Are the big animation studios right about people not wanting to watch traditional?

I'm talking about movies. How can they be right if there still are all these successful 2D animated shows on TV, like Rick and Morty, Bob's Burgers, The Simpsons, Steven Universe, Archer, Family Guy, My Little Pony, the original stuff on Netflix...? I believe it's a huge misconception.

Personally, I'm not watching another CG animation anytime soon, unless invited. It's not that they are bad, but I prefer traditional by a mile and am just sick of CG. The lack of traditional animation embitters me.

It's kind of hard to say. Traditional animated movies were underperforming in the early 00's while CG was doing well, but overall quality of the hand drawn stuff (Home on the Range, Brother Bear) was not on par with the CG (Incredibles, the good Shreks). Can't really think of a year when the two styles went head to head with movies of equivalent quality.

Would like to see more hand drawn movies as i prefer the style.

Traditional cell animation i do not believe exists, at all, anymore. Lion King *i think* is when they stopped drawing every frame, but i could be wrong.

Nope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super:_Broly#Box_office

The problem with traditional 2D animation these days is the fact that every time there's been a modern attempt at creating a new one, they completely bomb at the box office in contrast to a generally safer bet for a computer animated film. Disney, for example: their last major 2D attempt was for Princess and the Frog and yet that movie flopped financially. That was one of Disney's final attempts to see if 2D is at all marketable anymore, and unfortunately Disney sets the trends and if they're just going to do computer animation, then so will the rest of the industry.

Most of the cartoon shows you include are not traditional 2D animations but ones created with computers. At the end of the day and regardless, TV shows just aren't the same as movies. Unfortunately it's a bigger problem in movies right now than it is in TV.

We know. You know what I meant. I don't see why we have to get into this. I've asked this same question on a film forum and no one so far has brought up this obvious point. Calling it traditional just sounds more right than saying drawn animation or 2D. If I said hand-drawn animation, someone would probably still bring up that it's done on computers now (by hand).

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=319527

@ezekiel43:

Im not referring to whether its on a cell or in the computer, what im saying is that *i believe* around that time there was frame interpolation. Again i could be wrong on that.

Disney got rid of a bunch of their staff when things started to shift. These people went on to do The Secret of Nimh, which is excellent, btw. 100% by hand.

I would not say so. I do not look at South Park or Family Guy the same way I look at Fox and the Hound. To me that's the difference between stop-motion and claymation. There are different mediums at use here and I don't think the success of adult-grade cartoon shows are the same as the issue we have at hand in cinema over the lack of traditional animation.

I didn't just list adult cartoon shows.

Again, you know exactly what I meant, so there is no point in getting into semantics, especially since someone would undoubtedly still bring this up if I said hand-drawn animation. 2D wouldn't make sense, because it just sounds like an animation that isn't stereoscopic. It is traditional in the sense that it is still about moving drawings and rendered by hand. South Park never was similar to the kind of animation we are talking about, even when they did it without computers, which is why I consciously excluded it from my OP. It speaks volumes when movie buffs who know way more about movies than most people don't get into this silly debate.

Ordered!

After watching the enchanting, impressively animated Anastasia the night before, I was inspired to ask one of the supervisors at my job yesterday if he misses traditionally animated movies, as a former Disney artist. He said that he misses them so much and would try so bad to get back in if they started making them again. The guy is probably in his thirties. So many unused artists because Hollywood is too afraid to diversify. I wouldn't work on CG animation either if I grew up wanting to make traditional.

I'm still not sure why 2D animation went away, but I figure it has something to do with 3D being a lot easier and cheaper to make.

Need citation for 3D being cheaper. Princess and the Frog was 105 million dollars, while Frozen was 150 mill.

I can't really comment on this because who knows. But, I myself am a big fan & really miss traditional animation.

There's something so magical about hand drawn animation. Flipping through the pages & seeing the drawings come to life.

I've always wondered how incredible it would be to go into the Disney archives and flip through the some of the original pages of their films.

Yeah I guess you're right, looks like 3D movies cost more to make.

I really have no idea why 2D has been abandoned.