Rapunzel (film)

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Rapunzel
*Old logo for Rapunzel, which shows the working title Rapunzel Unbraided.*
Directed by	Glen Keane
Written by	Josann McGibbon Sara Parriott
Starring	Kristin Chenoweth Dan Fogler
Music by	Jeanine Tesori Amir Khalifa (Songs)
Distributed by	Buena Vista Pictures
Release date(s)	June 2009
Language	English
IMDb profile

Rapunzel is an American animation film scheduled for release in 2009 and produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and Walt Disney Pictures and to be distributed by Buena Vista Pictures in the United States. The story is based on the fairy tale Rapunzel by the Brothers Grimm.

Though the film will be made entirely in CGI, Rapunzel will resemble traditional oil paintings on canvas^{[citation needed]}. One of the main ambitions of the makers of Rapunzel is to create movements that are just as soft and fluid as of that in the old Disney Classics.

Very few details have been released about this film, except that in October of 2005, production was halted in order to "retool" it. Early versions of Rapunzel (then titled Rapunzel Unbraided) had been criticized by top Disney artists and executives for having too many similarities to the 2001 DreamWorks hit animated film Shrek, which parodied numerous fairy tales and Disney animated films. The retooling is expected to take two years, with Rapunzel's release date being pushed back from 2007 to 2009. Many classic Disney films often go through this retooling phase^{[citation needed]}. In July 2006, Disney's new creative head John Lasseter admitted that he is very pleased with Rapunzel thus far, after seeing a nearly-completed first act.

If the film is released on schedule, it will be the first Disney animated feature based on a traditional European fairy tale in eighteen years (the previous one being 1991's Beauty and the Beast), and the first one done in CGI.

1 Story
2 Visual style and animation
3 Concept artwork
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Story

Originally, the film's plot revolved around two 'romantically challenged', real-world teenagers who are transformed into Rapunzel and her Prince by a disgruntled witch who can no longer stand happy fairy-tale endings. However, since production was halted in 2004 for major retooling, Glen Keane has "promised" that the film will revert back to the fairy tale's "literary origins." Thus, it is likely that the previously-mentioned plot of two 'romantically challenged, real-world teenagers' will be discarded.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Visual style and animation

The Swing, the artistic inspiration for Rapunzel

The movie's visual style will be based on the painting "The Swing", by the French Rococo artist Jean-Honore Fragonard^[1]. Because director Glen Keane wanted this to be an animated movie that looked and felt like a traditional hand-drawn Disney Classic in 3D, he first had a seminar called "The Best of Both Worlds", where he, with 50 Disney animators (CGI artists and traditional artists), focused on the pluses and minuses of each style^[2]. The movie will be made by animators from both traditional and CGI backgrounds. Because of the advancements in computer technology many of the basic principles of animation used in traditional animated movies that has been absent in CGI films due to technical limitations, is now becoming possible also in this field of animation, where they will be used together with the potential offered by CGI. Keane has stated numerous times that he is trying to make the computer "bend its knee to the artist" instead of having the computer dictate the artistic style and look of the film. By making the computer become as "pliable as the pencil," Keane's vision of a "three dimensional drawing" seems within reach, with the artist controlling the technology. Because many of the techniques and tools that were required to give the film the quality Keane demanded of it didn't exist when the project was started, WDFA had to make them on their own^[1]. Among the new tools that are being used is a graphics tablet, first used in Chicken Little, allowing artists to draw silhouettes and sketches of the animated characters (in the same manner and freedom as a traditional 2-D animated Disney film) directly onto the computer screen. These hand-created character silhouettes will then be "filled in" with a computer-generated 3-D image, for instance by superimposing the handdrawn image over the 3D model. To create the impression of a drawing, Non-photorealistic rendering is going to be used, making the surface look like it is painted but still containing depth and dimensions. A short test footage of the film was shown at the Siggraph 2005, where it gained a lot of attention.