As if venturing into the world of video games wasn't enough reason to get excited for Wreck-It-Ralph, we recently learned that Disney would be preceding the film with their groundbreaking short, Paperman. A blend of traditional hand drawn and CGI animation, it's an offbeat love story about a lonely man in mid-century New York, who briefly meets the woman of his dreams on the train. Thinking he'll never see her again, he catches a glimpse of her in the building across the street from his work. Using paper airplanes and a healthy dose of imagination, he attempts to get her attention, only to discover that fate has something greater in store.
The film is directed by John Kahrs, an animator who worked on The Incredibles, before working with the great Glen Keane on Tangled. Just as Tangled used a special combination of hand drawn and oil painting techniques, Disney has created a totally new technology called Meander to give Paperman its distinct look. Kahrs spoke with Entertainment Weekly, and he briefly described the technology while also expressing some hope for the future of traditional animation...Kahrs: “What you’re seeing is a very stylized CG layer [underneath], but the feel of the image is very flat and lives in between the two."
"Drawing can have a really powerful, visceral effect on the viewer. You
can create anger and surprise or anguish with just a few lines of a
pencil. But it can't just be the same thing it was. I think for 2-D to
be revitalized, you have to figure out a way to make it new again."We could be looking at the next step for Disney, Pixar, and every other studio if Paperman turns out to be the success many expect it will be. We'll get our chance to judge for ourselves when Wreck-It-Ralph opens on November 2nd.
