Disney's PAPERMAN -- Animation Game-Changer?

[Ernest Rister]

Pixar's Catharine Hicks tweeted: "I saw Disney's new short "Paperman" yesterday. I have never seen anything like it before. Absolutely incredible. Hard to describe."

Brad Bird tweeted: "Just had the great pleasure of watching John Kahrs innovative & wonderful hand-drawn/CG mash up "PAPERMAN". Annecy, you're gonna love it."

What is PAPERMAN and why is it creating such a buzz?

Here's an excerpt from HuffPo:

"As the supervisor of animation on Tangled, John had worked closely with industry legend Glen Keane. And Kahrs watched as Keane had actively pushed to make sure that this CG retelling of the tale of Rapunzel had the look and feel of Disney's classic hand-drawn animated features.

"Glen would literally draw over our work. He'd take a tablet and a stylus and then show Disney's CG artists how they could make their poses stronger, how the staging of individual scenes could be improved by just drawing a few lines right on top of their scenes," John remembered. "And as I looked at Keane's hand-drawn lines on top of those CG scenes, I have to admit that I liked what I saw. Those few rough lines that Glen had drawn really added a lot of power, clarity and emotion to those scenes. Which is something that CG scenes sometimes lose as they go through the clean-up phase of production."

[snip]

So Kahrs wondered: Was there a way that Disney could possibly combine these two types of animation that then played to both of their strengths, adding the dimensionality and fluidity-of-movement that CG has with the power and emotion, which the very best pieces of hand-drawn animation often have?

But in order for that to happen, Disney was going to have to come up with a whole new way of doing animation at the Studio. More to the point, Kahrs and Co. was going to have to produce a film which then demonstrate how CG and hand-drawn animation could be combined to create a brand-new type of storytelling.

"So I got together with Kristina Reed, this producer at Disney who's not afraid to tackle tough projects. And then I roped in Brian Whited, who wrote this amazing piece of software which then made it possible to combine CG and hand-drawn animation in just the way that I'd imagined," John said. "And with a very small team at WDAS, we labored in secret for almost nine months on a short that we hoped could be usde to showcase this new production technique."

-- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-hi...=entertainment

In other words, Paperman is something new in terms of animation tech, retaining the drawn line and the CGI dimensionality.

But wait, there's more.

The blog animatie.blog.nl claims the tech is also linked to a new animated feature by Ron Clements and John Musker. They write: "They’re doing something very technical, new and secretive. Something with an interface that translates hand drawn animation into CG."

What is this project?

No one's talking. Musker and Clements toyed with adapting Terry Pratchett's DISCWORLD several years ago, and they're also linked to a Hitchcock-suspense piece called FRAIDY CAT, but neither are officially in production. Chris Buck is directing FROZEN, not Musker and Clements, so whatever this secret hush-hush project is, it will certainly be turning heads once announced. It would be great to see this used for FROZEN, but we're just going to have to wait.

So when will we finally see this Paperman short? It was announced that Paperman will now screen in front of WRECK IT RALPH, premiering this Fall.

Exciting times in animation, folks.