Don Bluth Believes Studios Will Go Back to 2D Animation

Legendary animator Don Bluth says that studios will get back to producing 2D animated films. ComicBook.com hosted a Mega-Con panel called "History of Animation with Don Bluth" in Orlando this weekend. During the conversation, the animation icon explained that ballooning budgets might result in things going back to 2D. Bluth began, "I believe that there will be a moment when, the suits I call them, when the suits finally say to themselves 'We can make more money with 2D drawn animation than we make with 3D.'" He would go on to point out the $200 million films that became a normal sight over the last decade or so. With all these companies cutting back, 2D could provide a solution to their budgetary concerns.

"I watch the amounts of money spent on a 3D picture, and it's up to something like $200 million or $300 million. And it's more people, I grow old  watching the end credits. So it seems to me that hand-drawn animation, let me take, for example, The Secret of NIMH, we made that movie for $6.5 million. So how in the world, in your sane mind, can you say $300 million is justified?"

Don Bluth's Approach To The Land Before Time

Crafting beloved stories isn't always easy though. During our conversation with Dan Bluth at Mega-Con, he revealed that Steven Spielberg said that The Land Before Time was too scary for kids. Now, there are some harrowing scenes for younger viewers in that series. Bluth pressed on and the rest is history. In fact, one of the defining features of those late 80s and early 90s children's films are that they contain at least one sequence that sticks with that viewer for the rest of their life. Here's what he had to say.

"My theory is that every good story that's a good story has a good villain, a good scare moment. However, when we made The Land Before Time, we took it to London to show Steven Spielberg and George Lucas," Bluth told the panel. "And Steven said, 'You know what? It's too scary, Don.' He says 'I'm going to have mothers holding their crying children in the lobby. We can't have that.' I said, 'Okay, what are we going to take out?' With the T-Rex they took out some of it that was so, so scary. We tried to make it scary, animators are nuts. We tried to make it scary and amazing that scary things that make people and move people a little bit."

"So they went in and took it out, never put it back in, and they destroyed it," Bluth would add. "And it was incredible. It's too bad because if you're going to go through all the business of drawing the film, first of all, drawing the sketches and finally animating it and finally bringing it to life, and finding when you see them in color, it takes your breath away, something you've been working on. It's like you created something that was really, really beautiful. And so, they're like your children."

Do you think studios will go back to 2D animation? Let us know down in the comments!

Mega-Con is going on all weekend, February 2nd through February 4th, in Orlando, Florida.