This sort of statement just makes me pull my hair. People, Disney fans in particular, place WAAAAAAY too much emphasis on the medium use rather than HOW the medium is used.
Disney and his team of animators made great hand drawn films NOT because they were hand drawn. They made great hand drawn films because they knew how to properly use it. They used it to better convey emotion, atmosphere, color and story. Not to mention that Disney experimented with MANY animation techniques just to see how it would work. Disney has done stop motion animation, limited animation, hand drawn combined with 3D elements, 3D films, live action combined with animation, so on and so forth.
Tangled was a CG film, yes, but it was easily the most beautiful CG film of the year, above How to Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3. The film knows how to greatly use the technique to convey a magical world. It was refreshing to see it trying to be more colorful than realistic, the animation was amazing and the film greatly benefited from it.
Glen Keane worked hard to make this movie happen and HE picked to work with this medium. If you didn’t like the movie that’s fine, but people should really stop focusing on the fact that it’s a CG film and more in that it’s a great Disney movie, period.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
THIS.
I’d like to add that Glen showed a test of the CG to Ollie Johnston, one of the Nine Old Men, before he passed away. Glen was so excited about the technology and pointed out the freckles that Rapunzel had, trying to persuade Ollie that it was just as good as hand-drawn.
Ollie took one glance at it and told Glen it didn’t matter whether it was hand-drawn or CG. What mattered was what the character felt and how the animators could best convey those feelings.
You just got Nine Old Men’d.