What caused the decline in 2d animation in the last 10 years?

Taking too many shortcuts to save a buck, reduced budgets, too much outsourcing but most of all Calarts.

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toy sales used to finance the high costs of animation.
with the rise of gaming and youtube toy sales declined so studios had to cut back on costs which lead to less detailed, shitty looking animation styles becoming the norm.
Woman and sjws also played a big role in the decline. By demanding quotas and more "diversity" a lot of talentless women and minority people got picked over more talented asian and white male animators simply due to their gender and skin color. Those female and minority animators in return only produced even more shitty looking animation with tons of feminist and sjw story elements injected into the new shows as well which alienated the main toy buying demographic of white boys. This naturally lead to toy sales only decline more.

Because 2D was always a niche that was hard to sell to audiences. Disney in the 90s was a massive unprecented fluke that doesn't represent western animation as a whole, and 2D swiftly died out right after.

Nothing new. Western 2d animations couldn't adapt AAA business. The west just chose the global marketing with a bunch of ads and budgets. Though French could make it with Japanese studios.

>What caused the decline in 2d animation in the last 10 years?

A lot of people ask this question and really want a satisfying answer and the the truth is, it really isn't all that satisfying.

It was just the perfect storm of fuck ups during a time when a rising medium was dominating. In the early 2000s 2d films across three major studios Disney, DreamWorks, and Fox saw themselves failing miserably at the box office i.e. Treasure Planet, Sinbad, and Titan AE. At the same time these three studios saw box office success with 3d films that their studios either produced or made in house i.e. Chicken Little, (yes it was a success) Shrek, and Ice Age. So to the main film studios it just made sense to close down the 2d studios and re-invest in 3d despite the higher production costs because it meant higher cash revenue.

That's really it. 2d didn't die because of sinister plots or a dastardly plan. It was just coincidentally bad timing among three major film studios in a very cut throat business

wasn't MLP the movie 2D too?

It's closer to 20 at this point and the problem is that 3D animation is far more convenient and a lot of unfortunate timing Disney's films in the early millennium, their traditional animations, like Treasure Planet, or Atlantis, were received poorly not for lack of quality but because they had very poor exposure and were up against juggernauts of films at the time. Treasure Planet was opening up against the second Harry Potter film during the height of Harry Potter mania,, the Lord of the Rings etc. It had a lot to compete with, and the cost, versus the poor reception made Disney think 'maybe traditionally drawn animation is played out' Shrek's success is what really signaled the shift over to '3D is at the point it's both affordable and people are paying out the ass to see this' back in 2001.

Ultimately, Disney's tried flirting with the idea again but the dividends don't pay off, because the Princess and the Frog, while it did well, had a lot of fucking competition and alienated a lot of the boy demographic with it's name. Little boys are going to be too embarrassed to see a film called the Princess and the Frog, which is why the name of Rapunzel was changed in development to Tangled.

Birdboy: The Forgotten Children
and The Congress also came to cinemas

Uh uh

Shrek

Horse movie, too.

One of the biggest truths is that there will never ever be a revival of 2D animation in the west and anime will always out perform anything the west produces.

Market saturation in the '90s along with some high profile failures because of weird material choices and often poor marketing coinciding with a long string of successful CG films made executives turn against the medium.

Pretty much the same thing that happened to scifi in the late '60s and westerns in the '70s but without a Star Wars/Close Encounters duo to resurrect it.

PatF probably would have cost about half as much if Disney hadn't completely shut down both 2D feature departments a few years earlier.

>that tweet

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>Woman and sjws also played a big role in the decline. By demanding quotas and more "diversity" a lot of talentless women and minority people got picked over more talented asian and white male animators simply due to their gender and skin color.

mostly of 2d animation is outsourced to south korea and japan. stop saying crap

3D is easier. Takes less time and skill to animate, so it's cheaper to do. It always comes down to money.

>3D is easier

if you take in consideration that, then it would have costed more, because you would have to pay that animation team their wages and program licenses for god knows how long.

What on earth does that have to do with the lack of 2D animated movies?

Well, that's like asking why we haven't seen any pictures without sound or any movies in black and white (outside or art films). Massive audiences don't rrspond well to such films and CG animations is where the trend is.

it is. In theory a team of 5 (rigger, sculptor, 3D artist, uv mapper, dedicated animator for testing) can make all the main characters for a movie. Then it just becomes a matter of giving the character to the rest of the animators and then they can begin working. There is no need to keep style consistency because the character is the same, and if there is the need to create new clothing for the character or if you need to move the camera, you don't need to redo all the animation from scratch.

