[HN Gopher] How 'One Hundred and One Dalmatians' Saved Disney
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How 'One Hundred and One Dalmatians' Saved Disney
Author : pseudolus
Score : 88 points
Date : 2021-06-06 10:46 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| teh_klev wrote:
| Tangentially, the other week I found out that Dodie Smith wrote a
| sequel to "The Hundred and One Dalmatians." which is quite
| barking (sorry) mad:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starlight_Barking
|
| It has a Space Dog and a kind of "Dog Rapture" thing going on.
| I'm guessing Smith fully embraced late 60's in many ways.
| clydethefrog wrote:
| The live-action sequel of the 101 Dalmatians live-action movie,
| (102 Dalmatians) also had a bizarre scene in the end where
| Cruella is baked into an enormous cake. She is mixed in a huge
| batter, baked alive (she survives, only the cake around here is
| baked) and blasted with frosting, all by the smart dogs working
| together. As a kid I remember it being pretty other-wordly.
| papito wrote:
| Here is all the madness in a short Twitter thread:
|
| https://twitter.com/SketchesbyBoze/status/140015018819540172...
|
| "It has never been filmed. It can never be filmed. It is
| unfilmable."
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| Reminds me a bit of how Charlie and the Glass Elevator, the
| sequel to Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, is also a weird
| departure from the original.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_and_the_Great_Glass_El.
| ..
| djxfade wrote:
| If you think that is crazy, check out the sequel to Forrest
| Gump
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gump_and_Co.
| teh_klev wrote:
| Yep, there's definitely some unexpected turns taken there.
| teh_klev wrote:
| That's where I bumped into the sequel but couldn't remember
| the specific tweet. Thanks.
| mquirion wrote:
| I'm a bit of a Disney geek, not for their content, but for their
| business history. I got reading a bio on Walt years ago and was
| astonished by how much Disney really is a "start up" in many of
| the ways we think of them today. Walt and his people were wildly
| inventive and incredibly driven. And that inventiveness, though
| not always perfect, is still very much within the company's DNA
| today. And I think it plays as much a role today in Disney's
| dominance as their IP.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| That computer aided process was pioneered by Pixar proposed
| earlier by John Lasseter for a minor 80's film, The Brave Little
| Toaster, which got him fired. You can read about it here under
| 'career' https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lasseter
| otterley wrote:
| To be clear, Lasseter was fired from Disney before the film was
| ever made.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Went on to direct Toy Story at Pixar. Scooped up by another
| fired visionary, Steve Jobs.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Hmm, this is the first time I've heard an explanation for the
| thick outlines of American cartoons. The visual difference
| between "Sleeping Beauty" and "101 Dalmatians" is striking.
| Black-outlines were needed because the cels on 101-Dalmatians
| were designed to be used in many different scenes.
|
| In contrast, each outline in Sleeping Beauty was specifically
| designed for its own scene: lighter Yellow outlines on Sleeping
| Beauty's hair to contrast with the dark castle around her.
|
| ----------
|
| The "Thick lines" is a tell-tale of American cartoon vs Japanese
| cartoons/anime. I never once imagined that this was because of
| the technology that American animators used.
|
| And it never occurred to me that these kinds of thick outlines
| would be offputting. I've lived with those outlines my whole life
| in a wide variety of cartoons: but we can see here that Walt
| Disney himself felt like they were too harsh the first time he
| saw 101 Dalmatians.
| basch wrote:
| The Mitchells vs the Machines has interesting stylized
| outlining around faces and clothing, not completely unlike
| Archer, but a much more complex watercolor variant.
| atlgator wrote:
| It was that one extra dalmatian that really put them over the
| mark.
| [deleted]
| open-source-ux wrote:
| One thing about 2D animation is that it is amenable to an
| infinite variety of drawing styles. If you can draw it, you can
| animate it. It's why 2D animation is so appealing, whether in
| short film or feature film form.
