OK, I'll admit I sent the wrong message here. What I meant to say was that Disney only has six super, excellent, put-on-a-pedestal character animators left at the studio. I did not mean to say that the other animators were bad. That was my mistake. WDFA has many good animators, to be sure. However, "great" vs. "good" is the difference between "Beauty and the Beast" and "Home on the Range." There is a remarkable drop-off in quality between those two films, and it's not simply because of the executives, or that one is geared toward the entire family. No, the fact is, the artistic talent on "Beauty and the Beast" was simply eons above "HOTR" ("Beauty" director Kirk Wise referred to the story crew on the movie as the "Justice League of Animation"). Now, I love "Beauty and the Beast" because of its heart, its great story, its wonderful character animation, and so forth. I will watch movies such as "Beauty," "Aladdin," or "Lion King" during any free time I have. In contrast, I couldn't wait to run from the theater after seeing "HOTR." Though some might say this was because of pressure to keep costs down from executives, I'll remind you that "Lilo and Stitch" was under the same pressures, and turned out just fine in my book (I would gladly put it in my DVD player). You see, by "great animators," I meant something along the lines of "approaching Nine Old Men quality" animators. "Good" simply does not cut it in animation.
P.S. Legacy also mentions the great in-between artists currently working at the studio that I had overlooked. However, in my previous post I stated that I did not count the other departments such as in-betweeners at the studio, because there were simply too many to review. I'm sure there are many talented in-betweeners at the studio right now, but the point was that they really don't have any say in what goes on in the story, which was the main point of my argument.
