In 1985 the Coca Cola Company made one of the biggest bonehead moves in modern business history by announcing they were going to discontinue producing Coca Cola, the premier soft drink for nearly 100 years and replace it with "New Coke". New Coke was essentially undrinkable which made many people think that the Coca Cola Company had actually held Coke hostage because their market share had been slipping due to rival drinks. Taking away beloved Coke made people appreciate it more while making it mandatory to at least try New Coke. It was soon that New Coke disappeared and original Coke re-emerged as "Classic Coke" (now reverted back to just "Coca Cola"). If New Coke had replaced Classic Coke for much longer rival soda companies could have reproduced original Coke's recipe and filled that void. However, the Coca Cola Company almost immediately returned to making "Classic Coke" so no abandonment of its brand could be claimed.
Now another iconic American company, almost as old and certainly as beloved as the Coca Cola Company, has seemingly abandoned its brand, permanently. It is The Walt Disney Company. Because computer animation (CGI) was considered less expensive to produce than hand drawn animation, Disney announced that its feature, The Princess And The Frog, would be its last traditionally animated feature film. That was in 2009 and so far they've been true to their word. Even Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Donald Duck and the other classic Disney characters now appear exclusively as CGI characters.
Since so much of the "Classic Disney" style is dependent on it being hand drawn, CGI gives everything its own unique visual look, it would appear that the Walt Disney Company has abandoned its brand. After all, the "magic of animation", traditionally, has been due to the illusion of drawings come to life. Therefore, we feel the time has come to not only re-introduce traditional hand drawn animation to the American audience but also to re-establish the classic "Disney" art style, a style they themselves abandoned over five years ago.
Not only has enough time passed that the classic Disney style is now sorely missed, but a new generation of young fans are being born. This new growing demographic is the main cause of animated features such as Frozen becoming blockbusters after years of lackluster ticket sales for children's movies and the glut of "adult" animation on television. There is a generation of classically trained American animators who should be in the prime of their careers but are instead chronically unemployed who are available to help usher in the reemergence of hand drawn, "Disney" style animation in America.
To contribute to what we see as a inevitable movement to re-introduce the magic and dream-like quality of hand drawn animation to a generation of children who only know animation created by machines, we would like to introduce the first in a series of original animated movie projects; HummingBirds (www.hummingbirdsmovie.com).
Produced in traditional hand drawn 2D animation.
Hummingbirds character model sheet.
Hummingbirds tells the story of a young hummingbird named Robin, her hummingbird girlfriends and her friend, Jerry the Squirrel, who live in the yard of a suburban Southern California home. A major theme of Hummingbirds is that the seemingly ordinary and mundane location of a suburban neighborhood is actually a world of wonder and adventure when seen through the eyes of the wildlife with whom we share our world.
Here is a short story from the Hummingbirds comic book featuring Herbie the Hummingbird.
Like the classic Disney movies of
The Second Golden Age of Animation,
Hummingbirds is a musical with music by award-winning music director
Greg Piper (
Just Imagine,
One Night Only,
A Day In His Life,
Rock & Roll Rehab) and award winning animator and writer
Neal Warner (Academy Of Television Arts & Sciences (Emmy Award), Chicago International Film Festival, Los Angeles Animation Celebration).
A Day That Never Ends
song from HummingBirds
Music by Greg Piper, lyrics by Neal Warner
The sun is shining and all my friends are here to help spend the day
It's perfect timing to have all of them near, I like it this way
I came to play with all of my friends
Spending a day with them I hope never ends, I hope never ends
We go out shopping, the stores are all in bloom so we hit the mall
Then we go bar hopping and all the boys make room, we never pay at all
Cause we're here to play with all of our friends
I hope today's a day that never ends, that never ends
But sometimes they say to me, "Please proceed more cautiously.
The world is not as you perceive" but I just laugh when they say, "Don't you see?
You're living a life of fantasy."
Why should I worry when I'm still cute and young and life is so long?
And why need to hurry when I have just begun and I'm where I belong?
Cause I'm here to play with all of my friends
I hope today's a day that never ends, that never ends
And when they say to me, "Be aware of what you cannot see"
I remain still worry free because, you see, I don't believe
I'm living a life of fantasy.
It makes me wonder why some feel the need to fly so high
In the wild blue yonder? They are wild indeed but why say,"Goodbye"?
Why not just stay with all of your friends
Spending a day with them that never ends
Yes, I came to stay with all of my friends
I know today's the day that never ends