|
| In contrast, 3D animation (for feature films) feels stuck in an
| aesthetic rut - call it the "Pixar look".
|
| The recent animated film _Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse_ has
| a refreshing 3D /2D hybrid visual look. It's a satisfying break
| from the 'convential' look of 3D animated movies. I hope the
| success of _Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse_ will inspire more
| visually varied computer animated films to follow.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| _Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse_ has some very clever
| animation choices.
|
| *The Mitchell's vs The Machines" does seem to have a sort of
| blended 2D/3D thing going on as well.
| dragontamer wrote:
| There's many styles of 3d animation. Video-gamers can recognize
| them: Dragonball Fighter Z looks completely different from
| Cyberpunk 2077.
|
| Lets take one genre dominated by Japan: fighting games. Look at
| Street Fighter V, Dragonball FighterZ, Guilty Gear Strive,
| Tekken, and Mortal Kombat (the only non-Japanese on this list).
|
| None of these characters, or animation styles, are the same. In
| fact, Dragonball FighterZ clearly "bends" the rules of 3d
| animation the most (aka: squash and stretch animation), likely
| because the original source material (Dragonball Z / Dragonball
| Super) is traditional 2d animation.
|
| -------
|
| Street Fighter V was based off of Street Fighter IV's style,
| which was itself based off of Battle Fantasia. (Street Fighter
| Alpha, the game before IV, was traditional 2D animation, so
| they looked at other games for inspiration on how to make 3d
| look good).
| kadoban wrote:
| I think GP's point may have been specific to feature films.
| Games do have a lot of variety in 3D rendering styles, but
| how many of those do you see make it to films, especially
| mainstream films?
| lehi wrote:
| These are 3D characters from Pixar's most recent film:
| https://static.onecms.io/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/6/2020/10/...
| dragontamer wrote:
| Wreck-it-Ralph kind of cheated, but... how many different
| styles of 3D animation did you see in that film alone?
| (Wreck-it-Ralph is sort of the "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" of
| this generation, so it makes sense. No one will say that
| Betty Boop has a similar drawing style to Woody Woodpecker,
| even if both are characters in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit")
|
| ------
|
| Thanos (Avengers: Endgame), Shrek, Davy Jones (Pirates of
| the Caribbean), the Na'vi (Avatar), Spiderman (Into the
| Spiderverse), and the recreation of Princess Leia (Rogue
| One) are all 3d animation. Would you argue that they're the
| same style?
| slothtrop wrote:
| Right, not just rendering but character design and motion.
| One recent stand-out in 3D was "Cloudy With a Chance of
| Meatballs". The snappy, fluid and elastic movement, and
| designs, were a nice departure from convention that seemed
| to draw from 2d influences. Generally the other big studios
| knock-off the Pixar fashion.
|
| AAA games as of late are even more rigid as they aim for
| realistic-looking characters, save for monster-design. So
| you get the same brown-haired 6ft tall white guy hero in
| 90% of games.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > AAA games as of late are even more rigid as they aim
| for realistic-looking characters, save for monster-
| design. So you get the same brown-haired 6ft tall white
| guy hero in 90% of games.
|
| I dunno if that even qualifies as a style for FPS games,
| let alone AAA games in general.
|
| Overwatch, Gears of War, Halo, Team Fortress 2, Destiny,
| and Splatoon all have distinctive art styles.
|
| Sure, some games take inspiration / style from other
| games (ex: Fortnite clearly is going for Overwatch's
| style). Call of Duty vs Battlefront both also take from
| each other pretty severely.
|
| But there's more to AAA games than just Activision or EA
| Games.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _"Walt never worried about money. To him, it was just something
| you could spend to do things you wanted to," says Solomon._
|
| Then I wonder what Walt Disney would have to say today about the
| company bearing his name...
| mook wrote:
| Given that he was around during
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_animators%27_strike --
| probably not very much.
