First Official Images From Disney’s Paperman

There’s been a lot of interest in Disney’s upcoming animated short, Paperman, which is due to play in front of the studio’s upcoming movie, Wreck-It Ralph. Now new images from the short have debuted over at EW. The innovative black-and film, directed by John Kahrs, blends traditional hand-drawn animation with CGI and attempts to create a new look.

The short is about a man who believes the woman of his dreams works in the building across the street. Armed with a stack of paper, he tosses paper airplanes towards her window, in hopes of getting her attention. The director, who served as an animator on The Incredibles and Tangled, spoke about the power of hand-drawn animation, and how it may make a comeback, “Drawing can have a really powerful, visceral effect on the viewer. You can create anger and surprise or anguish with just a few lines of a pencil. But it can’t just be the same thing it was. I think for 2D to be revitalized, you have to figure out a way to make it new again.”

Producer Kristina Reed commented, “CG has stomped to the forefront, and completely owns the space of the photo-real image and all the surrounding area around that. Paperman is, for us, a part of the larger conversation: ‘How can visuals look – other than moving slowly, more and more, toward photo-real?'”