This is coming from a place of ignorance, but are these "hand drawn" animations actually hand drawn or is this just a new way to say 2D animation? It was my impression that by now, even 2D things are put together mostly on a computer and not any more "hand drawn" than an initial sketch up of a 3D character. In other words, I find it hard to believe people are still using tracing paper to hand draw these movies frame by frame. I'm happy to be wrong here, though.
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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I can’t account for all the titles mentioned, but hand drawn means hand drawn, but they do it with software and drawing tablets and not actual paper. Think of it more like, they go frame by frame, but their process is assisted with software
I see, so it's sort of a blend in that they're no longer using paper and (i imagine, I'm not an animator) some sort of stop motion process, but doing the same thing with a tablet.
That's pretty cool. Still, as an animation consumer who is rather uneducated in the hows of animation, it seems like 3D animation could be done in a very similar way?
I apologize though, I think I'm just being a pedant about what "hand drawn" means when the article seemed to be more of an argument pushing for 2D over 3D animation. As a consumer I think the concept of "hand drawn" is really cool, however whether computer aided or not, I think as long as the end result is a good animation with a good story, I'm happy in the end. And, I'll say I'm happy to see 2D animation making a comeback!