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Why 2D Animation HAD To Die
Oct 3, 2025
When Disney released Chicken Little into theaters, and it failed, it seemed like the sky was falling for the House of Mouse. A few years later Disney would put out their final films using the traditional 2D Animation style and move completely into CG Animation. With studios like Pixar and Dreamworks leading the way, Disney had to figure out a way to stay in the game. Though after eventually finding their footing, Disney is now beginning to revert back to it's 2D Animation style, at least partially.
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Chicken Little! What is it? What's going on
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The sky is falling! The sky is falling! In 2005, Disney released Chicken Little
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It was their first fully computer animated film, and that freaked a lot of people out at the time
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because the name Disney had been nearly synonymous with the traditional art of hand-drawn 2D animation
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It felt like the sky was falling, and it was. Within a few years, the legendary studio would put out
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its last traditionally animated films, and the art itself would be allowed to wither and left to die
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What are you doing? Giving you your reward. Your eternal reward. When we speak of traditional animation, we are generally referring to the process of 2D movement achieved by drawing each individual frame by hand
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And while 1906's humorous phases of funny faces and 1908's phantasmagory took the first baby steps in the development of the medium
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most people now consider 1914's Gertie the Dinosaur to be the first proper foray into
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traditional animation. Over the early decades of the 20th century, hand-drawn animation slowly grew
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into an extremely popular form of entertainment and a big business for Hollywood. During this
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period, most animated films were created using a process called cell animation. In a nutshell
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the moving characters are drawn or painted on transparent pieces of celluloid, or cells for
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short, and then photographed over unmoving backgrounds. The first feature-length animated film created with this technique was 1937's Snow White
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and the Seven Dwarfs, produced by Walt Disney Studios. It's the style of animation Disney used to produce 50 years' worth of classics, including
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Bambi, The Jungle Book, and The Lion King, and is probably the style they're still most
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associated with. The studio continued to use the technique all the way up to the production of 1990's
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The Rescuers Down Under, which marked the studio's changeover to a digital system
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but the day that would change animation forever was november 22nd 1995 when a relatively little known studio called Pixar released the world first computer feature Toy Story Arriving in theaters with a 3D aesthetic
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that was revolutionary to audiences at the time, Toy Story also just happened to be
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an unmitigated triumph of casting and storytelling. Hey, Ham, look, I'm Picasso
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I don't get it. You uncultured swine? The movie's overwhelming success with both critics and audiences
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surprised even Disney president Michael Eisner and Pixar boss Steve Jobs. Meanwhile, DreamWorks Animation, run by Jeffrey Katzenberg
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the former Disney executive who had originally brought Pixar to the studio's attention
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was working on The Prince of Egypt, which was scheduled for release in the fall of 1998
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The studio hoped the traditionally animated film would make them a major competitor to Disney
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but through his friendship with Pixar's John Lasseter, Katzenberg learned that Pixar was looking to drop its sophomore effort
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A Bug's Life, in the same time frame. It's a buggy bug world out there, princess
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One of those circle of life kind of things. Determined to get Pixar to move their release date
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DreamWorks partnered with computer animation studio PDI on the similarly insect-centric ants
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which Katzenberg threatened to release just before a bug's life if Pixar didn't back off
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Long story short, Pixar didn't back off, and the Prince of Egypt didn't go anywhere near the kind of business
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DreamWorks was hoping for. But in the effort, Katzenberg had unwittingly set up the medium of traditional animation for its demise
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While he was failing to make waves in the traditional animation business, Katzenberg was also trying to develop an adaptation of William Steig's 1990 children's book
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Shrek. I'm gonna see this guy farquad right now and get you all off my land and back where you came from
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Shrek, which was animated entirely with computers, debuted to rave reviews and was a smash at the
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box office, eventually going on to win the first ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature over Pixar's Monsters, Inc
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But more importantly Shrek proved that Pixar wasn the only studio who could have a smash hit with a computer animated film The revelation inspired DreamWorks to shift its strategy and start seeing itself as a competitor for Pixar rather than Disney
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You're a monster! Now tell me, where are the others? Eat me! But where Disney had a near chokehold over the artistic pipeline
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required to do traditional animation, computers allowed animation to be done at a much faster rate and lower price
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and that meant anyone could get into the game. DreamWorks had let the CGI genie out of the bottle
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and the result was going to be more competition in the animation industry
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I mean, what chance does a toy like me have against a Buzz Lightyear action figure
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During this period, Disney relied on its partnership with Pixar to stay relevant in the computer animation market
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But that partnership was due to expire in 2006. And making the situation more dire was that Disney's traditionally animated fare
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was also seeing diminishing returns. Movies like Pocahontas, Hercules, and Mulan were well-received and successful
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but not to the degree that The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King
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had been. This, in addition to the increasing competition from DreamWorks and Pixar
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forced Michael Eisner to begin pivoting Disney to producing computer animated films
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It was horrible, you know, to come to this conclusion that only 3D was going to be our
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future. The first result of the shift was Chicken Little. Although it's been largely forgotten now
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the movie debuted at number one and was a modest financial success. But it struck out with
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critics and certainly didn't resonate with audiences the way any of Pixar's movies did
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If Chicken Little had been a hit, Disney might very well have parted ways with Pixar when their
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deal expired. But it was pretty clear that the House of Mouse wasn't quite ready to compete at
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a Disney-worthy level in the computer animated film market yet. So in 2006, Disney bought Pixar
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The acquisition, however, did not stop them from continuing to develop their own non-Pixar animated
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films. And in all fairness, they did get better than Chicken Little. In fact, Disney's non-Pixar
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computer animated catalog now includes iconic films like Wreck Ralph Frozen Moana and Encanto Well how about we just take that medal and give it to Ralph for once Would that be the end of the world Gene Now you just being ridiculous But back in the late aughts the writing was on the wall for traditional 2D animation
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and 2009's The Princess and the Frog and 2011's Winnie the Pooh
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would mark Disney's final forays into the form that made them a household name
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It remains, as of this moment, the last fully traditional animated feature film
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Disney ever made. But traditional animation fans can take heart in the fact that all hope for the art isn't lost
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In 2021, Disney Animation announced they were starting a hand-drawn 2D animation trainee program
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led by veteran Disney artists. And in 2022, Disney Plus released Chippendale Rescue Rangers
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which featured a hybrid of 2D and 3D animation. You remember that weird animation style
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in the early 2000s where everything looked real, but nothing looked right
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Oh yeah, that stuff was creepy. To celebrate its 100th anniversary, Disney is also releasing a short film titled Once Upon a Studio. Like Rescue Rangers, the short
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which one longtime Disney animator called a love letter to traditional animation, features
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traditional hand-drawn 2D animation mixed with CGI and live-action footage. It all seems to have
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been leading up to 2023's Wish, which, although still partially computer animated, will be the
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first Disney theatrical feature to include traditional hand-drawn 2D animation since Winnie the Pooh. And while the nod to the past is nice and the trend is encouraging for fans of
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traditional 2D, it only highlights how completely computer animation remade the animated feature
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industry. Led by a new generation of animators, the ever-increasing possibilities of computer
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animation have been reflected in the success of more experimental films like Sony's hit Spider
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Verse movies and Nickelodeon's new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem. The price of these
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adventurous new visions, however, shouldn't be the life of a beloved and powerful art form
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Traditional 2D animation offers creators and audiences a unique aesthetic and experience
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that draws on over 100 years of our collective cultural memories. For everything else computer animation can do, it can't do that
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