| stkdump wrote:
| It's crazy to think how unrecognizable the world is today in
| terms of attitude towards money. Yes, money allows big
| companies to do great things. But the real valuable work is to
| do great things, not to make a lot of money. If we knew of a
| better way to accomplish that than using money, I would be all
| for it, because it would allow for more people to do great
| things without having to care about funding.
| indigochill wrote:
| An idea in this vein I've been toying with is implementing a
| P2P IOU bartering protocol. I do something for you, you
| cryptographically sign me an IOU (which is a plaintext IOU
| note - no monetary amount required) which I can either call
| in later or trade to someone else who needs your services
| more for something I want from them. Messages sign adjacent
| messages (probably using Secure Scuttlebutt), so when someone
| comes back to you with the IOU, you can have a strong
| guarantee that it's the original note and not a copy even
| though you don't necessarily have visibility of all the
| participants it transited through.
|
| Even in theory, it only works in some contexts, though,
| namely in exchanges between individuals. Because there's a
| strong reliance that neighbors in the path trust each other
| and leaves them responsible for settling exchanges to mutual
| satisfaction. All this proposal adds to direct barter is
| long-distance authenticity guarantees.
| deepnet wrote:
| This is needed.
|
| IOU works well on small scales. It has often worked locally
| or within small communities[1]. LETS[2], babysitting
| vouchers, friends who value and track favours and keep the
| scales balanced.
|
| Make the FOSS infrastructure as easily deployable as
| wordpress.
|
| IOUs with a PGP signed chain of trust is brilliant and it
| could be a killer app for PGP adoption.
|
| Who of us doesn't owe Stallman and Torvalds at least a
| favour ? But never got their key-signed ?
|
| Widespread PGP adoption means lots of people would have
| their own crypto so privacy and trust could be run over any
| insecure transport medium.
|
| Maybe there could be a FIDOnet type central glue and
| exchange protocols so money could travel further than
| local.
|
| Local non-currency ledgers on a eco-friendly blockchain.
|
| Money is human glue. It represents creativity and potential
| energy.
|
| It is democratic to have lots of types of small monies so
| no-one has to be excluded. Small things often work well.
| National monies fail for a lot of people and cryptos
| current success model is to be worth something - and so are
| stuck being tied to national monies so the excluded are
| still excluded.
|
| Make it easy to make an altcoin, so anyone can and the goal
| can be stimulating a local economy rather than being tied
| back into the main one.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Exchange_System
| [2] https://www.lowimpact.org/lets-origins-michael-linton-
| letsys...
| wyager wrote:
| How is this not strictly worse than money? It's like money
| but not fungible.
| indigochill wrote:
| The non-fungiblity is the point. Fungible value tends
| towards centralization, but non-fungible value
| necessarily remains distributed. Even with something like
| bitcoin, the "central authority" is the network
| consensus.
|
| In this proposal, we don't even need consensus. The only
| thing that matters is human trust between individuals.
|
| That said, it is definitely worse than money if you want
| to make an exchange with someone more than a degree or
| two distant from you.
|
| Anyway, right now it's just a thought experiment. I think
| the critical feedback is sufficient motivation to just
| make the thing and see how it works or doesn't in
| practice.
| luma wrote:
| This sounds like money with extra steps.
| matheusd wrote:
| The Offset[1] project seems to be around that position in
| design space, at least going by their Economic Idea[2]
| page.
|
| [1] https://www.offsetcredit.org/
|
| [2]
| https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/intro/economic.html
| mavhc wrote:
| Disney spend loads on developing new technology for their
| films, and developing the story in their weird, but
| apparently successful way, while other animation studios
| don't often don't bother and just want to rake in the cash.
| csharptwdec19 wrote:
| This sounds inverted to me.
|
| There are two things that IMO Disney does far more than
| most other animation studios; First being sequel churn (the
| general pacing of MCU releases, the pacing on the last SW
| trilogy and sidecar movies,) But the bigger one being
| Toyetics. [0]
|
| Neither of those things are particularly 'innovative', and
| the latter of the two is a semi-exploitative practice of
| child psychology.