You really don't understand how CG films are made do you?

There's nothing easy about asset modeling, uv mapping, texturing, rigging, environment setting, animating, lighting, effect engineering, rendering, and compositing a 3d movie.

>What caused the decline in 2d animation in the last 10 years?

Japan

that's bullshit, only americans stopped producing 2D

In theory you are fucking stupid

Wonder why literally ONLY Japan does it in the world. Why can't any other country make and develop it?
Couldn't imagine the world would be this uniform and unvarying.

My little pony had a 2D movie in 2017

The first two equestria girls too were released in theaters

literally this and nothing else on this thread

Animation is a factory process. The CalArts style is part of some neo-postmodern bullshit where it's partially tied to an ideology. You're doing blobforms out of some concept of aesthetic purity and presenting flaws and diversity as positive via a lack of definition.

Nobody wants to pay millions to hire these modern animation grads for a project on the scale of an animated motion picture, and even if they did they'd rebel and attempt to unionize after a week.

Apparently the person in OP is really shit at looking things up because there'd been a hell of a lot more hand-drawn theatrical movies in the past ten years.

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Your still not accounting for a dozen variables. What about cloth simulation? Particle animation for effects? Hair? You know one rig can't be used by the entirety of your animated cast and it really isn't easy, a single rig can take months to produce. What about asset management? What about the shear amount of tech you need to run all this software and more importantly render it? What about a team to monitor renders?

In theory a single guy can make a 2D movie

>blaming outsourced Asians
They didn’t create the storyboard idiot

That's the biggest stretch I've seen to try and blame CalArts for any given problem in animation.

If you want to rotate a camera around a character in 3D, you rotate the camera. If you want to do it in 2D you've gotta DRAW that shit.

>If you want to rotate a camera around a character in 3D, you have to model the character, the assets in the environment, uv and texture everything, rig the assets and the camera, light the environment, rotate the camera, then render everything out at 1 frame every 30 minutes if your conservative. If you want to do it in 2D you've just gotta draw it.

You can make the other side look just as easy if you omit shit.

Asians still prefer 2d. And probably this goes for blacks and Latinos. I think it's because, actually, at least in the US, white audience and creators got bored with 2d. They were the ones who were making it no matter what.

This, and also that excecs can a lot easier intervene in the movie when everything can be made from a computer. Same with practical effects. There is much less hands on or personal touch in 3D than, and if you want to alter something, its just about remodelling sequences and not starting from scratch

Worst part is Hollywood was warned about this, but its around the same time that the current establishment began pushing for changes in the power structure

Limited release.Also utter garbage,there's nothing to be proud those two shits.This thing was in the continuity of Hollywood laziness,refusal to create new IPs and instead shoehorning popular concepts in a universe where it doesnt fit or doesnt make sense,here Monster High dolls in a "furry/talking animals universe.

It's WAY easier to reuse assets from 3D films.

Disney has gotten especially lazy about it lately and even obvious unique character models have been springing up in new productions. (Look at the baby girls from the mid-credit scene in Wreck it Ralph 2 and how it's a blatant rip of the baby Moana model.)

Once all the assets are created, your job is done. Nothing needs to be redrawn and recolored thousands of times in order to create the illusion of motion. You basically become puppeteers after the models are rigged. You fuckers don't even know HOW to draw, half the time.

Combo of a few things:

1)It's easier to go from a storyboard, full animatic, to finished render. Especially with how automated server farms have gotten in automatically finishing scenes and then only needing light adjustment from technicians.

2) Major studios can save a TON of money using the same engine and assets for multiple films. Almost all of the current 3D Disney films can trace themselves back to the engine they created with Tangled. (This goes from background elements all the way to character models. Same reason why Bethesda continues to use the same engine since the Morrowind dayts.)

They have developed the sort of pipepline that can turn intellectual properties from other sources (like LNs and manga or whatever personal dream project of the directors) into anime.

They have access to a talent pool of animators from across East and SE Asia as well as their own.

They have a model for funding all of this.

Basically they have developed the infrastructure that makes it easier (as compared to other countries) to turn something into a show.

Its more technically difficult, but as an artistic practicality 3D is in all ways a easier craft. The major difference in a business perspective is that to do good/impressive 3D, you need MASSIVE funds for equipment and manpower, whereas any goofy squad of nerds can do 2D, its just takes more skill, patience and time. Look at pictures from animation floors for 2D productions and 3D productions. 2D is some guys on a run-of-the-mill office floor, whereas 3D is an entire fucking factory

Those assets are hard as fuck make.

