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Chris Sanders Removed From American Dog

imagineer boy

imagineer boy

Well-Known Member
Well, if Lasseter felt he had to fire him, then it must've been for a really good reason. Maybe we'll get the details of exactly why he was fired in the near future.
 
C

clarksfan95

Member
I had heard about this about a week or so ago, but didn't post anything because it came across simply as a rumor and the web-page I saw it on only had a single sentence stating that it was believed that he had been released.

I don't understand why he would be taken off of "his" project. Lilo and Stitch did quite well and had little to no influence from Disney management. I doubt we'll ever hear anything else about this, but hopefully he'll decide to hang around and not leave....though, I'm guessing after this that he'll be taking some time off.
 
Ryoseth

Ryoseth

Member
I definitely lost some sleep over this. !_!
i hope the film doesn't deviate too much from Sander's original idea, that's why i liked Lilo and Stitch so much, because it was so quircky.
 
MyNameisStitch

MyNameisStitch

Member
Original Poster
Ryoseth said:
I definitely lost some sleep over this. !_!
i hope the film doesn't deviate too much from Sander's original idea, that's why i liked Lilo and Stitch so much, because it was so quircky.
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Thats exactly how I feel. I loved Lilo and Stitch so much (Obviously :lol:). Its become my favorite movie. And I couldn't wait to see an original, fresh new movie from the same director.

Plus, I heard that they want to take the film and make it 2D animation. Same with Rapunzel Unbraided. Now don't get me wrong, I started jumping up and down with joy when I read that Lasseter wants to return to traditional animation for WDFA and leave the computer animation to Pixar. But, I have had concept art from American Dog and Rapunzel for a couple years now and it looks so amazing in 3D animation. I know these pictures aren't the computer animation but they look so good. You can tell they are by Chris Sanders. *Sigh* Oh well, I just hope he doesn't leave.
 

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PencilTest

PencilTest

New Member
What really sucks is that, due to the behind-the-scenes nature of this, we may very well never hear the reasoning behind this decision. All we hear is "John takes Chris off his own pet project" and immediately people start to think 'John's a d*ck'. There could've been a lot of reasons why the decision had to be made, but I doubt we'll ever know what they are. Plus, we don't even know the status of the film as of now. 2D? 3D? If they start over with a clean slate, what gets axed and what (and who) gets added? It's so up in the air that it's almost impossible to speculate on how everything'll end up. Don't get me wrong though, I hate that this happened, because American Dog was the picture I was looking forward to most out of the current crop.

I can't help but wonder about how or if it would've been any different if Chris and Dean DeBlois were both able to work on this, like with Lilo & Stitch. I remember reading about Disney putting them on different projects (this must've been at least a year or two ago) and thinking "Why on earth would they do that?" That decision still baffles me.
 
Bravesfn1

Bravesfn1

New Member
I think this is a good move. For one the project was imagined and planned as a 3D computer animated film. Now that Disney has acquired Pixar why Would Lasseter want Disney FA to make the same types of films Pixar does? I hope this is a signal that Disney FA will return to making 2D animated films while letting Pixar handle the 3D animated films.
 
Ryoseth

Ryoseth

Member
Bravesfn1 said:
I think this is a good move. For one the project was imagined and planned as a 3D computer animated film. Now that Disney has acquired Pixar why Would Lasseter want Disney FA to make the same types of films Pixar does? I hope this is a signal that Disney FA will return to making 2D animated films while letting Pixar handle the 3D animated films.
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perhaps, but it really wouldn't be the smartest thing to fire Chris Sander from his film, regardless if it is going to be 3D or 2D.
::
i too would be thrilled if it went 2d, but i would be disappointed if it didn't go 3D. i've read, and seen some amazing things from the picture so far. and if it DID go 2D, then Chris Sanders would be the man i choose to direct it.
 
imagineer boy

imagineer boy

Well-Known Member
darthjohnny said:
Why would Lasseter have anything to do with this? American Dog does not have anything to do with Pixar. It was being developed by Disney before they made the merge.:confused:
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John Lasseter has a lot of creative control over most of the animation division ever since Disney bought Pixar. He's contributed to many tweaks and fixes to Meet the Robinsons, and Repunzel.
 
