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BIG HERO 6

2014

Big Hero 6 is Disney's 54th animated feature and the first one based on a comic book by Marvel after Disney's acquisition of the franchise in 2009. But just like the studio has done so many times with other stories, the film is really very loosely based on the characters and plot of the original comic book.

The movie was directed by Don Hall and the super amazing Chris Williams who's been a great part of Disney's new renaissance with movies like Bolt, Frozen and now BH6.

Going back to what Disney does best, the movie focuses on amazing characters (design and personality-wise) and a great story. 

In my own opinion, this is Disney's best movie since Emperor's New Groove which came out in 2000, so this is a pretty big deal.

FROZEN

2013

Frozen is Disney's 53rd animated feature film, and the second one inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's short stories, The Little Mermaid being the first one.

Loosely based on the tale of the Snow Queen, Disney's first attempt at an adaptation of this story was way back in 1940 when Walt wanted to create a film based on Andersen's life and the stories he wrote. The film was never produced and the project of animating the Snow Queen was shelved as so many other projects in Disney's history.

The studio's latest effort to bring the production to life went through a lot of changes and has some really tough moments, but the end result was probably Disney's most popular musical since the movies from the 90's renaissance.

WRECK-IT RALPH

2012

Wreck-It Ralph is Disney Animation's 52nd feature film. Packed with some great video game cameos, the film was first envisioned by the Disney team in the 1980's and was since developed under different supervisors, changing the story throughout the years until it was finally Rich Moore, one of The Simpsons' first directors, who saw the movie's development till the end.

Even though some of the movie's aesthetics are based on existing video game concepts and worlds, the creative team at Disney did a great job at designing something incredibly fun and really nice to look at. This is also partly because of the rendering software used to create the light and texturing of the film. Throughout the studio's history,  Disney has been known for working on groundbreaking technology which they use to create their films, and though they hadn't done anything super innovative in the latest years, for Wreck-It Ralph they developed a new system of rendering which really enhances the visuals in the film.

WINNIE THE POOH

2011

Winnie the Pooh is Disney's 51st animated feature and the second one telling the many adventures of Pooh Bear, Christopher Robin and friends (Although there had been many movies about Pooh. Only in the 2000s the studio released The Tigger Movie (2000), Piglet (2003), The Adventures of Roo (2004), and Pooh's Heffalump Movie (2005) produced by Disney Toons). Based on the stories by Alan Milne, the first Pooh movie (which was originally released as 3 separate short stories) was released in 1977 and at that time Winnie the Pooh wasn't even popular in the US, so producing the film was sort of a risk for Walt Disney.

Nevertheless, the film was an incredible success due not only to the great story of the Hundred Acre Wood, but also to the amazing voice talents and animators that brought the characters to life.
But this time around, the movie was produced with some incredibly talented artists that will probably be as important to their time as the original cast and crew in 1977.

TANGLED

2010

Tangled is Disney animated features' 50th film. Loosely based on the Brothers Grimm tale of Rapunzel, the film marked the return of a couple of great Disney veterans like Glen Keane and Alan Menken. In fact Keane was the original director of the film and was in charge of its development since 2002 (this movie took a heck of a long time to be made and went through a lot of changes).
Originally called Rapunzel Unbraided, the film was going to be a more Shrek-esque version of the tale, but Keane wasn't happy with the story (thank God!) and the plot was scrapped and reworked.

In 2008 Keane had to step down as director and was replaced by Byron Howard and Nathan Greno who had recently done an incredible job bringing Disney back to life with Bolt in 2008.

PRINCESS AND THE FROG

2009

Princess and the Frog is Disney's 49th animated feature, and the first release done in 2D in 5 years. When John Lasetter was named Creative Director at Disney, he immediately reopened the hand drawn animation department, and Princess and the Frog was the studio's return to this media. And it did so in the best way possible.

