If I may be permitted to rant…

I just found out something that has me a bit upset but at the same time very curious. Apparently, Disney is going to release The Princess and the Frog in Disney Digital 3D. That’s right. A traditionally hand-drawn animated film will be given the 3D treatment.

My question for Disney: WHY?!

The film has been marketed as the next wave in quality hand-drawn animated films, said to bring back the days when films like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin were the films people came to see and left feeling what made Disney films magical. They even went so far as to revisit the princess genre, which if you go by the numbers has a high success rate in quality storytelling (barring those cheap direct-to-video sequels that just ruin anything associated with the originals).

So why, oh, why did Disney decided that this film should be given the gimmick of being presented in Digital 3D? Digital, I can understand, but 3D?! What will that look like?

One can only assume that the fore-, middle-, and backgrounds would be separated in a way that would look like a pop-up book cut out. The backgrounds in the promotion art I’ve seen alone suggests that they are not trying to produce a 3D environment like they did with Tarzan, though it is possible that they were produced using Deep Canvas.

And how would putting a hand-drawn animated film in a 3D space be received by guests? All the 3D effects created for the CG films I’ve seen rely on the virtual space, which works because it puts the viewer in the 3D environment created in the computer. With hand drawnings? While it has yet to be done and I actually and curious as to how the new animation department will tackle this, I can’t help but feel that it won’t have the same effect as it would with films like Coraline and Monsters vs. Aliens. Both of those films were just beautifully done and took advantage of some of the elements that a 3D film very well, specifically scale and depth perception.

It’s funny. The more I think about this, the more I become curious and want to see a 3D trailer for The Princess and the Frog if and when one comes out for it. Hopefully, Disney will be smart enough to put one in front of Up. (Well, technically before the short film Partly Cloudy, but you know what I mean.)

I will say this, however. It better blow me away. A 3D hand-drawn animated movie does sound like the big gamble Pixar would do where a lot of people will say “That’ll never work.” And we’ve been proven wrong by Pixar time and time again. So here’s hoping.