Posted by: @pete

Add to that, as mentioned, it would also solve the issue of the aging of cast, as it's just the voices that need to be provided so it wouldn't matter so much how close together or far apart the films were made or which order they were done in.

Yes, I was thinking of that too — and the fact that animation also removes the issue of finding actors who look appropriate for the part, and also removes the need to spend time and money on costumes, make-up, prosthetics etc. to make people look like Fauns or Dryads or other such characters! I'd love to see an animated version with a traditional hand-drawn feel to it, though of course using modern digital technology as well to make it work. 

Posted by: @courtenay

I'd love to see an animated version with a traditional hand-drawn feel to it, though of course using modern digital technology as well to make it work. 

On reflection, I also think a traditional hand-drawn production would be lovely too, especially if it was a nod towards Pauline Baynes' illustrations and incorporated them into the production.  One of the few things I really strongly loved about the VDT movie, was the credits with her illustrations.  This makes me think of "The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends" the animated series from the 1990s which was based closely on Beatrix Potter's illustrations, and was quite a charming production.

Posted by: @wanderer

Seeing the trailer for War of the Rohirrim got me thinking about animation adaptation for Narnia again and how the animation scene certainly has changed so much since this thread was first posted, especially with the rising popularity of combining 2D and 3D animation techniques, allowing for a more diverse mix of styles and atmospheres.

Although I'm not entirely averse to Anime (either as an art-style, or as a genre in itself) there is something about the big eyes and small pointy noses which feels incongruous to the world of Middle Earth in the War of Rohirrim trailer. The backgrounds all look utterly fantastic, and even the character designs as a whole look spot-on... its just something about those faces that doesn't work for me.

That said, i've actually enjoyed most of Netflix's recent foray's into the Anime genre, with the Witcher anime spin-off being much better than the live-action spin-off (though that is a very low bar to clear) and their Anime adaptations of Castlevania and (new this week) Terminator series have been pretty solid, therefore I'm not going to entirely rule out Anime as a animation style when it comes to Narnia.

That said, one of my favourite recent animated releases in terms of visual style (other than the Spider-verse films which @wanderer also mentioned) is the Marvel "What If" show on Disney Plus, which managed to incorporate elements of "natural light" into the animation style which I thought really elevated it above more traditional "flat" 2D animation.

See article: https://comicbookmovie.com/tv/marvel/what_if/what-if-producer-reveals-and-explains-the-over-100-year-old-inspiration-for-the-shows-unique-art-style-a187245#gs.e1v1xm

I don’t know if real children could lend their voices to an animated film such the parts of the Pevensies, but I think it would be more realistic if they were used.  Using adult voices for children’s roles might be too artificial.  In addition I would hope that they would draw the children to look like the way they are in the books. Perhaps they could be similar to way Pauline Baynes drew them, although the artists could have their own unique style. It would be interesting to see what animators would do with the material.  I don’t think there are many old fashioned animated films today, and it would be refreshing to see a new one of good quality.  🙂

Posted by: @icarus

Although I'm not entirely averse to Anime (either as an art-style, or as a genre in itself) there is something about the big eyes and small pointy noses which feels incongruous to the world of Middle Earth in the War of Rohirrim trailer. The backgrounds all look utterly fantastic, and even the character designs as a whole look spot-on... its just something about those faces that doesn't work for me.

I haven't watched a ton of anime (only two shorter ones all the way through) but I do find the art style interesting. Anime as a genre contains such a broad genre of styles, and as far as facial proportions go, War of the Rohirrim is one of the more realistic ones (as opposed to Sailor Moon or One Piece). One of my friends who has watched quite a bit of anime pointed out that so many fantasy anime, manga, and manhwa (Korean webcomics) take cues from European architecture, clothing, and fantasy tropes (basically established by LoTR). So while I think it's an odd choice from a general marketing perspective, the faces didn't read as incongruently to me given the context of other animes. To add to your point about facial proportions, I'm not sure 3D Disney/Pixar style would work well for Narnia either, because the eye to nose proportions in a movie like Frozen or Luca are even more stark to me than in War of the Rohirrim. 