He's talking about the shift from to cgi being pushed by the owners of the industry for the purpose of streamlining. Ultimately basics in 2d aren't even taught in schools anymore for this very reason.

A large portion of calarts grads go into 3d animation you retard.

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CGI

>To do 2d animations you need good artists that also know how to properly do animation which isn't easy or cheap.
>Meanwhile with CGI you can just hire a bunch of fucks to do animation because soon as modelling and rigging is done the rest of process is quite simple only needed be polished by rest of staff. Also way faster to pump.

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Why don't they just use a mixture of 2D and 3D like with that one Disney short or like how the Lion Guard works? That shit looks good and it uses fucking flash.

It doesn't sell. Simple as that.

It’s because of whatever current group or association I hate right now.

Then why are they making a Steven Universe Movie?

He said 3D is easIER, which is correct. Not 3D is easY, which is patently absurd and far too many people still believe to be the case.

You could say the same about in-betweeners. The reality is the public isn’t interested in 2d animation anymore. Just look to tangled vs princess and the frog box office comparison.

No budget. People want the new innovative CGI and 3D graphix. Were gonna end up losing this type of animation and our only saviors are goddamn youtubers and newgrounders.

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You ever wonder if Netflix is pushing production companies to make bad decisions so they can poach the bombs after they fail in the theaters?

How was it?

>3D is much easier if you have the cash and assets
>Constant Disney fuckups in the early 2000’s (Home on the Range, Brother Bear) compared to Pixar made them think that 2D was the problem
>Doing a 2D movie at this point against Japan is asking to get your shit kicked in. 3D avoids this thanks to Japan not being good at it, but god help you once studios figure out how to do Arc System’s style of animation for cheap.
>3D animators are replaceable, 2D ones are not.
>Other Western nations have made 2D movies but America wants that cash money from it’s own studios and blocks them out. Japan gets a pass thanks to weeb money.

Video games also get similar flak.

No matter how good they are or if they are excellently animated, the response is always nearly same.

>Looks like snes sprites.

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But all the cgi movie have to be drawn in 2d first

Princess and the frog had to compete with Avatar it is not a fair comparasion.

the thing is that if you want a camera change those things are already done as part of the pre-production process. You don't need to repeat those steps every thing the director wants to move the camera around.

You don't need to know how to draw in order to be a good animator. It definitely helps, but on the other hand, stick figures animators are a thing.

People don't give a shit about 2d animation because they think it's for babies and children. I have no idea why. There is some serious cognitive dissonance going on with the wider public. My friends who are Disney drones that watch every Marvel movie (AKA the average American) thought that visually Into the Spiderverse was incredible, while Akira was just meh. Don't get me wrong I think they both look great, but comparing the visual style and subject matter one can plainly see that Into the Spiderverse would be much closer to the definition of a children's movie. It moves fast and has a lot of bright colors, and the characters have big heads and huge eyes. Akira isn't those things, and yet the main takeaway my friends had from Akira (OBJECTIVELY THE BEST LOOKING 2D ANIMATED FILM OBJECTIVELY) was that it was weird seeing drawings do mature and violent non-cartoony things(my disappointment was very large). I guess when the average person thinks 2d animation they just instantly think Looney Tunes or Dora? Basically the medium has never garnered respect and never will. It's baby shit.

>Once all the assets are created, your job is done
>He thinks assets aren't constantly changed or edited up until the rendering process.

but if you use iterations and references, you only need to edit one and the rest of the assets are updated.

You should stop talking about a medium you know nothing about

2d animation is incredible and superior and the fact that most people see it as a genre for children and not a medium for anything is shit. It's just SHIT

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Except that's how i do it in my job. Maya literally has the option of importing assets as references, allowing you to edit the original and having all the other copies be updated without having to enter to each and every scene and replacing them manually.

Even 3D anime has upped it's quality
youtube.com/watch?v=SBwyCtYq9ik

The belief that it is a medium for kids, the studios refusing to put money into projects that go against that notion and the attitudes of people working in the industry to not even bother going against the grain.

There are a lot of reasons, depending on how cynical you want to be. Mostly, it has to be big studios pushing out 3D films and so that's what most people are familiar with and expect for quality. Past that, you can say anything from big film studios intentionally pushing that idea to stifle competition, to universities no longer teaching animation because of rich prep kids, to cost saving techniques.

If recent box office numbers are anything to go by, not even 3D is doing well anymore. Pets 2 underperformed massively when compared to the first one, as did Toy Story 4 albeit not as drastically, and who knows how Frozen 2 will do.

