are ya sick of Pixar copycats yet? (CG movies)

[Joe Carney]

Yi Fong Yu, yes I see your point. When parents don't care, then the right wing religious crazies step in and decide they know wha't right for all of us. We can't let that happen.

4 more beers, 4 more beers.

John Ashcroft, public enemy #1.

Uh, oh, I bet this post is gonna get me on the no fly list. Oh well, if it's good enough for Ted Kennedy, it's good enough for me.

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

"At some point, I'm not sure when, the transition happened to where animation started seeming solely for kids. Anyone a cartoon historian around here? I've always been curious as to how that transition happened."

Throughout the 1950s when cartoon shorts progressively started being produced for television rather than for theatrical play, they took a decidedly kid-friendly twist, until the art form all but vanished in the 1960s. (When George Lucas, straight out of USC, won a prized Warner Brothers internship that allowed him to work in any department on the lot in 1968, he lusted to look over the shoulders of the artists in the studio's vaunted animation department, home of countless Looney Tunes classics and an extraordinary wealth of creative talent--only to discover that the department had been dismantled and no new cartoons were being produced.) Animation as a short form never really returned in force, but Disney's re-commitment to feature-length musical animation with The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, etc. in the 1990s revived the form as a family-friendly entertainment.

The past year at Walt Disney Feature Animation has seen greater transformation than since those early days when Jeffrey Katzenberg took over. The studio's new strategy seems to be an abandonment of traditional 2D animation in favor of 3D. Chicken Little is the studio's next big offering, coming out Summer 2005. It'll be 3D.

It's interesting; none of the Pixar films have been musicals, but Disney's biggest success has been the musical feature, not just on the screen, but also with stage adaptations that have grossed hundreds of millions in ticket sales.

[Yi Fong Yu]

well... toy story was kinda of a musical with songs.

[Keith Loh]

Animation for adults has been returning to vogue. People in their late 20s and thirties grew up with Saturday morning and after school animation and still want it. Hence you see the gearing of many programmes on the Cartoon Network aimed partially at adults. Genndy Tartakovsky is popular for "Samurai Jack" and Lucas' "Clone Wars" shorts.

The Adult Swim set is definitely aimed at college age and above such as "Sealab 2021", "Aqua Teen Hunger Force", "The Venture Bros." "Invader Zim" and "The Tick" probably fly over the heads of any kids who see them. Adults I know continue to enjoy even overt superhero fare such as "Teen Titans" and "Justice League". "Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation" and their "Sick and Twisted" shows are always packed.

This is a demographic change, the same one that has popularized live action super hero fare in movies. Some critics might call this the infantilization of adults and that is partly true though it sneers at some real quality underneath the surface.

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

I've seen clips of Chicken Little. It's no Little Mermaid or Lion King. Anybody with one eye in his head can see that this strategy (trying to beat Pixar at their own game rather than making the musical movies they've always excelled at) won't turn out well for Disney.

[Joe Carney]

Disney tried earlier with a failed Dinosaur movie, the animation was superb, the story lame. Shrek succeeded because it would have been funny in just about any medium. And it was most funny when it was making fun of Disney.