Comments on: Academy Award Nominated Animation 'Paperman' is a Gorgeous Blend of 2D and 3D

By: Shorts ‘Paperman’ and ‘Curfew’ Win Oscars, ‘Inocente’ is 1st Academy Award-Winning Kickstarter Film - NoFilmSchool

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 08:14:06 +0000

[...] involved in a number of festival and award-winning films — including a few Oscar nods. Also, if you missed it previously, embedded below is Paperman, which took home the best animated short film Academy Award, and the [...]

By: Sean Breathnach

Sean Breathnach — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 16:37:36 +0000

Cool film! Thanks for sharing it.

By: carlos

carlos — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 00:06:38 +0000

Haha glad I wasnt the only one! The animated short is nice but a total rip off

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:53:15 +0000

It looks like fake 2D, doesn’t really get to me. I liked the gray look and lighting though. Story? Well, it’s Disney, what can you expect…

By: Stephen van Vuuren

Stephen van Vuuren — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 18:24:14 +0000

Gets worse. This short also came out in 2009. Throwing paper airplanes from window to window. Interesting both shorts released in the same year. Paroles en l air http://youtu.be/Z3fCNSR3m8M

By: Stephen van Vuuren

Stephen van Vuuren — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 18:08:23 +0000

Thanks for sharing that short. That’s a better short anyway – and wow, that does seem more than coincidence. The animation is nice is the Disney but the story bored me.

By: Diego

Diego — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 17:34:35 +0000

I loved the animation. From the start I said “ooooh, this will be one gorgeous looking short“. The story, however, does not stand up to the challenge. Although the first few minutes were compelling, the whole thing went downhill the moment the magical mystical paper airplanes appeared. There was no indication at all that something like that was likely to happen. Something tells me they had some great idea while writing the first few pages, and then couldn‘t decide how to end it, so they just threw a bunch of Disney magic in.

By: Brynn

Brynn — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 14:21:53 +0000

I, like a lot of the others here, watched it with the sense that I’d seen it before. Couldn’t place where until I saw Wes’ post at the top of these comments.

By: DIYFilmSchool.net

DIYFilmSchool.net — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:56:01 +0000

I liked the animation style. At times it felt lifelike in the shading, like when the guy is walking down the street after the girl.

By: Alan Hadgis

Alan Hadgis — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 11:43:05 +0000

Saw this when I went to see Wreck-It-Ralph. Fun little animation. Don’t think there was amazing innovative story telling going on, but I thought it was a great lil short.

By: Luke L

Luke L — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 08:54:41 +0000

Glad someone else noticed!

By: Nate

Nate — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 05:22:37 +0000

Ah, yes I stand corrected. Thanks Gabe.

I assumed that the animators just moved their controls based on a perpendicular plane against the camera, but this is completely different.

By: Gabe

Gabe — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 04:49:25 +0000

Sorry, you’re wrong about the effect. Cel shading effects are very limited because they’re trying to create a hand drawn artistic effect without an artist hand drawing anything. What Disney did with this is very different…they’re using the 3d animation to calculate motion vectors…then they draw the characters and animate those 2d drawings using the 3d motion vectors. Very clever, and it makes a huge difference. And it allows them to hand tweak the 2d stuff at every moment if they want to.

By: au8ust

au8ust — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 03:35:48 +0000

Thought the same!

By: Nate

Nate — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 02:57:51 +0000

Cool thanks for the post :). I really do admire this short, it’s very appealing. Thanks for that post above wes, I’d say it defenitely resembles SIGNS.

This effect actually isn’t a “blend of 2D hand-drawn animation mixed with a 3D world”. It’s all 3D. The characters, the set, etc. They just used a toon shader on the characters giving them a flat rendering, no different than what Iron Giant, for example, like you stated as well. It can be done quite easily in most 3D packages, like Maya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF6pPQnzSCE.

By: quobetah

quobetah — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 01:25:40 +0000

Awesome!

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 01:19:37 +0000

Visually it was fantastic, I especially loved the dramatic lighting, it reminded me of the work of Pascal Campion, the character design and dramatic lighting.
http://vimeo.com/13387502
I don’t think the story was all together original but I think it was well told.
The 2D/3D hybrid has been tried many times with mixed success in my opinion. The Japanese and the French seem to do it with most success. Blood, triplets of Belleville and lots of Goeblins productions are good examples.
Watching the process video I can’t help but think how silly it seems to have such a complex process to re-create a traditional process. However, the visuals speak for themselves.

By: Pablo Saldana

Pablo Saldana — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 00:11:52 +0000

In my opinion Disney is too predictable. They are not good storytellers anymore.

By: Austin Mace

Austin Mace — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 00:09:47 +0000

Beat me to it! Gah I was so excited to bring this to discussion but yeah I 110% agree with you. I really want to know what others are thinking.

By: Wes Palmer

Wes Palmer — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:47:13 +0000

I saw this and loved it. Unfortunately, I saw waaay too many similarities in plot to the Australian award-winning short film “Signs” from 2008, and although I’m sure the idea isn’t wholly original, some of the shots that are used (him looking out the window, seeing her, trying to get her attention) alongside the plot similarities make it seem a bit too similar to just be a coincidence.