Frankly, I'm genuinely worried we might see a full blown crash in the western animation industry some time soon.

Kids don't give two fucks about cartoons anymore and would rather watch let's players scream or someshit, and the closest thing they'll see to animation are those vloggers who use animated avatars to portray themselves, like odd1sout.

The animation industry is stuck in the past and desperately seeking a way to stay relevant to a generation that couldn't care less about it.

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Toy story 4 is almost at a billion in the box office.

Notice the "albeit" not as drastically.
It did well sure, but by all rights it should've done far better.

Your friend sounds like a typical westacuck. I mean he's just insular and closed minded to foreign stuff.

It's doing better in Europe than America.

you are just boomers
3D can be as good as 2D or even better

he is ignoring every movie that is not Japanese or American

money, time and skill is something that you need in more quantity when doing 2d animation. The cheaper and easiest method almost always wins.

Japan is the same, nobody cares about anime movies outside the same 3-4 franchises
But otaku money is strong and autistic and seasonal anime still exists somehow, barely.

U wot ??? EQ is kino

>nobody cares about anime movies outside the same 3-4 franchises
Horseshit. Your Name was entirely original and is the best selling movie of all time for the country, not counting obvious imports. And other original movies still do relatively strong

And more the point, the anime industry is nowhere near the size of the North American animation industry or has even a tenth of the influence. At best it's a cheap way to get products people like

>otaku money is strong
>but it doesn't count because I said so
That's retarded user. The anime industry is thriving more than the western industry, despite its own shit that currently fucking it over.

The two can't be compared outside of a base level, and you going
>b-but Japan
Isn't going to change that.

The idea that 3D is cheaper is false. Go look at the budgets for a bunch of Disney 2D movies and compare them to their 3D movies. Even counting inflation, the 3D stuff costs like $20-$100 million MORE. Even their live action movies cost more.

I think they just don't think 2D can sell because executives just latch onto the last thing they saw and consider it a natural law. I also think it might have something to do with screwing over unions. Discarding the stronger and more entrenched 2D animator union so they can screw over a bunch of 3D artists who aren't as well protected. The workload on Toy Story 2 nearly claimed someone's life so who knows what the conditions are like.

pic related: people who blame the decline of 2D on Cal-Arts and SJWs

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No they fucking don't, who the fuck is even complaining about something like Hollow Knight being 2D?

It had two theatrical just one of them is horse-humans.

>I think they just don't think 2D can sell because executives just latch onto the last thing they saw and consider it a natural law.
While you're also probably right about that the other big benefit as to why executives love 3D so much is time management. 2D requires a lot of time and human resources. 3D costs more but technology does most of the work and does it faster.

>toy sales used to finance the high costs of animation.
Only before the late 80s (and most merch driven cartoons were of terrible quality), Duck Tales spawned a new wave of cartoons that were more self sufficient.
Either way this has nothing to do with decline of 2D animation in cinema, which was never toy driven. That came due to a combination of factors including but not limited to:
>The booming popularity of the far more cost efficient 3D animation in feature length films.
>The influx of low quality television spin off theatrical films attempting to capitalize off the success of the Rugrats movie.
>Disney sabotaging its own 2D animation studios so it could justify moving to 3D to investors.
And etc etc

>and who knows how Frozen 2 will do.
Probably somewhere around a billion

>Japan is the same, nobody cares about anime movies outside the same 3-4 franchises
Yeah, that is straight up wrong.

Around the time Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid became huge successes every big studio wanted a part of the animation pie. This overall streak of success from Disney continued for a few years with Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.

But then we had the middling profit streak of Pocahontas, Hunchback and Hercules, which made the studios waver and lose confidence. This was the real start of decline.

3D was an exec's wet dream. During the production of The Land Before Time, Spielberg didn't like the look of a scene and requested the animators to change the camera angle. The animators had to explain to him that it meant scrapping all work done for that scene and starting from scratch.

Cost savings

2D is declining ONLY in the US.
Everywhere else, 2D animations are getting made, even in fucking AFRICA.

It's okay, not as good as it could be.
Only thrird one.
Good. Fuck the industry, let it die.

>Japan is the same, nobody cares about anime movies outside the same 3-4 franchises
Let me guess. Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Doraemon, right? You're full of shit, user.

I've taken both courses on 2D and 3D and it's true that CGI is easy as FUCK when you learn how to do everything. 2D literally made me want to kill myself and I fucked up and had to start entire sequences over. CGI I just fucked with the controls and graph editor and shit went fast. Rendering can be a Bitch but the actual production fast as fuck. That being said, 2D was very interesting but I don't know if I have the patience.