(Paris) On the genius ofAladdin to “mini Maui” in Moana, Éric Goldberg has been working with Disney for more than 30 years. For this artist, traditional animation, which is his field, and 3D, however, “do not have to be in competition”.
“3D and 2D are not the Sharks and the Jets”, summarizes the 68-year-old creator to AFP during the Annecy festival, in central-eastern France, in reference to the two clans rivals of West Side Story.
On the occasion of its hundredth anniversary, the studio with big ears unveiled a short film on Sunday paying tribute to its key characters. The genius ofAladdin being in the game, Éric Goldberg was asked.
On Wednesday, he delivers a cinema lesson by diving into scenes ofAladdin and D’Herculese, where we owe him the character of Phil, and showing how traditional animation can be applied to more recent techniques.
Since his last hand-drawn feature film, The princess and the Frog in 2009, Disney released only computer-generated films, helped by the takeover of industry pioneer Pixar in 2006.
Candy
Not enough to put Eric Goldberg out of work: he animated “mini Maui”, a living tattoo and kind of consciousness of Maui in the 3D film Moana (2016).
“Mini Maui does not speak, but we always know what he thinks, it is one of the powers of animation”, argues Éric Goldberg about his “Jiminy Cricket”.
For Moana, the “hand drawing animators” worked “arm in arm with the digital animators. We had to do our scenes together, it was great. It felt like, for the first time in years, the whole studio was making the same movie.”
It was in 1992 that Eric Goldberg, a long-time producer of television commercials, joined Disney to Aladdin.
“It was absolutely wonderful and a lot of it had to do with Robin Williams.” The comedian, who died in 2014, not only lent his voice to the blue character who grants wishes in the English version, his sketches also inspired all his gags and makeovers.
“It was like eating too much candy. It was always funny, we burst out laughing all the time, ”says the cartoonist with a frank laugh under his mustache, dressed in a shirt decorated with characters from the Mickey band designed by his wife Susan, also an animator at Disney.
Smurfs
The experience was “very different” for Pocahontas (1995), entirely co-directed with Mike Gabriel.
Already because the film followed people who really existed. Also because Disney wanted this feature film to “win the Oscar” for best film that had escaped The beauty and the Beastin 1992, for the benefit of the Silence of the Lambs.
Asked about the cardboard in 2009Avatar by James Cameron, Éric Goldberg is more mocking.
“Passing me in a hallway at the studio, (Disney’s favorite composer) Alan Menken asked me: ‘Did you see Avatar ?”. I replied: you mean Pocahontas with Smurfs? You could predict all the aftershocks with my wife, it’s very similar”, even if “I would have liked Pocahontas brings in so much money,” he jokes.
If Éric Goldberg does not comment on a possible return of Disney films in 2D to the cinema, he points out that the creative director of the animation studios since 2018, Jennifer Lee, has “encouraged hand drawing a lot. It’s a relief because the previous managements didn’t care so much”.
It was she who allowed him to create three 2D short films, How to Stay Home with Goofyduring the pandemic, giving him “the fastest green light” of his career.