Well, if some of you may not know, Disney, Dreamworks or Pixar would always have their in-house employees to come up with new short films, be it experimentation or just a really good story to be produced and screen for the first 10mins before the movie starts. When I attended a 'Big Hero 6 seminar' that was held for young artists to meet with the veterans in today's animation industry, They told us that every employee whether a junior animator or an art director can come up with any idea of their own and if the producers like it, it will be featured before one of their big hit movie.

Some of the short films featured previously

Piper which was aired together with finding dory

Lava which was aired together with Inside Out

Inner workings which was aired together Moana

There are many more short films that Disney Pixar produced. One thing about these short films, it's always what I like to say, a way that Disney Pixar can 'show-off' something new. Could be their new render system, their animation style, certain inhouse software that they've developed. Out of all these Short films, I was really drawn into this particular short film, Paperman. Which was aired before the movie, Wreck-It-Ralph begun.

Paperman is a romantic comedy produced by Walt Disney Animations and directed by John Kahrs. It has won both the Academy Award for the Best Animated Short Film at the 85th Academy Awards. It is the first animated film that Disney produced to win an academy award.

What was Disney trying to show?

The Idea

The first thing that caught my eyes was that it was in black and white, not just your normal monotone renders with toon shading but it had a traditional paper-ish feel to it. Remember the days when all cartoon animation such as Mickey Mouse was hand-drawn? Back then, computer graphics were not capable to do what is able to achieve now.

Paperman was more than just a simple render. The short blends 2D traditional animation and computer animation. Disney actually created a whole new software to be able to create this 2D/3D Hybrid technique animated feature just six months before Wreck-It-Ralph was gonna air.

Here’s (basically) how the Paperman process works:

1. The CG animators animate the scene in CG pretty much the same way they do in any other CG film.
2. The computer renders the CG animation in a flat, “cel-shaded” or “toon shaded” kind of way. (There’s no line art/ drawing at this point, just the fills.)
3. The lines are drawn by hand onto the keyframes inside of what appears to be the custom software that was designed for the production.
4. This software “sticks” the drawings to the CG models in the keyframes and auto-generates the in-betweens the animation… Sort of.
5. The auto-generated in-betweens are not as artful as the completely hand-made keyframe drawings so the animators still have to go through and tweak the in-betweens to look authentically hand-drawn, appealing and organic.
6. The paper texture is added in compositing… but I can’t tell if the paper texture is added before or after the drawings.

The whole process is so time-consuming and labor-intensive that it makes me admire the passion these guys have to be able to bring back 2D traditional animation.

For the more technical geeks & nerds :

Here are some photos of the character profile, poses taken from cgmeetup.

What do you think about it?

Honestly, I'm into romantic comedies that end well and the feeling of everyone finally being together with the one they love. The whole love at first sight thing. And Disney's storytelling is always uplifting and smooshy on the heart. And you know it's Disney when there's a little Disney's magic when the planes started flying.

For those who haven't watch Paperman

Enjoy :)