Can Mickey Find His Mojo?

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The 3-D-vs.-2-D debate at the studio went beyond the commercial or even artistic implications of CG. Hand-drawn animation was the Disney religion. Stainton, while overseeing a reduction of the animation staff from 2,200 to 725, worked hard to win over the old boys. He argued that CG actually frees artists "to produce movies of extraordinarily different styles. There are limitations in hand drawn. In CG you can do things that are much more complicated." But some still thought the very notion of a change sacrilegious. To abandon the grand old style for 3-D would be like tearing down Chartres to put up a condo.

As the animator of many cartoon heroes, from Ariel in The Little Mermaid and Beauty's Beast to Aladdin, Pocahontas and Tarzan, Disney veteran Glen Keane was expected to lead the rearguard battle. "Everybody," he says, "wanted me to really fight for hand drawn." When Keane looked for ways to work in the new world, he says, "many of the traditional artists thought that I had betrayed them. And many of the CG artists didn't trust me." In 2003 the two camps met for a retreat. "We realized there were a lot of things being done [at CG studios] that just aren't us. So let's do us."

A few respected animators, like Andreas Deja (who drew the title characters in Hercules and Who Framed Roger Rabbit) and Eric Goldberg (mastermind of the Genie in Aladdin), resisted making the switch to CG. And Keane, when he sat down at a computer, was soon aware of its downside. "It tempts you with the easy choices. It says, 'You designed half that face. Push this button, we'll duplicate it, and the job's done. You've got symmetry--perfect!' But the key to beauty is strangeness, asymmetry."

To woo him, Stainton told Keane he could direct a favorite project, Rapunzel Unbraided--if it was CG. Keane discovered that the computer "forced me to be a better artist. It challenged me to be better at what I do." CG also allowed him to give his leading lady something hand drawn couldn't persuasively do: freckles.

Rapunzel is scheduled for a 2008 release. It is to follow next year's fantasy trip Meet the Robinsons, in which a boy is taken in by a wonderfully eccentric family, and, in 2007, the hip, puckish American Dog, about a canine celebrity who thinks he's still on his TV show when he's really stranded in the desert. Those three films have a high standard to meet in the sassy, bouncy Chicken Little. The title character (voiced by Zach Braff) has huge glasses and a studious mien. And, oh, is this chick adorable, whether trying to win a chaotic baseball game or shaking a tail feather in his soon-to-be-copied chicken dance. It's up to him and his outcast pals to persuade the local skeptics that, darn it, the sky really is falling. At a pace as sprightly and assured as the great old Warner Bros. cartoons, the movie flirts with alien abductions, crop circles, Streisand jokes and familial reconciliation. The animation is gorgeous, but it's the feeling that you'll take home--warm, smart and happy.