Brad Bird Would “Love” to do Another Hand-Drawn Animated Film

While Brad Bird’s recent live-action effort Tomorrowland wasn’t exactly met with the warmest response (and was not the box-office hit that Disney hoped for), his status as a visionary filmmaker and something of a rock star within the animation community remains unquestioned.

Three weeks ago, Brad indicated that he was set to return to animation with a sequel to one of his best-known movies from Pixar: The Incredibles 2. But now it appears that Brad might have plans beyond The Incredibles sequel that involve the style of animation with which he began his career forty years ago (a style of animation with passionate conversations that now revolve around its current state).

On a recent episode of The Bancroft Brothers Animation Podcast (stemming from a report by Cartoon Brew), the twin animators held an interview with Brad Bird. During this interview, Bird dropped an interesting revelation: if possible, he hopes to come full circle and do a hand-drawn animated feature.

In Bird’s own words:

A lot of the projects that I want to do beyond [‘Incredibles 2′] are both live-action and animation, and I would love to do another hand-drawn thing.

As wonderful as CG is and can be, and I really enjoy it, and I enjoy being able to move the camera, and I enjoy the control over lighting, and really tiny movement that you have in computer generated stuff, there’s an itch that is not scratched that only hand-drawn can really scratch in me.

There’s a sense of wonder that’s very specific to me about hand-drawn animation where it kind of announces its artificiality at every moment, and yet, if you do it right, you can make people disappear into that world just as well as you can into CG. I miss that, and I would love to do somewhere down the line, to return to a hand-drawn film.

As I mentioned previously, the current state of hand-drawn animation is among one of the most hotly debated topics within the animation community, with strong arguments put forth on every side.

If there’s anyone who has the talent and the name recognition to put hand-drawn animation on the big screen again, it’s Brad Bird. Whether or not he can make this happen at Disney is the big question. But, judging by his words, he clearly feels passionate in his desire to do hand-drawn animation again (in whatever capacity).

Listen to this episode of The Bancroft Brothers Animation Podcast here.

Tomorrowland is now in theaters. See Morgan’s review of the film on our website here.

What do you think? Would you want to see Brad Bird do a hand-drawn feature again?

Edited by: Hannah Wilkes