Onward was such anawful piece of shit that I literally couldn't sit through it. I tried on three seperate occasions to watch it and never finished it. I have never had that problem with any other Pixar film. Onward is that bad.
I know of an animator who worked at Pixar for 20 years who left a few years ago. Saw this was the direction they were moving in and jumped ship. He even said when asked that he's never even seen their most recent films, including ones that would have been in production when he still worked there.
To understand what went wrong, you have to look at what made it so good in the first place then see how those factors changed over time.
One is just time. The writers and animators who created Pixar's best works are a lot older now, and I think that the new people who filter in at the bottom to replace them are not as talented. The environment that created 3D animators in 2000 is much different than what is creating 3D animators today. Over time, enough of the most talented people either leave or become stagnant.
Another part of time is that the industry as a whole changes. When Pixar was making it's best films, the technology was getting better each time, so each new film was created to take advantage of that and be better than the last. But also because the technology was still in rapid development, there were still limitations that breed creativity. Now that factor of constantly increasing technical quality and possibilities isn't behind them pushing anymore.
The guy who quit mentioned Spider-verse as a big moment. The reason it was so important and shook up the industry so much, even at Pixar, wasn't even it's style being so new and fresh, but just the fact it even had a distinct style in the first place. Obviously every film Pixar made has had a style, but it was largely dictated by the limited tech at the time, and once the tech was no longer such a big factor in what they could do they were already in a groove. They had started to stagnate. Then after Spider-verse, they realized they needed to change everything up, which is part of why the most recent Pixar films feel somewhat directionless.
Another factor I couldn't fit in the last post is creative in-breeding.
At the same time that Pixar is searching for something new to stick, and a lot of their older team is aging out, they now have to deal with all of the incoming young talent having watched Pixar movies their entire childhood, and getting into 3D animation with the expressed intent of working at Pixar. This is also part of why I think a lot of their recent films almost feel like an AI was asked to make a Pixar (tm) movie. All of the new people working at Pixar want to make Pixar movies, just like the ones they grew up with, while also trying to be totally creative and off the wall. It creates a situation where whatever they make just ends up being derivative of themselves, while also having this sort of empty faux creativity.
When animation students fresh out of university are lining up with portfolios tailor made to get into Pixar, their whole time studying, all just trying to "make something like Pixar", you aren't going to get any new hires that actually have any really different ideas to breath any new life into the company.
>At the same time that Pixar is searching for something new to stick, and a lot of their older team is aging out, they now have to deal with all of the incoming young talent having watched Pixar movies their entire childhood, and getting into 3D animation with the expressed intent of working at Pixar.
Prior to the 1990s most up and coming comic book talent were conventionally trained in the basics e.g. anatomy. Rob Liefeld dropped out of art school on the "I didn't go to film school, I went to films" Tarantino methodology of "just imitate what you like without comprehension of what underpins it" which is creatively degenerate (not in the moral sense).
Allowing those self-taught, low-discipline chucklefricks to take the reins damages the passage of knowledge between generations, regardless of medium, without exception.
Another factor I couldn't fit in the last post is creative in-breeding.
At the same time that Pixar is searching for something new to stick, and a lot of their older team is aging out, they now have to deal with all of the incoming young talent having watched Pixar movies their entire childhood, and getting into 3D animation with the expressed intent of working at Pixar. This is also part of why I think a lot of their recent films almost feel like an AI was asked to make a Pixar (tm) movie. All of the new people working at Pixar want to make Pixar movies, just like the ones they grew up with, while also trying to be totally creative and off the wall. It creates a situation where whatever they make just ends up being derivative of themselves, while also having this sort of empty faux creativity.
When animation students fresh out of university are lining up with portfolios tailor made to get into Pixar, their whole time studying, all just trying to "make something like Pixar", you aren't going to get any new hires that actually have any really different ideas to breath any new life into the company.
big if true. It really does seem like there's some internal chaos happening at Pixar at the moment.
>I think that the new people who filter in at the bottom to replace them are not as talented.
Mentors just aren't a thing anymore. We don't have a constant conveyor belt of young blood directly learning from experienced veterans who will then get their big break after years of practice and getting vouched for. We have young artists being thrown into major positions such as story artists after only being out of college for two fricking years.
They will learn the basics of storytelling, they might pick up bits and pieces from their peers, but it's all insular growth. Things aren't being challenged to the degree where a co-worker might suggest to someone else that maybe their entire story is not working and they need to start over. Instead, they all encourage one another in a safe environment-- they try to make the existing story work with tweaks and changes. A veteran who comes in and says they need to start over will be labelled as "hard to work with" or be accused of creating a hostile environment.
