My case for The Lion King having the best hand drawn animati

[Elton John]

As a note I haven't seen every studio ghibli movie, ghost in the shell, etc.

1: The most important thing is a strong sense of being aesthetically pleasing. All the animals have a fine balance of realistic anatomy, vivid color palettes, and move in a way that is believable as animals, and have very humanlike emotions with the facial expressions and body movement.

2: like most Disney renaissance era films the animation is very smooth and lifelike. There's also a good sense of realistic physics with the way their bodies move. Most of it looks very natural.

3: what most disney renaissance era movies don't. Proper shading. It helps create an environment that feels so real.

3: particle effects! Most noticable during be prepared, the stampede scene, and the battle for pride rock.

5: a lot of scenes feel like they used real camerawork. Which is very impressive for a 2D movie. It's much easier to do in live action or cgi. The way angles change, the way it feels like the camera is moving, etc. not an easy feat.

6: the backgrounds are jaw droppingly good. The most impressive being the jungle in the second half of the film.

7: the choreography during the action sequences, like mufasa saving simba, the chase during the elephant graveyard, etc are coherent, varied, and boast many of the things mentioned already.

8: Even though the wildebeast stampede was cgi it doesn't feel that way, blending in with the hand drawn seamlessly.


Agree? Disagree?

[SimbasGuard]

I agree 100% You just give a far more detailed and eloquent argument for your cause than I could hope to muster.

[FireAndSun]

I always knew that The Lion King has good animation. You gave all the reasons I think it's good.

[Captain Cupcake]

It's hard to state that The Lion King's animation is most definitely the best. Given that throughout Disney's history they've tackled all sorts of projects and different challenges, it's really hard to hold TLK above all of them so easily. A lot of the animation from the Golden Age is considered to be the highest of the high and on a whole other level, with a lot of fluidity, sense of depth, and weight that's very difficult to match.

Comparing the films of the Disney Renaissance alone, I'd have to say that Tarzan may actually be the feature that holds the most complex and well done animation. Not only do they animators have to tackle a good deal of very, very different animals(such as apes, a leopard, elephants, crocodiles, etc.) similar to what the team for The Lion King had to tackle, but they also had Glen Keane and his group designing and animating a stylized yet somewhat anatomically correct human being, due to the protagonist wearing nothing but a loincloth. And not only that, but Tarzan's entire mannerisms and movement had to also replicate that of a gorilla's. There's also that revolutionary Deep Canvas technology they came up with, creating CGI backgrounds and then digitally painting over them, making everything blend seamlessly with the character animation and function as fully 3D backgrounds to move the camera around in which allowed for a lot more filmic and complex shots.

When one looks at the work put into Tarzan's visuals, it feels like a culmination of all of Disney's efforts during that past decade. Every innovation, types of creatures tackled, attempts at digital coloring and shading, and the mixture of CGI and traditional animation, all of that experience came to ultimate fruition and delivered something truly spectacular.

That tree-surfing sequence at the end of the Son of Man song sequence is especially breathtaking and a visual marvel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZA6nitNeYw

[Elton John]

Well, the golden age of disney is very impressive and to me Tarzan is the number two renaissance era disney movie in terms of animation but all things considered the lion king was able to retain the same level of quality even during the more dynamic, faster paced action sequences.

My problem with tarzan is that while the hand drawn stuff is excellent the cgi in the tree surfing scenes is jarring, not that good looking while the wildebeast stampede looks almost hand drawn.

While classic Disney is breathtaking, most notably fantasia, pinocchio, and bambi, excluding fantasia...

Something like be prepared is fast paced, has dynamic shading, lighting, particle effects, angles, fluid animation and has a lot going on in it.

[Captain Cupcake]

I found that the only use of CGI in Tarzan that looks a bit jarring is the dinghy boat and sea during the very first sequence when Tarzan's family survive their ship going down at night. Whenever it came to rest of the film, which featured mostly flora and trees, the digitally painted models look a lot more seamless. In any case, I think the relatively more varied and complex character animation alone helps Tarzan earn its top spot animation-wise.

[Elton John]

I still think Tarzan is a very respectable choice. It's just that I don't think the cgi is up to par with the rest of the animation.

[Captain Cupcake]

That's fine and all, but I don't think it necessarily undermine the rest of the animation(although if it was flat out terrible, it probably would) and automatically puts it under The Lion King so easily.

This isn't exactly a case where the character animation, sense of weight, lighting, how scenes are choreographed, and minor special effects are all even and everything hinges on a comparison between how well each other's computer generated work has aged. A number of those elements shared between both TLK and Tarzan are simply better executed in the latter, which helps to outweigh things in its favor despite some dated shots of CGI thrown into the mix.

The complexity of Tarzan's(the character) animation itself, the consistency of shading, the level of fluidity, the varied and extremely dynamic action sequences(such as the Sabor battle and the baboon chase) can all somewhat best most of TLK on a technical level throughout the majority of the feature.

Of course, comparing which films function better on an emotional level is another matter. Even though certain action segments in Tarzan are more complex than the stampede sequence, I'd probably find the latter a bit more emotionally gripping than anything similar in the former.

[Elton John]

I'm not trying to undermine the rest of Tarzans visual quality.

To me it's like, say there's this great tv show but it has one character that weighs down a bit all the other positive things about certain scenes he/she is in. There's another tv show that is not as great in most areas but has nothing that brings down the show. That to me is Tarzan compared to the lion king.

The rest of Tarzans visual quality is probably better than the lion king but there's one thing that keeps me from saying that it's better as a whole.

[DGFone]

The Lion King used CGI in every frame. The elements were all done by hand except for a few very special cases (such as wildebeest in the stampede), but a computer composed it all together. Not that the same thing couldn't be done by hand, just that it would have taken much longer.

That being said, the CGI used in this movie is used properly: that is, you don't notice it. My biggest gripe with modern pure CGI movies is that the quality of the animation, not the story, is a major selling point. While from a technological perspective, I am always very interested in how these movies are made, but at the end of the day, it's a movie. Story comes first, pretty visuals second.

The Lion King got that right unlike many, many movies, both animated and live action.