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is 2-D is dead !

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is 2-D is dead !

As a guy that's trying make traditional animation today in a 3d dominated workplace i often feel that I'm on my own, i know my way around max,c4d, and xsi i use them to create a lot of content for my 2-D, but i would never get the satisfaction i do when drawing frames.

Anyway my question, is it possible in today's world of 3d movie to make a crust from 2-d animation, i mean freelance ? or are we all starving to death ?:o

Oh please.

Disney has 2D projects in development AND in production. Other studios also still produce 2D work.

2D is NOT dead if the medium is still being used--and it most assuredly IS still being used.

I still work in 2D. I draw my storyboards on paper and import them into Toon Boom. I'll probably always use paper in some manner or another to produce my boards, and if not in storyboarding then in other cartooning work.
I'll still use pencils, ink, paint.........all of those mediums still have applications and are still viable. I have been doing so for a long time now, and probably will do so until the day I retire, or die.

3D is a tool chest--that's ALL it is.
A LOT of people get suckered into the notion that 3D is the be-all and end-all of artistry.

Bullshit. Its not.
Its just another set of tools, used to create certain kinds of artwork.

To that end, it is why I stridently encourage other aspiring artists/cartoonists to become as fully functional as possible. Software is just another tool--it means NOTHING if you cannot produce appealing art with it.
Focus on producing good work, rather than just pushing pixels around.
Far too many people lose sight of this, and then wonder why they are not getting hired.
Learning software is just another skill-set, another set of procedures--something that anyone can learn, but the value judgements that allow an artist to create an appealing image cannot be taught, and must be developed through exploration.

"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)

Not in Europe, it's not...

I would say not at all. There are 7-15 feature productions starting in Europe each year, and from flicking through the catalog from Cartoon Movie(non profit org. for the European animation industry) I would say that more than 50% are 2D.

Here is a small selection of companies in Europe that all do 2D:

Cartoon Saloon* http://www.cartoonsaloon.ie
Walking the Dog* http://www.walkingthedog.be
Kecskemet Film* http://www.kecskemetfilm.hu
Artlegion* http://www.artlegion.com
Estudio Mariscal* http://www.mariscal.com
Animagic* http://www.animagicfilms.com
Jet Media* http://www.jetmedia.lv
Neomis Animation* http://www.neomisanimation.com
A-Film* http://www.afilm.com
Folimage http://www.folimage.fr
2D3D http://www.2d3d-animations.com/
Prima Linea http://www.primalinea.com
Millimages http://www.millimages.com
...and in Brazil
Lightstar Studios* http://www.lightstarstudios.com

All of those companies are doing traditional 2D animation frame by frame on paper, in fact most of them animate on paper quite often. They are of course also able to animate paperless and do 3D cgi, but good old paper, HB, pencil sharpeners, erasers, rotating light tables with front/back light and flipping pages are in.

So when animation is made on paper, line test would be any of the line test softwares including, in no particular order, flipbook, animo, harmony, ctp... with peg-bar and camera or preferably scanner with sheet feeder and stabilizer software and normally vectorization (normally a page a second would be obtainable).

Paper x-sheets are sometimes maintained during production of each milestone (2D animation milestones often Rough, Key and Inbetween/Cleanup), but the basic x-sheet would often be printed from the automatically generated line test setup's including audio waveforms for dialog, sound fx and music in different tracks, AND with written dialog, phonemes or mouth shapes, normally for each character, automatically imported from services like syncmagic.

Brendan and the secret of Kells ( http://www.thesecretofkells.com/ ) was final scanned in very high resolution to keep "the soul of the pencil in the film", no vectorizing here, but that is not standard.
Have a look here at the director, Tomm Moore's blog, http://theblogofkells.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2007-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2008-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=35 with pictures from some of the studios.

Coloring would quite often be made digitally though, using your favorite color tool.

Productions in Europe are very often Co-Productions, mainly for financial reasons. Subcontractors are also often used.

HoBSoft is a company that, amongst other services, makes it possible to work efficiently together in several studios over long distances, something that becomes more and more necessary.

The last production finished was 2D on paper, "Brendan and the secret of Kells" ( http://www.thesecretofkells.com/ ) produced in 7 studios around Europe and Brazil, with headquarter in Kilkenny-Ireland. For the last half of the production the PM (Camille Leganza, now DreamWorks Redwood) worked almost 100% from her home in Turkey, keeping the reins on 6 producing studios from the comfort of her own home.

Currently we are managing "Chico & Rita" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235830/ ), 2D on paper, produced in 6 studios between Sao Paolo and Riga, with headquarter in Barcelona-Spain.
See here for another discussion of this production Chico & Rita - 2D(+3D) on love and latin jazz

So is 2D dead? Not in Europe, it is not... but one could argue that the films produced there does not reach huge masses of cinema goers and as such does not really count... but it is alive.

HoBSoft Automated animation workflow for feature and tv-series

agreed

Totally agree with you guys, don't get me wrong, i replied with a similar reaction when i was told by a Nob in a well known studio that the only way to make a living today was by way of 3D, that's why i wanted to ask the question.

Ken, i have been learning animation for 3 years, in 2-D animation terms i am a novice, i have spent a lot of that time learning software but most of it trying to understand basic's of movement, and character development, i come from a art background in still life so it's taken me a while to learn to make things as simple as possible as well as creating my own unique style, getting there !

thanks for comments, it's good to know there are people still championing 2-D !

Thanks

and thanks for all the links will av a butchers right now !