The 2003’s buzz bordered behemoth Nemo and bohemian Belleville. Finding Nemo © Disney Enterprises Inc./Pixar Animation Studios. All rights reserved. The Triplets of Belleville © 2003 Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.

2003 was the year that traditional animation cried “uncle.” And, unfortunately, Uncle Walt and his nephew Roy, left the building.

On the whole, sequels and TV spin-offs did OK at the box office, while big budget hand drawn films performed only fair to poor — but of course, a little CG fish swam on to become the highest grossing film of the year.

What does this signal to Hollywood? You guessed it — computer generated animated features are hot, with pre-sold TV and toy properties the only valid option left for 2D.

Thus, as 2004 begins, classic theatrical hand drawn character animation — for the first time since... well frankly, for the first time since animation began — is no longer being produced in Hollywood.

What went wrong? What went right? Let’s take a look.

Disney and Nick learned that low budget sequels & TV spinoffs — Jungle Book 2, Piglet’s Big Movie and Rugrats Go Wild respectively — have a box office ceiling that averages around $40 million in the U.S. The main audience — kids — were quite loyal, but then no real attempt to lure adults was expended on these matinee flicks.

The good news: Miramax’s Pokémon Heroes tanked. The fifth feature length Pikachu epic nails the coffin shut on that annoying TV fad — at long last. Anime, however, is very much alive and kicking, big time. The theatrical billboard release of TV anime hits Cowboy Bebop, Patlabor and Sakura Wars spun off into huge profits on DVD.

Brother Bear proved that 2D is only dead in the minds of some executives. © Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. All rights reserved.

The biggest surprise last year was the box office performance of Disney’s Brother Bear, grossing more than $80 million. No one was more surprised than Disney — they expected it to die — but its performance proved that a well crafted, sincere traditional cartoon feature can still get a gross. The problem for Brother Bear — and every other 2D animation project this year — was the phenomenal success of Finding Nemo.

If one wants to know where the heart of Disney animation went — it moved to Emeryville California. Pixar has now become the studio Disney once was. Finding Nemo, written and directed by Andrew Stanton, demonstrates the studio’s strength in blending computer graphics, classical character animation and good ‘ol cartooning.