Comingsoon.net has the first look at Disney's, hopefully triumphant, return to traditional animation, The Princess And The Frog. Click below for a better look. The film will tell the story of Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) a girl who lives in the French Quarter of New Orleans, during the birth of jazz in the 1920s. No more information is given about the plot, but we're figuring it's going to follow the story of the girl who kisses a frog who's actually a prince in disguise. Falling in love with a frog is still wrong, even if he is really a man, so you are one sick puppy, Tiana.
We're delighted that Disney, under the influence of John Lasseter, has returned to traditional animation. It was never the case that the medium stopped being interesting, just that Disney lost the knack for telling compelling stories and tried to go too teenage (we're thinking of things like Treasure Planet and Atlantis: The Lost Empire). Watch Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan or The Lion King today and they're just as good as they ever were, even if they're not 3D. And drawn animation seems to be working just fine for Studio Ghibli.
It's encouraging that Ron Clements and John Musker are directing the film. As the makers of The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and the under-rated Hercules, they seem the perfect people to mark 2D animations return. We expect we're not the target audience for this – given that we're not mooning 8-year-old girls, despite what you might think – but we hope that it's a success so that we might see more ink and paint animations from the studio.