A frame of traditional animation looks like this: http://www.animationsensations.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/s/l/s

A frame of traditional animation looks like this: http://www.animationsensations.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/s/l/sleeping_beauty_icon.jpg http://www.animationsensations.com/media/catalog/product/cac... That doesn't look too detailed, but imagine drawing four of those every day for a year without weekends. 365 x 4 is about equal to 24 x 60. Congratulations, you've created a minute of footage. To make a feature film, you'll spend a life. I guess Disney-style animated characters occupy a kind of sweet spot. They are carefully stylized to look good enough that adding more detail won't really make them much better, and simple enough that a large team of animators with top-down planning can make a complete movie in a few years. Japanese anime has slightly more detailed characters, at the cost of having fewer frames per second. If you want a lot more detail with good enough framerate, you need more money than your audience is willing to pay.