One other thing that occurred to me is that CGI (and even some 3D animation) ages poorly, and it ages fast, especially when used to create characters, while good 2D animation (or even some 2D/3D--see the Disney short Paperman produced in 2012) remains timeless. Narnia's books have a uniquely timeless quality about them, and I fear that heavy use of CGI (which would almost certainly be the route live action would go) would date Narnia, similar to how dated the Star Wars prequel trilogy looks today (the character movements like Jar Jar Binks suffer the most while the ships and industrial textures hold up decently).

@narnian78 I'm also inclined to prefer child actors in an animated show. It can be done--the Charlie Brown cartoons did it well, I think--and might lend more authenticity to Edmund and Lucy's arguments in particular. 

Posted by: @narnian78

I don’t know if real children could lend their voices to an animated film such the parts of the Pevensies, but I think it would be more realistic if they were used.  Using adult voices for children’s roles might be too artificial.  

The young actors who played the children for the Focus on the Family audio dramas of The Chronicles were very good. I've seen plenty of good stage productions with major child roles played by pre-teen or young teens. 

A bit of tutoring, for how to perform the roles, is surely all they'd need? The voices are recorded before the animation is created, aren't they?

I don’t know if people here like comic book animation similar to the old Star Trek animated series. If it were be done in an old fashioned way like the Prince Valiant comics it might work for Narnia. It is true that those kind of comics are decades old, but if they were made into a motion picture and looked medieval enough they could actually work. I think they would help keep Narnia from becoming too modern.

@narnian78 i like that idea. It would reintroduce that style, and present the Narnia stories within their European culture. 

I kind of like Claymation animation and I think it might even work for Narnia.  It has been tried for certain children's shows, although it may be difficult to make a two hour movie adaptation of the Narnia books.  Still, it is not a bad way to represent the stories, and it has the advantage of looking more dimensional and realistic than most children's cartoons. Remember the Gumby and Pokey and Davey and Goliath animated series of the 1960's?  I thought they were quite well done and appealing to children.

Posted by: @coracle

A bit of tutoring, for how to perform the roles, is surely all they'd need? The voices are recorded before the animation is created, aren't they?

Posted by: @narnian78

I kind of like Claymation animation and I think it might even work for Narnia.  It has been tried for certain children's shows, although it may be difficult to make a two hour movie adaptation of the Narnia books.

While not actually Claymation, Kubo and the Two Strings was a stop-motion animated film that I thought was beautiful, seamlessly melded the fantasy elements with the rest of the world, and it was a feature length movie. With the right style, I think that type of animation could absolutely work for Narnia.

From what I understand, though, stop-motion animation is really time-consuming, even compared to regular 2D/3D animation. It might be difficult to find studio(s) who are a) capable of producing full-length stop-motion films (I personally only know of two), and b) who can produce up to seven within a reasonable time frame.

But, I also haven't exactly researched it, so maybe I'm underestimating how many stop-motion animators are out there. If they could find enough to make it work, I'd be really interested in seeing the results!

I wonder how people would like seeing Narnia done with marionette puppets.  It would look old fashioned enough, and today’s technology could probably cover up the strings. Gerry Anderson made some of the best puppet shows back in the  1960’s, although today marionette puppets have become something of a lost art. A Narnia marionette film might have kind of a charm to it just like Anderson’s old shows do today since people still watch them for the nostalgia.  But not many films are made today with puppets because people usually want more advanced technology. The puppets have some advantages.  Like claymation films they often have the advantage of looking more dimensional than flat cartoons.

@narnian78 Hmmm... Gerry Anderson's puppets were F-A-B for quirky '60s sci-fi shows like Thunderbirds, but that and most other stop-motion animations, including claymation as well, are part of the kind of genre that deliberately doesn't take itself too seriously — the audience is meant to be laughing along with it and enjoying the fact that it's not even trying to be realistic, which is a big part of the fun. That works perfectly for those kinds of shows where that atmosphere is intended — one of the best-known modern examples in the UK is Wallace and Gromit (there's a new one coming out at Christmas! ), and other claymation productions by the same studio (Aardman).

