Next month, Disney will release their next non-Pixar CG Animated film ‘Tangled’, featuring a fun retelling of the classic Rapunzel story. Over at the Wall Street Journal, they talk with the directors and discover just why they decided to go with CG over Disney’s classic hand-drawn animation.
“Tangled” directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard say that CGI technology allowed them to capture the Rapunzel story’s most essential element: her flowing locks. In the original Brothers Grimm tale, Rapunzel is a long-haired girl imprisoned in a tower by a witch. In “Tangled,” Rapunzel’s tresses can act as a ladder, a whip or a third arm. “We could have drawn the hair in 2-D but it would have been just a yellowish shape on screen,” Mr. Howard says. “With CGI, we can render 100,000 strands of hair—it’s almost a character in itself.”
Nice to see the CG used as a way to enhance & reinvent the story, and not as just ‘CG Rendering is faster than Hand Drawn’ or ‘People don’t like Hand Drawn anymore’. Of course, we’ll have to wait a month to see if the CG really helped any.
via A Tech Hair Day for Rapunzel in Disney’s ‘Tangled’ Animated Movie – WSJ.com.
