TBF it was also a time before the corporate entity realized maximum short term profit doesn’t come from perfected products.
The only counter argument would probably be something like Flow. But what Zilbalodis did was perhaps as handcrafted as 3D animation can get.
I totally agree, Disney’s Robin Hood from 1973 is peak hand-drawn cartoon
You dropped this -> /s
I don’t think they did…

That gif better not awaken something in me.
Oooo da lolly!
Ah yes, Maid Marian. The first time I was like “why dis animal girl so hot?”
The first time
I’m not a furry, I’m just a furry enjoyer
My confused seven year old ass was like “I would like to hold hands with both Robin Hood and Maid Marian ver much”
I still do
That was the video cassette I actually watched so much I wore it out as a child!!
Reasonably so hahaha
Eeeeeeh… Maybe not. It’s pretty good, but there is so much recycled animation that you might aswell call the Jungle book the best aswell.
Forgot about Fantasia?
Lion king?
Don bluth cartoons?
Anything made by Miyazaki.
I’m with you on the studio Ghibli stuff; and the Lion King while a better movie is very polished and to me lacks the hand made feel of Robin Hood
…but the Lion king was hand made.
I’m aware it’s hand-made, I meant how polished and ‘perfect’ it is - like it was redrawn 100 times from the original sketch - it just lacks a certain je ne sais quoi of Robin Hood
The lion king famously used CGI though.
Yeah, i guess i forgot about the multiplication and wildebeest animation.
I guess it’s slightly more impressive that you barely notice.
but robin hood isn’t entirely hand-made, most of it is copied from other films. that’s why there are so many visible roughs in the animation.
I just recently rewatched 101 Dalmatians and actually cried multiple times just from really soaking it in. Just the way so much of it comes to life. The imperfections genuinely make it feel so much more alive.
Modern Hollywood animation is incredibly sterile and perfected. A major studio now would never imagine releasing something with visible sketch lines.
Sure it wasn’t nostalgia? Sounds like the same symptoms
I don’t think so. I’ve been watching a lot of classics from my childhood lately and most of them weren’t hitting me that hard. Maybe it’s that the actual story and the horror of it sunk in properly for the first time as an adult. Hadn’t seen it since I was young. The voice acting from the pups is just incredible. That probably didn’t help.
I think animation, when the animators care, has improved. Yes treasure planet looks better fight me. But I think the problem is that there is more shit animation now, and we have forgotten the shit animation of the past.
Thankfully they’re learning this and we get movies that are starting to look less like plastic cgi and are using painted textures and drawn in motion blur like in k pop demon hunters which gives the movies more character and makes them look like a mix of the old and the new
the opening to beauty and the beast remains my favourite piece of animation ever <3
Beauty and the Beast features computer animation, by the way. I think it’s only in the ballroom scene though.
thanks! i’m not an expert so i wasn’t sure (i know they did switch sometime in the 90s but i thought 91 would have been too early for computer/cgi)
If you rewatch the ballroom scene it’s pretty obvious. It’s like partially 3d. But it’s subtle enough to not stick out.
Wasn’t the first use of CG in a major Disney animated film the carpet in Aladdin? No necessarily the whole movie, but certain scenes at least.
yeah i remember the carpet scene in the cave of wonders with the lava being particularly cgi (i mean as a kid it looked awesome but still)
Uh, sure, why not! Seems believable enough to me.
Wikipedia has a pretty good list of big “firsts” for cgi.
It notes that Disney first used cgi for the clock tower in The Great Mouse Detective. However it seems like it may have been cgi generated frames that were then hand animated over.
As for Aladdin, maybe first to have cgi character? As Beauty and the Beast came out 1 year earlier and definitely had cgi effects in the ballroom scene.
Note: no idea how accurate the whole list is, but that one checks out.
The original Mobile Suit Gundam 0079. The US cartoons from the 1960’s and 70’s were the best with plenty of lessons from Wile E. Coyote.
When’s the last time you watched the original MSG? I too love the old Gundam series… I’ve actually been rewatching the og recently but there’s been more than a few instances where I’ve seen some very dodgy and poorly drawn frames pop on screen. I say this with love and respect but it’s not a great example for good animation. There are beautifully drawn examples to draw from. 0083 Stardust Memory comes to mind. Absolutely gorgeously drawn and animated. 08th MS Team is another great looking one.
Saw the first one in Nagano, Japan and then recently on Netflix. My favorite is the MSM-04 ACGuy and I built the model kit from Bandai.
Same with the OG Lilo and Stitch:
IIRC last film to use honest to god water colors. And it shows.
Was this before or after the lion king, because they really started leaning on cgi from then on
Lion king was 5-10 years before this
Flowknocks the crap out ofDalmatians.yeap

Interestingly enough, 101 Dalmatians was the first Disney film to adopt the process of Xeroxing the animators’ drawings directly to cels, rather than hand-tracing them. It’s still a beautiful movie of course, but it’s also an advance in animation technology that often gets over-looked!
Thanks. Fascinating read. However…
The character Roger Radcliffe in Dalmatians was entirely outlined in black
This is not true, as you can see in their provided still. Some internal “outlines” are not in black, especially his hat and shoes (hard to tell with his jacket whether dark brown or black). It is similar to their Sleeping Beauty (supposedly) counter-exanple.
They were more interested in telling a memorable story than making a quick buck
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I guess we’re gonna just whitewash the systemic exploitation of “betweener” labor, then? Oh, good. 🖕🏽
So a couple things, do you have a link where I can read up on the history of betweener labor because now I’m curious? But secondly what are you talking about? What this post or the comments implies anything to do with race? I don’t understand where you’re getting that from
I think there is nothing about race at all. Whitewash as in the meaning: to make something bad seem acceptable by hiding the truth.
My spouse likes to watch the different Dexter shows and anytime I see any of it I just keep thinking it’s whitewashing a murderous psychopath. Like the shows seem to be pro murder and corrupt police departments and a lot of people must like it because they keep making more.
I only murder people who I think deserve it and don’t feel bad about it because I have a “code.”
