I had an animation teacher who worked at Disney and all he did on Aladdin was animate the tassels on carpet. After that, it was constant background character and crowd shot animation and then he moved onto inbetween work for character animation. For years, he was merely supporting the experienced artists and learning how they did stuff by cleaning up or inbetweening their animations. It was how he got to learn because he just spent years of absorbing masters before getting the chance to prove himself. It wasn't until Tarzan where he finally got a major character to be an animator for.
I don't know if the industry is purposely trying to take advantage of young artists by giving projects to helm fresh out of college because they're cheap-- or if they're doing it because they want "fresh blood" to "think outside the box". Either way, there is definitely skill being lost in this next wave of artists and even general audiences are noticing.
Yeah, I think knowledge loss is inevitable at this point. I'm studying animation right now, and the best of my peers aren't much better than me, and I suck. I think there is a subset of people going into animation who can tell what's up, but there is just so much saving face that you really have to be hyper self-aware to even know how good you are.Then some new crap ass kid's cartoon comes out and I hear about how amazing it is from everybody.
But I do think there still are people who at least strive to be great and are aware enough to know what great actually means. So what I hope is that those people can at least make something. I think talented people might have to just go the indie route, make stuff with a smaller scope but higher quality. But who knows, we'll have to see.
Their idea guy was a giant sexual abuser. The studio lost its identity and now it's lost and trying to find something thst sticks. That's why we are getting Toy Story 5 btw. Pixar needs a safe bet to keep the lights on and the train going so they can find their new thing.
In my opinion, Brave was the beginning of the end. A betrayal of the Pixar ethos. Crassly commercial. Princess movies where for Disney Studios, Pixar was for innovation and non-traditional protagonists.
Cars was a commercial for toys, no denying that. But the in 2008 the idea of Pixar doing a Disney Princess movie was controversial to say the least.
At least it's not subpar sequels like Monsters U, Cars 2, Toy Story 4, etc.
If those somehow flop, it's actually over for Pixar
Monsters University is a good movie
4 of them was due to the pandemic directly. The last 2 is because of the consequence of the pandemic.
The pandemic is basically over. There is no excuse for the last two.
ummmm...? sorry sweaty, but havent you heard of "long covid"? it's pretty much fact by now.
John Lasseter, Pete Docter, and Brad Bird are all edgelords
Lasseter got metoo’d.
For all of his pervy-ness, Lasseter was essentially the Miyazaki of Pixar. Since he's been gone the ship has run aground.
Onward and Soul are fine. Mid-tier Pixar movies compared to their Golden Age. Outside of that comparison they're solid.
The rest are just trash.
Onward was such anawful piece of shit that I literally couldn't sit through it. I tried on three seperate occasions to watch it and never finished it. I have never had that problem with any other Pixar film. Onward is that bad.
Frick you, Soul was good
Maybe. But it flopped.
I know of an animator who worked at Pixar for 20 years who left a few years ago. Saw this was the direction they were moving in and jumped ship. He even said when asked that he's never even seen their most recent films, including ones that would have been in production when he still worked there.
To understand what went wrong, you have to look at what made it so good in the first place then see how those factors changed over time.
One is just time. The writers and animators who created Pixar's best works are a lot older now, and I think that the new people who filter in at the bottom to replace them are not as talented. The environment that created 3D animators in 2000 is much different than what is creating 3D animators today. Over time, enough of the most talented people either leave or become stagnant.
Another part of time is that the industry as a whole changes. When Pixar was making it's best films, the technology was getting better each time, so each new film was created to take advantage of that and be better than the last. But also because the technology was still in rapid development, there were still limitations that breed creativity. Now that factor of constantly increasing technical quality and possibilities isn't behind them pushing anymore.
The guy who quit mentioned Spider-verse as a big moment. The reason it was so important and shook up the industry so much, even at Pixar, wasn't even it's style being so new and fresh, but just the fact it even had a distinct style in the first place. Obviously every film Pixar made has had a style, but it was largely dictated by the limited tech at the time, and once the tech was no longer such a big factor in what they could do they were already in a groove. They had started to stagnate. Then after Spider-verse, they realized they needed to change everything up, which is part of why the most recent Pixar films feel somewhat directionless.
That shit really is the modern day sleeping beauty.
I SLEPT THROUGH IT like a beauty!
DOHOHOHO.