|
| [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyetic
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| Look up Disney Research and Disney Imagineering R&D.
| Check out their SIGGRAPH papers. I used to work for them
| (not representing them here), you'd be surprised at the
| scale+level of R&D activity.
| wdb wrote:
| Yeah, think there is a big Disney lab in Zurich?
| Clewza313 wrote:
| The most objective measure of "greatness" we have is money,
| which comes from people who think something is great and are
| willing to pay for it.
|
| Sometimes this works well: for example, pretty much everybody
| thinks _Toy Story_ is a great movie, and Lasseter and Pixar
| were rewarded handsomely for it. Sometimes it doesn 't work
| so well: for example, Wall Street thinks money is great, so
| they spend a lot of time and energy figuring out ways to
| extract more money from people.
| Emma_Goldman wrote:
| I don't think this is anywhere near as obvious as you make
| out. Film is an odd example, given that the films that lay
| claim to being great works of art (e.g, Koyaanisqatsi, Wild
| Strawberries, The Battle of Algiers) are rarely the most
| popular and highest-grossing films (e.g., Transformers,
| Avengers, Toy Story). We usually mean something by
| 'greatness' quite different from 'popular'.
|
| Even if we just focus on popularity (i.e., first-order
| preference satisfaction), money is a very rough proxy for
| it:
|
| 1. Lots of profitable activities, once you price-in their
| externalised social costs, are net negative. Given the
| scale of the climate and ecological crisis, that is very
| far from a marginal phenomenon. Ecological economists like
| Herman Daly argue that once ecological costs are included
| in the national accounts, we are running a GDP loss.
|
| 2. Some commodities are instrumentally necessary but
| intrinsically negative. Many people acknowledge that social
| media is a net negative, but use it anyway because it helps
| build their profile and career. Market dynamics often
| transform intrinsically positive activities into merely
| instrumentally necessary activities, e.g., the
| marketisation of academia means researchers spend their
| whole career optimising for maximum articles and grants,
| not great work.
|
| 3. Market demand reflects the stratified incomes of people
| around the world. Markets are therefore heavily skewed in
| favour of the interests of the rich.
|
| 4. Market exchanges which are mutually beneficial for the
| transacting parties often have unintended effects in the
| aggregate, sometimes negative, e.g., no one wants Facebook
| to be a monopoly, and no individual makes it so, but it is
| the aggregate consequence of people joining Facebook.
| stkdump wrote:
| I wouldn't say it is the most objective way. It is a
| remarkably simple way to accomplish a number of excellent
| things and with more success than other methods humanity
| tried so far.
|
| I hope we can come up with something better in the next few
| hundred years. The main problem of money lies exactly in
| its simplicity, i.e. everything becomes fungible, which in
| reality many things just aren't. To work around this we
| needed to invent stuff like taxation and legal persons. A
| mind-boggingly huge part of government and thus man-power
| is set aside to work around the problems that the
| fungibility of money creates. I am pretty sure there are
| superior technological solutions, where the rules/laws
| don't have to work-around ever more clever ways that
| cooperations and rich people use to work-around the limits
| we try to set for the fungibility of money.
| simonh wrote:
| An awful lot of them spend their time figuring out how to
| extract less money than other people, but make sure they're
| the ones doing the extracting. That's competition for you.
| underwater wrote:
| Money is a measure of the ability to earn money, nothing
| more.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| > The most objective measure of "greatness" we have is
| money
|
| Why is this more objective than other metrics? The fact you
| can easily put a number on it doesn't make it objective.
|
| It's a definite indicator of wealth, but surely _greatness_
| is a different thing?
| [deleted]
| canadianfella wrote:
| What other metrics?
| nxpnsv wrote:
| As soon as money doesn't only come from customers directly
| purchasing a thing you make, that is not a great metric.