Going back not only to traditional animation, but musicals and princess tales, the studio brought back a bunch of big animation names that had worked at the studio on the classics.
First of all, the directing duo John Musker and Ron Clements (Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules). They where there when Disney started it renaissance in the late 80's, and they where back again in 2009 for the studio's comeback.

BOLT

2008

Bolt is Disney Animation Studio's 48th feature and what I would consider to be Disney's return to the right path. During the 90's the studio had gone through an amazing period putting pout a series of what could be their best films ever, but when 3D started to get more popular, Disney got into a dilema and had a pretty rough time figuring out what to do next.

And so, after producing their worst 4 movies in just over 8 years, they hired John Lasseter as Chief creative officer and finally came to what could be called Disney's new Renaissance.

MEET THE ROBINSONS

2007

Meet the Robinsons is Disney's second feature film completely made in 3D animation, and the first one done after the studio's acquisition of Pixar, and so John Lasseter became a producer and an important part of the show's development. 

Based on the book "A day with Wilbur Robinson" by William Joyce, the movie was originally intended to be a live action film, but after a while it was passed on to the animation department where Stephen Anderson took it as a very personal project and directed it. 

The movie was actually presented in Disney Digital 3D in some theatres, after having done the same with Chicken Little. But the first Disney animated movie released in 3D was Adventures in Music: Melody in 1953! 

CHICKEN LITTLE

2005

Chicken Little is Disney's 46th animated feature film and the first one in the studio's history to be done entirely by computer animation.
The movie marked a new era in Disney, which in the beginning didn't seem like it would be a good one. After the ALGO of Disney's previous movies Brother Bear and Home on the Range, and the success that other studios were having with 3D animation, the studio decided to shut down the 2D animation department and focus only on CG features.

Although Disney had already used CG to enhance some scenes since the late 80's and had even released Dinosaur, a movie done with 3D characters over live action environments, this was the first time the studio produced a movie done entirely in 3D. And I think that they struggled a lot in the beginning to create nice characters and environments and get to the 2D animation's level that Disney was known for.

HOME ON THE RANGE

2004

Home on the Range is Disney's 45th movie and the last 2D animated film made by the studio before shutting down the 2D department to focus only on 3D features. The 2D department would later be reopened by John Lasseter when he was named head of the animation department. Since then, two more 2D movies have been made: Princes and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh.

But instead of ending 2D with a bang, Disney produced one of it's worst films to date. Visually, its great. Story-wise, its not very entertaining.

BROTHER BEAR

2003

Brother Bear is Disney's 44th animated feature and the last one to be created entirely at the Orlando Studio, which closed shortly after the production ended. Disney was slowly shifting away from 2D animation (due to the bad reception its previous features had had) and they ended up closing the studio in Paris the same year.

Brother Bear was conceived after the huge success of Lion King. Disney directors wanted to create a new feature taking place in the wild, so the creative team came up with the idea of following the adventures of a bear.

TREASURE PLANET

2002

Based on the famous novel "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Planet is Disney's 43rd animated feature, and probably the studio's best work mixing 2D and 3D animation. If you look at Disney's next films, hand-drawn animation is reduced until it completely disappears in the last couple of movies.

Although we'd seen 3D and 2D animation very seamlessly put together in previous Disney films, this time the production team took it a little bit further and created their first character using both animation methods and even one character completely animated in 3D. Although it's very easy to tell that the vehicles are computer generated, the CG in the characters is pretty great (not that the vehicles aren't awesome).

LILO & STITCH

2002

Lilo & Stitch is Disney's 42nd animated feature and could be considered as a small return to the aesthetics of the classic Disney films. Even though there is a lot of Computer Generated sequences in the film, the watercolour backgrounds and the style of animation is reminiscent of the features of the 40's.

The plot, art direction and even some of the voices were created by mastermind Cris Sanders who pitched the idea while the studio was looking for a new story to develop as a low budget film. Sanders came up with the whole concept (although the story was originally to take place in Kansas) and created a bunch of concept art and character designs which were later taken as the foundation to create the film.

ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE

2001

Atlantis is Disney's 41st animated feature produced by Disney and the second film co-directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise. After Hunchback of NotreDame, the pair decided to work together on a new film, and adventure feature inspired by the works of Jules Verne instead of a musical like so many other Disney movies. In other words, they wanted something with "Fewer songs and More explosions" as they stated.

But making a movie with no songs wasn't the only thing that set this project apart from previous Disney films, aesthetically it is very different from what the studio was known for doing. The characters and overall mood of the film were based on the work of Hellboy Creator Mike Mignola.
Most times, when a movie's art direction is based on the work of an outside Disney artist, the product is very unique. See what happened with Hercules for example.

EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE

2000

The Emperor's new Groove is Disney's 40th animated feature and, after the package films from the 40's, its return to a southamerican based story. The film is also really different from what the studio had produced in previous years story, character and humor-wise.

In my opinion it is also one of the most underrated animated films from Disney. I could easily place it in my top 5. I think its great all around. It doesn't have the epic scale of Lion King or Pocahontas, it's not based on great stories like Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland,  and none of the supertar animators worked on the final version of it. So how is it that this is still one of my favs?

The color in the backgrounds, added to the amazing environment design is simply great. The characters are

DINOSAUR

2000

Dinosaur is Disney's 39th animated feature, the second one from the year 2000, the first one made only with 3D characters, and the first one to include live action environments.

The year 2K was a weird one for Disney in my opinion. Fantasía was an unexpected movie for Disney to make I think. I guess as kids we got used to the amazing adventure movies that Disney had put out in the 90's and were expecting more of them, so when Fantasia 2000 came out, I guess we were all a bit underwhelmed (although now that I saw it again I thought it had some great stuff).

We still had a chance to get an adventure movie the same year with Dinosaur, but apparently Disney focused more on bringing some incredible visuals and not so much in creating the great characters that they normally develop or an interesting/new story for their new film. Sory-wise they gave is a new (and not very good) version of The Land Before Time, and character-wise they failed to create visually appealing and likeable characters.

FANTASIA 2000

2000

Fantasia 2000 is Disney's 38th animated feature, and the second instalment of Walt's ongoing music based project which began in 1940.

Since the 1930's Disney had been working on animated segments based on music scores which were called Silly Symphonies. The very first one (and probably on of the most famous ones) is the Skeleton Dance which came out in 1929. Since then, and until 1939, Disney produced 75 different Silly Symphonies sequences before releasing its first feature film: Snow White.

Walt's idea with Fantasia was that there would be new sequences coming out every once in a while so that the film would be constantly changing with the inclusion of new stories and some of the classic ones from previous Fantasia versions.

TARZAN

1999

Tarzan is Disney's 37th animated feature and the second one developed in part at Disney's studio in France. The first time this happened was on Hunchback of NotreDame, where the three studios (Burbank, Orlando and Paris) worked together.

For Tarzan, Supervising animator Glen Kean thought it was really important to work with the Paris studio due to their heavy studies on anatomy. So he even flew over to Paris to work directly with the team at that studio.

MULAN

1998

Mulan is Disney's 36th animated feature, and the first one to be made entirely at Disney's Florida Studio which had been used for developing segments of each feature length film since Little Mermaid and would continue to produce work for future films until Lilo & Stitch in 2002 when it closed.

Since the movie was based on the Chinese poem of the same name, a group of artists from Disney travelled to China for inspiration and cultural and artistic references for the film. But even with all the references gathered from this trip, finding the perfect style for Mulan was very difficult. Some artists even worked on the film for 5 years. Since there wasn't a specific style that artists wanted to follow (like Gustaf Tenggren in Pinocchio or Gerald Scarfe in Hercules) the team tried a lot of different things before settling on the final style.