Summary SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Pencils vs. Pixels examines the evolution of animation by looking back at the height of 2D animation, including the Disney Renaissance era in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The documentary also shows how the animation medium changed with technological advancements introducing 3D computer-generated animation.
And so the transition happened after they accepted my third portfolio back in '73 and they said, "You'll be a better animator if you understand the principles of animation." I said, "Hey, I'll do anything you guys want me to do as long as I end up in the background department." And so they put me under the tutelage of nine old man, Eric Larson.
And he would just snicker and laugh. He loved it because, I think to him and to a lot of the other nine old men and the old timers, it was revisiting their own start in the '30s during the Depression era, when they started out as young college graduates in their early 20s, they're watching this happen all over again, and he was extremely kind.
So guys like me in 2003, we were all out of work, but all of these unemployed artists made migrations across the United States into college and university art departments and began animation departments. So all of those lessons, those 12 illusion of life principles got passed on to generation after generation of students.
Now, Michael Eisner, had many strengths, but being an innovator and the type of mind that Walt was, was not one of them, and so he saw a need to close it down. This was 15 years before when he and Frank Wells first took over. They were thinking that, "Okay, this medium needs to be realigned or closed. It's not making that much profit."
The major studios, the major players that distribute these, they want to see the players come out and deliver the $300 million profitability that first box-office weekend. This was interesting because it brings up a story about, "When you were a child you saw An American Tail." American Tail was one of the first films to go out there and make 2D hand-drawn animation legitimate to all the other studios.