D

darthjohnny

Active Member
imagineer boy said:
John Lasseter has a lot of creative control over most of the animation division ever since Disney bought Pixar. He's contributed to many tweaks and fixes to Meet the Robinsons, and Repunzel.
Click to expand...

With all these rumors, it is unclear to me how much "creative control" John Lasseter has.

Before, he had a lot of control with Disney Imagineering.

Some of these rumors have to be false.:xmas:
 
Legacy

Legacy

Well-Known Member
Jim Hill had an article on this a couple of days ago (OH NO! Jim Hill!).

American Dog was always presented as a CGI film, however with WDFA hopefully returning to traditional animation, it would make sense to start transitioning their in-production pieces to 2-D.

Now, from a creative stand-point, once an idea is concieved it is difficult to move too far away from it. It's the nature of creativity. If Chris Sanders envisioned American Dog as a CGI, I imagine it would be difficult for him to move away from producing a CGI film. Removing him from the project allows the film to be re-imagined in a 2-D framework. Honestly, I would rather see it done traditionally, simply because it seems to have a Lilo and Stitch meets Emporer's New Groove vibe to it. I can see the logic behind the removal, and still expect it to be a very good film.
 
C

clarksfan95

Member
I think it'll still come out in 3D, same with Rapunzel. It would be a huge loss of money to company to change the directions now (especially with Rapunzel). I dont' see Lasseter changing to 2D just because if it was made in 3D it wouldn't jive with what Pixar was doing. Otherwise, I think Sanders would still be on the project. Sanders has been involved on several of Disney's most successful animated features of the past 8-10 years (all of which were 2D).

I think the cost of changing these projects mid-stream will weigh in the long run against the films themselves. Look at Emperors New Groove, the animation was already half finished when they decided that the film needed a new direction. All the animation that had been completed became trash at that point. The film made zero profit (though Disney may claim otherwise) due to the amount of money sunk into it's production...there are other films that had this very same problem, Treasure Planet had issues as did Atlantis.

These films have their followings, especially ENG but when you look back at it's time in the theatre, it's obvious that they didn't do so well coming out of the gate. I remember walking out of ENG and going "What was that?". I now have found a fondness for it my heart and all of it's quirkinesses and all the jokes that I still continue to laugh at.

If anything...I could see these films get shelved before switching to traditional. Though I'm normally a proponent of 2D, I'd much rather see Disney release as 3D films and then work on getting concepts for 2D films going. No reason to spend endless millions on something that is going to become nothing.
 
PencilTest

PencilTest

New Member
Bravesfn1 said:
Now that Disney has acquired Pixar why Would Lasseter want Disney FA to make the same types of films Pixar does? I hope this is a signal that Disney FA will return to making 2D animated films while letting Pixar handle the 3D animated films.
Click to expand...
"You can't use the color blue, because Finding Nemo had a lot of blue and we don't want Disney movies to look like Pixar!"
"Oh yeah, well you can't use 2H pencils to draw, because we use them and we don't want Pixar movies to look like Disney!"

Sorry, but I highly doubt that John Lasseter has any ulterior motive for Disney making hand drawn movies again, other than the fact that no major studio in America is doing it and Disney has a celebrated history with the format. I don't buy any of the 'eliminating the CG competition' rumors that people have been coming up with. Besides, how much CG in a hand-drawn feature would be considered "too much"? They've been using CG in Disney movies since the 80s on everything from backgrounds to props to supporting characters. Would they now be not allowed to do that anymore?

Anyway, wouldn't the "We want Disney to be completely out of CG" idea be as ham-fisted as Eisner's "We want Disney to be completely out of 2D" plan from a couple years ago?
 

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