The new DreamWorks animated movie Sinbad performed a major bellyflop this holiday weekend, further driving the nails into the cel animation casket.

Studio executives and the media are propagating the myth that movies like Treasure Planet and now Sinbad do poor business because they're not computer animated - like this summer's biggest hit, Finding Nemo - but that's a load of bull. Fact is that Pixar, PDI, and Blue Sky Studios (with Ice Age) are making movies that focus on great stories and interesting characters rather than just visuals, and that's why they've done well...not because they're CGI.

It's a sad state of affairs when a "traditionally animated" movie like Sinbad has to be sold on the fact that "it's got CGI, it really does!". The studios want to brush the wonderful craft of hand-drawn animation under the carpet, and focus on 'cool' technology, because we all know that's what people want. (Hey, sounds like the game industry.)

Problem is, from what I've heard, Sinbad is a merely okay movie, and it would've had a hard time competing against all the big summer flicks regardless of the methods used to make it. But now its failure is being read as a sign (and sold as a story) as to how "2D is dead, long live 3D" - and soon there will be no more cel-animated feature films made...and no more artists and animators to make them. What a horrible shame.  ¶ 20:58