Actually, the article just states Don Hahns past with the company, he won't hold this position long enough to actually do anything. As for Lasseter tho, he is a huge fan and supporter of 2D animation and Pixar was looking into creating their own 2D department so that they could make 2D films. This probably won't happen now with the merger, but Lasseter will have say as to what kind of films get made.
I, myself had the same dream that Legacy had ripped right out from underneath him. I love animation, went to school and have a degree that covers both 2D and 3D animation and I do occasional work on television commercials, but it was a very harsh and saddening thing the day that Disney closed up shop.
I hold a lot of faith in Lasseter tho. The one thing that has to seen tho, is that the Disney "of the good 'ol days" is done. It's time to move on and embrace whatever it's future may be. Even Frank and Ollie knew after seeing the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, that this was no longer the Disney that they worked for, that a new day and age had begun.
It'll probably take another 4-5 years before we see another traditional feature out of Disney...first off, they have zero of them in the development pipeline, second, they take about 4 years to make...so...it'll be a while, but the talent still remains...mostly....at Disney, now granted, they laid a lot of that talent off, but the major players were kept.
As for Beauty and the Beast being quality....I don't know about that. I love the movie, the story was amazingly strong...........but the animation, overall was good, but the characters looked different from scene to scene and were very inconsistent. For example, look at Belle as she is walking down the hall way of the West Wing, looking in the mirrors...then compare that to her facial features when she's cleaning the wounds on Beasts arms...then compare that to how she looks at the beginning of the films walking through town. Each time, Belles appearance changes, and this is not how these films are to be made. It's not about individual expression of the artist...they are paid to draw that character exactly the same every time...they are trained to draw that character just like their co-workers. There is no room for deviation and this film has a ton of it. Watch Aladdin and see how deviation there is in Aladdin or Jafar or Jasmine or the Genie. This shows the artists at their peaks, no deviation is character model whatsoever. I still love Beauty and the Beast completely and it's still one of my personal favorites, but it lacks artistically the consistency of every other Disney films ever created. I've read interviews with some of the animators and they said they couldn't believe that amount of alteration in the character designs as the film went on.....a couple of them, said that it was unacceptable and that Walt probably wouldn't have released the film until the issues were corrected.
