had when they did their first movie with humans as their main cast
despite being cg all of the characters are visually distinct from each other and they look like 2d figures translated into a 3d environment
now it’s just???
all their human characters kind of lack that visual distinction and they’re all just? cute?
Alright, I wasn’t gonna comment b/c it’s kind of a waste of time, but I see a lotta folks tryin to pass off “Incredibles” designs as ‘an attempt to avoid Uncanny Valley with primitive tech’ or ‘resembling comic book art’, and a lot of other…. un-design-savvy comments.
Brad Bird had come from a background in traditional animation, he’s the guy behind this
So Lasseter (Pixar) rings up Bird like “Hey you wanna make a CG movie with us” and Bird’s like “Yeah, lemme bring my guys”, artists like Lou Romano, Teddy Newton, Tony Fucile, and Albert Lozano, who worked with Bird previously.
This may have been Pixar’s first production to feature an entirely human cast, but I think mostly what the excellence in designs boils down to is simply good artists with good taste.
And then have the fantastic designs in “Ratatouille”, also by Bird and his boys
We’ve also got the film “Up”, directed by Pete Doctor. Animated films rely on several artists for the designs of characters, set, props, ect, but it often leans towards one artist’s work. Putting other artists in charge gives “Up” a distinctive visual difference in style to Bird’s films.
You could place the blame on all these newer movies featuring mostly children characters, but I mean…..
Come on. Way to drop the ball on the chance to play with evolution in a fictional, animated setting. The issue isn’t what the tech was or wasn’t, is or isn’t capable of. This comes down to the artistic choices.
Anyway, I wish I could get more in-depth with this, but it’s difficult to find the information I need online in a timely manner, and I don’t have my books here with me.
If you’re interested in the designs/work that goes into animated films, check out the “Art Of __” books. The older ones I mean, that have actual raw concept art done for production and not just a bunch of cutsie drawings of characters b/c that’s what sells.
The difference between then and now is simply that Pixar was bought out by Disney, and is now one of Disney’s biggest money-spinners. They make superhero movies focus-grouped for boys, princess movies focus-grouped for girls, and since Pixar movies are supposed to appeal to both those genders equally you get, well, that. A neutered, generically cute art style that lends itself to big-eyed dolls with brushable hair and cute animal plush toys that make noises when you squeeze them. I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again; Disney (and by extension, Pixar) don’t make art any more. With a few scant exceptions they haven’t made art for decades. What they make is money. What they’re selling is a brand. Their last few passion projects spent years in development hell, hemorrhaging money the entire time, so what would eventually become Tangled, Frozen, and The Good Dinosaur ended up as bland and generic simply to recoup some of that enormous loss. And by being bland and generic, they ended up turning a massive profit, so you can expect that trend to continue. A corporation that sells everything from kid-friendly cruise holidays to mickey-themed wedding packages is not going to make art. A studio that’s so creatively bankrupt that it’s now rebooting every good movie it’s ever made is not going to make art. If you want art, look to smaller studios (Laika, Reel FX), smaller, lower-budget projects (Captain Underpants), and anything that Hollywood considers ‘risky’. Expecting Disney (and Pixar) to make anything that doesn’t blandly appeal to everyone at this point is like expecting blood to come out of a stone.
Nah, there’s more good content, real art coming out now than ever before, it’s just not coming out of Disney.
“We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective.”
Michael Eisner-former CEO of Disney
