I really don't like 3D animation, so this sucks tremendously if they really do get rid of it (which seems very likely for the reasons of sales regardless of how vague Iger or Lasseter were on the matter). I think the upcoming adaptation of the Snow Queen was originally going to be hand drawn but they canned that idea and decided to CGI it. I was quite disappointed in that. CGI just can't touch hand drawn animation.
A quick search told me this wasn't the only site with this information. Unfortunately, the 3D films have been better recently. Tangled was an excellent movie. Wreck-It Ralph was also excellent. The Princess and the Frog was okay, but not as good as the other two. There was a certain creative element, especially from Wreck-It Ralph, that made it better than the 2D animated films. Plus, they are more visually stunning. Rapunzel's hair would not have looked nearly as good in 2D.
But who knows. This isn't the first time Disney has said this, so it's possible they'll do some more 2D films.
I disagree entirely. I found Princess and the Frog to be superior to Tangled for the most part. The story that is. Even if Tangled had been in 2D and PATF was in 3D, I still liked PATF better. Though I do definitely believe gorgeous 2D animation improves an animated movie and the best hand drawn animation always beats the best CGI animation.
BTW Tangled would have looked absolutely wonderful in traditional animation. I wish it was in that style instead of CGI. I admittedly WOULD have enjoyed it more had it been (though the story and characters still wouldn't have been as good to me as PATF). And that includes the hair animation. If you want an animated movie that showed how incredible the artists can be with hair animation, look no further than Dreamworks' Sinbad from 2003 (gorgeous movie overall BTW). There's one particular villainess in the movie called Eris, who i'd easily argue may be some of if not THE best character animation i've ever seen in any animated movie. The way they animated her body and hair is just incredible, it's wonderful to watch. I'd say it looks similar to the motion they gave to Ursula's lower octopus body in Little Mermaid, though far more impressive.
There may be some spoilers here, but here are some clips of Eris and her incredible animation-
The scenery in Tangled at least looked decent for the sole reason that they attempted to really make the 3D animation look like it was hand drawn in parts. But even after all these years now the character designs still just don't look good at all. Whether a movie is using CGI or hand drawn also has nothing to do with how good it is from a story perspective. I do like Tangled but found it very disappointing in ways. I enjoyed both Wreck it Ralph and Meet the Robinsons more than Tangled from a story perspective, but I also largely disliked their animation and would have preferred 2D much more.
I also really loved the new Winnie the Pooh movie as well, it heavily surpassed all my expectations (which were already high). It's hilarious and has lovely 2D animation. It would have been a horrible shame had it been made solely using CGI instead and would have heavily dumbed down the experience.
Regardless of anything though, no animated movie Disney has made in the past 13 years or so now has been able to touch their 90's movies from a story perspective (let alone even the gorgeous animation or wonderful music). The one exception being Pocahontas being a disappointment, but even that at least had fantastic animation and music to offset its other flaws, so was still incredibly awesome to watch.
I'll also say that while I have enormous fondness for Pixar and like what Lasseter has accomplished, the past several years Pixar movies have had poorer story telling than anything Disney itself has made in the past few years. Particularly Cars 2 and even Brave (I knew going into Cars 2 that it was going to be crap but Brave was a massive disappointment to me). So really it would seem that it's box office profits that have become the crutch for bad storytelling, not so much the animation style. One of the movies mentioned in the article I dislike highly too (Bolt). But what can you say? Audiences have been rewarding mediocre or terrible movies lately (Twilight or the Transformers franchise) and not ones that really deserve the money.
