photo #9324146

Hand-drawn animation means every frame is drawn by a person. Roughly 24 of them for one second of film.Walt Disney Animation has not released a fully hand-drawn feature since Winnie the Pooh in 2011. The studio is now rebuilding the craft from the ground up.A training program launched in 2021 took six people from more than 2,000 applicants, twelve months under veterans who animated Simba, the Genie and Tiana. Ron Clements, who directed The Little Mermaid, came out of retirement in 2025 to mentor the studio's animators.Chief creative officer Jared Bush said at the Annecy festival in 2025 that the studio's 2D artists were doing remarkable work, and left it there. Any return would need a real story reason, he added.No hand-drawn feature has been announced.Sources: TheWrap, IndieWire, Animation World Network, SlashFilm, MovieWeb