Should they have kept the original animators or is it ok to fire them?
Yes, it was ok to fire them.
No, they should have kept them and asked for their advice.
0voters
I was wondering for a while and I thought this would be a good topic.
Do you think that Disney/Pixar was being unfair to all the “original” artists that worked on movies by hand-drawing them (Lion King, Aladdin, etc.) or do you think that 3D is waaaaaaay better than hand-drawn cartoons. I think they shouldn’t have fired all those original animators, they should have kept them and asked for their advice at times during animation. So… what do you think?
Well, that depends, really…I’m sure it probably would’ve been useful to keep some of the important animators, the ones that really know their stuff, as I’m sure there’s some cross-over between 2D and 3D animation. But on the other hand, there are probably some animators that worked in 2D that didn’t want to be with the new company, as such, and wanted to work elsewhere where their skills and talents could be used properly. Perhaps some of the 2D animators didn’t want to be involved with the new type of animation.
I think they really should have kept a lot of them. Many of those animators were seasoned storytellers. Some actually being part of the story department itself.
Overall it was a dumb thing to do. Many of them can still learn the programs and technology to over to CGI if they had too. People like James Baxter went on to do supervision work on movies like Shrek 2, and Baxter is one of the best 2D animators I’ve ever seen.
It was just poor business planning and good example of why not to put your eggs all in one basket.
CGI is a medium, people. Not a replacement.
From what I understand Pixar hasn’t made any high profile mass-firings as such, that was solely in DIsney’s hands. Pixar has probably been the harshest critic on Disney for firing their old 2D animators, because the people at Pixar completely understand the importance of traditional animation. Because, as mentioned, it’s not the computer that makes the animation, it’s the people. In fact, I believe people at Pixar are hired for their inherent traditional animation skills, regardless of their knowledge of animating on computers. So yes, that is very bad, and according to the news at the time of the Pixar/Disney merger, Lasseter is trying to get Disney to go back to their roots. We’ll see how that turns out.
Pixar had nothing to do with the mass firings at Disney (directly) the only reason people associate the two is because Disney switched to CGI because of Pixar’s huge success. The Pixar merger (and John Lasseter) are the main reasons 2D is coming back (ironically), so 2D animators should be grateful for Pixar. Pixar even hired many 2D artists because they don’t care what medium you work in as long as you are good.
Ok… maybe I’ll try: let’s see, CGI animation and traditional animation aren’t COMPLETELY different, but they shouldn’t be replacements for each other, and Disney’s decision was a bad one, but what can you do about it? 2D is coming back, so I guess the decision is being corrected. So basically I don’t think the traditional animators should have been fired, they probably would have brought so much more to Disney’s latest productions. Ominousorb explains the rest very well!
I agree with a lot of you. They should have kept them and asked for advice. I’m not sure a lot of them would have liked to have “learned” CGI animation though.
Well no, they shouldnt have been fired, but I hope you’re not grouping Pixar in with Disney on this. As it has already been stated, Pixar wasnt involved with that. I mean, the companies werent together yet, and even though they were associated with each other, they are hardly interchangeable.
This might be a little of topic, but I always hate it when people confuse Pixar with Disney. And in an offhand manner refer to certain films as Pixar films when they aren’t. It’s not even just with Disney, they sometimes confuse films from other studios with Pixar films, like Dreamworks and Blue Sky. Thankfully I haven’t heard much of that lately.
But yeah, people really need to remember that Pixar has its own unique identity, even if they’re part of Disney.