Another factor I couldn't fit in the last post is creative in-breeding.
At the same time that Pixar is searching for something new to stick, and a lot of their older team is aging out, they now have to deal with all of the incoming young talent having watched Pixar movies their entire childhood, and getting into 3D animation with the expressed intent of working at Pixar. This is also part of why I think a lot of their recent films almost feel like an AI was asked to make a Pixar (tm) movie. All of the new people working at Pixar want to make Pixar movies, just like the ones they grew up with, while also trying to be totally creative and off the wall. It creates a situation where whatever they make just ends up being derivative of themselves, while also having this sort of empty faux creativity.
When animation students fresh out of university are lining up with portfolios tailor made to get into Pixar, their whole time studying, all just trying to "make something like Pixar", you aren't going to get any new hires that actually have any really different ideas to breath any new life into the company.
Look Tomar it's you.
>At the same time that Pixar is searching for something new to stick, and a lot of their older team is aging out, they now have to deal with all of the incoming young talent having watched Pixar movies their entire childhood, and getting into 3D animation with the expressed intent of working at Pixar.
Prior to the 1990s most up and coming comic book talent were conventionally trained in the basics e.g. anatomy. Rob Liefeld dropped out of art school on the "I didn't go to film school, I went to films" Tarantino methodology of "just imitate what you like without comprehension of what underpins it" which is creatively degenerate (not in the moral sense).
Allowing those self-taught, low-discipline chucklefricks to take the reins damages the passage of knowledge between generations, regardless of medium, without exception.
>Tomar
Why?
big if true. It really does seem like there's some internal chaos happening at Pixar at the moment.
>I think that the new people who filter in at the bottom to replace them are not as talented.
Mentors just aren't a thing anymore. We don't have a constant conveyor belt of young blood directly learning from experienced veterans who will then get their big break after years of practice and getting vouched for. We have young artists being thrown into major positions such as story artists after only being out of college for two fricking years.
They will learn the basics of storytelling, they might pick up bits and pieces from their peers, but it's all insular growth. Things aren't being challenged to the degree where a co-worker might suggest to someone else that maybe their entire story is not working and they need to start over. Instead, they all encourage one another in a safe environment-- they try to make the existing story work with tweaks and changes. A veteran who comes in and says they need to start over will be labelled as "hard to work with" or be accused of creating a hostile environment.
I had an animation teacher who worked at Disney and all he did on Aladdin was animate the tassels on carpet. After that, it was constant background character and crowd shot animation and then he moved onto inbetween work for character animation. For years, he was merely supporting the experienced artists and learning how they did stuff by cleaning up or inbetweening their animations. It was how he got to learn because he just spent years of absorbing masters before getting the chance to prove himself. It wasn't until Tarzan where he finally got a major character to be an animator for.
I don't know if the industry is purposely trying to take advantage of young artists by giving projects to helm fresh out of college because they're cheap-- or if they're doing it because they want "fresh blood" to "think outside the box". Either way, there is definitely skill being lost in this next wave of artists and even general audiences are noticing.
Yeah, I think knowledge loss is inevitable at this point. I'm studying animation right now, and the best of my peers aren't much better than me, and I suck. I think there is a subset of people going into animation who can tell what's up, but there is just so much saving face that you really have to be hyper self-aware to even know how good you are.Then some new crap ass kid's cartoon comes out and I hear about how amazing it is from everybody.
But I do think there still are people who at least strive to be great and are aware enough to know what great actually means. So what I hope is that those people can at least make something. I think talented people might have to just go the indie route, make stuff with a smaller scope but higher quality. But who knows, we'll have to see.
Joe Ranft died and no one since has taken his place as the soul and conscience
It's honestly that simple
>Joe Ranft died
Closest thing to sense in this thread, but still not really the whole truth.
Let me show you WHEN Everything began to fall
Their idea guy was a giant sexual abuser. The studio lost its identity and now it's lost and trying to find something thst sticks. That's why we are getting Toy Story 5 btw. Pixar needs a safe bet to keep the lights on and the train going so they can find their new thing.
>giant sexual abuser
Oh frick off.
Their entire studio identity became “we’re so deep and mature, and our movies make you cry” after Up.
In my opinion, Brave was the beginning of the end. A betrayal of the Pixar ethos. Crassly commercial. Princess movies where for Disney Studios, Pixar was for innovation and non-traditional protagonists.
Cars was a commercial for toys, no denying that. But the in 2008 the idea of Pixar doing a Disney Princess movie was controversial to say the least.