Topping "Poppins" (Or Trying To)

The Gray Lady explains how the filmmakers for the sequel to Walt's last big live-action epic approached the new animated sequences:

... [I]t felt right to begin planning the [animated] sequence using actual drawings rather than computer images. “We pulled together a storyboard — pinning sheets of paper onto corkboards, the old Disney way,” Capobianco said. “We met in the bungalow and pitched the boards using an umbrella as a pointer. Rob would say, ‘I love that idea, but we need a little more time.’ Marc would get on the piano and rewrite the music; we’d redraw stuff and re-pin it." ...

[T]he animators knew that the [original "Poppins'"] cartoon sequences had largely been drawn by Milt Kahl, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, three of Disney’s “Nine Old Men,” whose work remains the gold standard of animation, even in the age of CGI.

“I’ve spent my entire career being intimidated by their work, so that’s nothing new,” Baxter said with a laugh. “It was great to have that high bar: It’s the motivator to do the best you possibly can, even though you know you’ll never get over that bar. If it’s not there, there’s not as much motivation to reach for the stars.”

"Redraw stuff and re-pin it...". What a concept. Woolie Reitherman used to do this endlessly with story crews he directed on multiple animated features in the 1960s an 1970s. Today, of course it's all digital storyboards and lots more posing. As a wise old board artist told me some time ago ...

"Bill Peet's storyboards wouldn't work today. Directors and producers want more drawings, less held drawings on the screen. Animatics have changed the way we work."

Animatics (digital storyboards) have changed the way production unspools. Drawings are made on computer screens, not paper. Few sit in story meetings surrounded by cork boards covered with drawings (although it occasionally happens). Does the "new, faster" story technologies improve the quality of the work? Look at the older pictures made in the old-fashioned way (Pinocchio, Peter Pan, 101 Dalmations, Mary Poppins) and judge for yourself.