Paperman

Paperman accompanied Wreck-It Ralph in the theaters last year but was released online yesterday. The short film is nominated for an Oscar in part because of its aesthetic: it’s a CGI-animated film from Disney that looks like it’s hand drawn.

Director John Kahrs told Cartoon Brew that the origin of Paperman “really came out of working so much with Glen [Keane] on Tangled.” After looking at the work of Keane — a classic Disney animator who worked on The Little Mermaid, Beauty and The Beast and Aladdin, among many other projects — Kahrs found himself with a new appreciation for traditional animation and drawing techniques. “I thought, Why do we have to leave these drawings behind? Why can’t we bring them back up to the front of the image again? Is there a way that CG can kinda carry along the hand drawn line in a way that we haven’t done before?”

The answer was yes. It just required a technology that no one had actually created yet.

Reminds me a bit of what Wes Anderson did with th stop motion animation in Fantastic Mr. Fox…he went back to a more traditional look that made the whole thing look less polished than it might have with newer techniques.

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