But I just can't imagine Narnia being done successfully in that kind of format, because Narnia — for all its own inherent quirkiness and charm! — is meant to be a fantasy world that we DO take seriously, ideally so that the audience can imagine themselves stepping into this world as well and becoming part of it like the Pevensies and other children from our world do. I just don't think that atmosphere, the believability that Narnia needs to have, could be brought out well enough in a production done with puppets and stop-motion. I reckon it would just end up looking awkward and hokey and make the whole story come across as a twee little tale, instead of a marvellous and deeply meaningful experience.

The 1979 animation and the BBC TV adaptations have the same problem to some extent, but they do still manage to be charming enough in their own right, at least for those of us who grew up with these as the only screen adaptations of Narnia that were available at the time. I get the clear impression that they're a lot less popular with younger viewers, and I can totally understand why. And now that the technology exists to make fantasy worlds look ultra-realistic on the screen, I really can't imagine a director wanting to revert to a retro style of animation (and an expensive and time-consuming and difficult one, at that) that would risk looking like it was mocking these classic stories instead of honouring them.

(I've said elsewhere, in the discussion on this topic, that I can imagine a new animated version of Narnia working well if the artwork was ultra high quality. But stop-motion animation — whether with marionettes or clay models or whatever — has a very different feel to it that, as I've just explained, I don't think would suit the Narnia stories at all.) 

@courtenay 

It was something serious that actually started Thunderbirds.  As I remember it was a mining accident in Germany in which people were trapped underground and needed to be rescued.  It was that accident which gave Gerry Anderson his idea for the show.  Narnia is at least as serious as that.  Probably it could look about as serious and have the depth of a completely animated film using the old fashioned techniques of puppet animation combined with modern technology. Using a marionette puppet for Aslan might be about the same as the BBC’s puppet, which had its own charm and was very good for children, although its movements were a bit artificial.  There are some modern animated films that are quite good such The Prince of Egypt, and they have serious themes.  Today people can watch puppet films and see them as either serious or humorous, depending largely on the kind of story that is adapted for the film. 

Posted by: @courtenay

But I just can't imagine Narnia being done successfully in that kind of format, because Narnia — for all its own inherent quirkiness and charm! — is meant to be a fantasy world that we DO take seriously, ideally so that the audience can imagine themselves stepping into this world as well and becoming part of it like the Pevensies and other children from our world do. I just don't think that atmosphere, the believability that Narnia needs to have, could be brought out well enough in a production done with puppets and stop-motion. I reckon it would just end up looking awkward and hokey and make the whole story come across as a twee little tale, instead of a marvellous and deeply meaningful experience

Have you seen Testament: The Bible in Animation? It's a TV show that adapts stories from the Old Testament, a British and Russian coproduction, I believe. Some episodes use hand-drawn animation, and some use stop motion. (They also did a movie based on the gospels, The Miracle Maker, in the same style.) The puppets were quite realistic looking, not like Aardman or Laika characters at all. 

@col-klink No, I haven't seen either of those. They do sound interesting, but I'm just not convinced that Narnia could come off well in that style. And I say that as a fan of stop-motion animation! There was a lovely film and follow-up TV series of The Wind in the Willows in the early 1980s that used stop-motion puppets, and that was very effective for that particular fantasy world. And doing Bible stories in animation would certainly make them feel a bit "different" and intriguing. But I'm still just not convinced it's the right approach for Narnia in particular. It'd probably work for a niche market, but not for the kind of broader audience that Netflix and any other major producers would want.

And (in response to @narnian78 as well) I see this has already been mentioned further up the thread, but stop-motion animation of any kind is REALLY time-consuming and expensive. To do the Chronicles of Narnia in that style, and to have them done well, would take an incredibly dedicated team who knew exactly what they wanted to do and had a very clear artistic vision for it. It's not impossible that that could happen, and that the results might end up really beautiful after all, but I don't think it's likely.