Is traditional animation fading away?
If indeed Home on the Range is the last traditionally animated feature we’re going to see from Disney in a while, then you can say the form is going out with a laugh and not a whimper. A high-spirited romp about three cows, a horse and assorted other critters looking to capture an ornery cattle rustler, the movie is notable for what it omits. There are no dead parents to grieve, no characters desperately looking to find their place in the world, no Important Life Lessons to be learned. “We’ve made a big cartoon,” says John Sanford, who co-directed the film with Will Finn. “And we don’t apologize for it.” Trends in animation are cyclical and tend to peter out after about a decade. Obviously, the big thing right now is computer-generated 3-D animation, the art form honed by Pixar (Finding Nemo, Toy Story), Blue Sky (Ice Age) and Pacific Data Images (the Shrek movies). Outside of the sci-fi misfire Final Fantasy, which was aimed at fan boys, not families, there hasn’t been a 3-D dud. Or a