| Money is more complicated than that.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The problem isn't money nor is it free enterprise nor is it
| markets. The problem is ehe capitalist structures of
| ownership that divorce production from ownership and
| commoditize all economic activity.
| clydethefrog wrote:
| He would've probably be disappointed that most Academy Awards
| after his death have been awarded to only the Pixar animation
| department. That man loved his awards.
| odiroot wrote:
| Companies became (purely?) investment vehicles for
| shareholders. These shareholders are frequently retirement
| funds and insurance companies.
|
| It all makes sense when you dig down.
| sorokod wrote:
| That part of the business was taken care by his brother Roy.
| Roy worried about money. A lot.
| trey-jones wrote:
| I don't really notice these visual details, but I appreciate the
| explanations behind them, and I find the history of the process
| and the integration of technology interesting.
|
| On a somewhat related note, I watched this film last week with my
| children (3,7,11) and I thought it was really great. Not that it
| was my first time seeing it, but my first time as an adult. I
| don't think it was rose-colored glasses, but I was just genuinely
| impressed by the story, voice acting (especially), animation, and
| the whole.
| Agentlien wrote:
| I work with computer graphics (in game development) and I love
| how much I notice about the technical details when watching
| movies.
|
| With Disney and Pixar it's often delight at how well made
| something is. With Hollywood productions it's often cringe at
| some cheap CG and obvious artifacts. Even then, I often enjoy
| being able to spot it.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| I watched it last night with my kids as it happens, and thought
| it was pretty bad. The story is basically just a single long
| chase sequence which doesn't really reward adult viewers. I
| much prefer the one millionth rewatch of Robin Hood, which
| definitely has a lot of flaws (really blatant reuse of
| animations) but is a lot more fun with a lot of different
| action sequences and jokes. Basically the only easter egg for
| adults in 101 Dalmatians is the What's My Crime TV show.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| I will say compared to Sleeping Beauty; it's at least
| watchable. SB was a triumph of the art department over any
| common sense. "Let's make a high modernist technicolor crazy
| angular art piece... about Sleeping Beauty." I can see how
| they talked themselves into it, but Walt should have talked
| them back out of it. That art style is fine for a short but
| can't hold a feature and conflicts with the goal of making a
| movie for children with resonant themes for adults.
| hulitu wrote:
| I thought Snowwhite and the seven dwarfs saved Disney.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Disney was on the ropes several times. Hand-drawn animation is
| a hugely expensive hits business, and at the beginning there
| wasn't a library providing huge ongoing royalties to tide them
| through the gaps.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Many companies have the 'bet the farm' style of management
| with movies. MGM 'bet the farm' many times with big
| production movies and then a plan B movie to hold them over
| if it failed. A good pairing of that would be Gone with the
| wind (bet the farm) and plan b Wizard of Oz. Get a few duds
| in a row and you get sold off to one of your competitors.
| Wonder where they will end up after Amazon.
|
| It was actually Iger who restructured Disney with the
| double/homerun style movies. Why did Disney crank out junk
| movie after junk movie in the 90s? Because they were cheap
| and consistently made money. I think Disney has gone back to
| bet the farm style. I personally think it will end up with
| them sliced up in to a bunch of smaller companies.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Not an Disney expect, but my take is it's more like it didn't
| kill Disney. It was the ~first full-length animated movie and
| was very expensive to produce.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| And "The Little Mermaid". And Pixar...
|
| I think Disney needs saving every generation.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are from an era of animation
| master pieces. The article describe the steps to make such films
| and how labor intensive it was. Hand drawn and hand painted, the
| difference in quality is remarkable compared to today's
| disposable computer-generated animation. In many ways, a lost art
| form, most likely there will never be another film produced in
| such a manner.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| I doubt the hundreds of people who spend thousands of hours
| over multiple years to make a single movie think of their work
| as disposable.
| linuxftw wrote:
| What they think in no way influences my opinion.
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