If you were to go to your local movie theater, you could probably find an animated movie, however there is a slight difference had you gone 15 years ago. 15 years ago you would have seen hand drawn animation, otherwise known as 2d animation. Not the more modern 3d animation.
What’s 2D animation, you ask?
2D animation is actually pretty simple to understand. It’s an animation style that is all hand drawn, originally only ever used for short films due to the amount of work that had to be put in to making it.
The most famous example of this is Disney’s very own Mickey mouse. Through Walt Disney’s hard work he brought Mickey Mouse to life in “Steamboat Willie” from 1928. And Mickey would continue to appear in shorts for many years before full length movies. Think of them as entertaining commercials.
Hand drawn shorts were all people thought could be achieved with animation until Walt Disney studios released an 83 minute fully hand drawn animated movie, Snow white and the seven Dwarfs.
The movie was unlike anything ever seen, a full length, full color animated movie. And up until the 1990’s it was believed by the general populace that 2D Animation was the only possible way to have an animated movie, however behind the scenes a certain film was being cooked up, 1995’s Toy story.
Toy Story was revolutionary, a fully 3D animated film, the first of it’s kind. and other stories would come in this format. You probably know a lot of Pixar’s stories; a bugs life, finding Nemo, Ratatouille, and the Incredibles.
But Pixar didn’t dominate the 3D animated realm for long. DreamWorks was right behind them with their movie Antz predating Pixar’s movie a bugs life by a month. But it wasn’t that DreamWorks movie that killed 2D animation the death of 2D animation was 2001’s SHREK.
SHREK due to its popularity made Disney the company that made strictly 2D animated movies at the time-Pixar is a branch of Disney not the main animation studio-Finally saw the future of animation and it was 3D not 2D with Disney’s 2005’s Chicken Little being the company’s first venture into 3D animation.
Even though they were now making 3D animated movie Disney didn’t abandon 2D animation entirely. At least not for a few years but by 2011 Disney had made its last 2D animated movie. Killing the form of art that made the company.
2011’s Winnie the pooh was the last time we saw an American company make a 2D animated film that was released in theaters that was until now, with Warner brothers loony Toons movie: the day the earth blew up. We may be seeing the return of 2D animation, one step at a time.
