Jungle Book and John K

So me, my girlfriend and her roommate all watched the new jungle book dvd that came out today and I couldn't stop thinking about what John K said about Disney animation in his blog. He said something along the lines of, "classical Disney animators have the technical skill required to reproduce real life, but their characters possess no soul, " or something to that effect. I couldn't really understand what he was saying without seeing it for myself though.

Now I was all pumped to see the jungle book again for the first time in maybe 10 years; to see the masters like Milt Kahl in action. So this scene comes up in the middle of the movie with mogley walking down this path, and then it hit me...John K was right! Not just that he was right, but for the first time, I understood why he was so unimpressed with disney animation. Mogley had this perfect walk cycle! At first I was very impressed at how fluid and natural the animation was, but then the more I studied it, the more I noticed that it was too perfect! It was like it was rotoscoped! It was too real! The idea of knowing for a fact that that animation wasn't rotoscoped blew my mind! I mean, I can watch an anime and tell immediately when a scenes been rotoed because it stands out among the rest of the animation; the lack of exaggeration makes it stand out, and that's what was happening during this walk cycle. But it wasn't rotoscoped, the animator was just so good at imitating real life to the point that the animation started to look too much like real life(if that makes sense?)

And that's what John K's been saying all along: Disney's goal was to imitate real life in animation, to make a animated film that could "stand up" to a live action film. Now don't get me wrong, I still think jungle book is an impressive piece of work, and I love how sketchy and old school some of the scenes are. But I'm in agreement when John K says that animation should do things that are only possible in animation(besides talking). Now like I said, the animation in that movie is amazing, I just wish they didn't play it so straight.