Can We Talk?

In the bad old days of Disney animation, that would be pre-Catmull and Lasseter back to the late ‘90s, it was fairly easy to find out what was going on inside what was then known as Walt Disney Feature Animation (WDFA). That’s because as the Mouse literally turned thousands of animation workers out onto the streets worldwide, they were only too happy to let people know what was happening to the most fabled animation studio in history.

Things are different now of course, since Disney Big Cheese Bob Iger purchased Pixar Animation Studios, merged them with what’s now called Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS), and put Pixar’s Ed Catmull and John Lasseter in charge of the whole thing.

There are still occasional layoffs at WDAS, mostly from overstaffing as one project ends and others have not yet ramped up sufficiently to absorb the available talent. Now, when layoffs do occur, most staffers don’t feel the need to talk about what’s happening inside Disney’s infamous “Hat Building.”

Besides that, Mickey generally makes them all sign a big, fat non-disclosure agreement before picking up whatever severance package they may have coming.

For the most part, though, those still working in Disney animation are so happy with the way things are going, they have cheerfully embraced the Pixar ‘Cone of Silence.’

This is not to say that everyone is pleased with the changes wrought by Catmull and Lasseter. A few “creative executives,” formerly attached to DisneyToon studios and Disney Television Animation, still working for the studio have been trying to turn some mole hills into a mountain of controversy. Outside of the Pixar haters who can’t wait to see Disney’s stock plunge—an increasingly less likely event as time passes—they’ve had few takers.

How Not to Goof Up a Movie

This doesn’t mean, however, that there’s no news coming out of WDAS. Sources close to the studio report that the new Goofy short, How to Hook Up Your Home Theatre, is complete and ready to join Walt Disney Pictures Enchanted for its Thanksgiving Week (November 21) release. More importantly, those who’ve seen the film say it’s the funniest thing to come out of Disney animation since the golden age of theatrical shorts.

“I haven’t seen Enchanted yet,” said one Disney insider. “But if it’s not really great, this could be like the old days when people came to the theatre just to see the Mickey Mouse (cartoon),” referring to a time in the ‘30s when Mickey Mouse and his short seven-minute films often got equal or even top billing with the feature films they accompanied.

Goofy in the classic Disney short Goofy's How to Play Baseball.
Image copyright© Disney Enterprises all rights reserved.

Even the tight-lipped among the top brass at WDAS are venturing so far as to tell nearly everyone they meet, “You’re going to love it.”

If the Goofy short is as big a hit with audiences as the folks at Disney think it will be, it could usher in the return of a dedicated shorts unit to the Burbank animation studio. With parent studio Walt Disney Pictures planning on releasing fewer than 12 films a year, it’s conceivable that each could be preceded by a cartoon short.

Such a production and distribution schedule would have several advantages. Primarily it would give WDAS a way of ensuring a continual flow of animation talent schooled in the Disney style. Additionally, collections of shorts could be released to the home video market, thereby replacing some of the revenue lost to the shuttered cheapquels unit.

Dark Clouds

Not all the news out of Burbank is positive.  For several months now, former WDAS staffers have been quietly saying we may not have seen the last of the Chris Sanders-like departures of major talent from the studio.

“All these guys like and respect each other,” said a former Disney artist referring to WDAS’s top production staff and the studio’s new bosses. “It’s just that they’re all now middle-aged guys with 20 years or more of doing things a certain way.” The artist went on to say that the Disney way of the past two decades doesn’t always match up with the Pixar way of doing things now in use at WDAS. Additionally, this is leading to problems “not unlike those experienced by Chris (Sanders).”

Still others who once worked for WDAS have cautiously expressed fears that some longtime friendships might suffer if creative differences between the studio’s new bosses and production heads continue to simmer.

Dream a Little DreamWorks

Speaking of former Disney employees, Jeffrey Katzenberg, sounding more like the big corporate CEO he is now than the head of Disney Studios he once was, recently made an interesting admission to Merrill Lynch’s Jessica Reif Cohen. Between talk of capital investment and acquisitions, Katzenberg told the senior media and entertainment analyst that he didn’t much care for the last act of Madagascar. He went on to say that he felt it wasn’t up to par with the rest of the film.

It remains to be seen how much of the DreamWorks Animation CEO’s time and attention will be given to Madagascar 2: The Crate Escape. If memory serves, his former boss, Michael Eisner, was often criticized for spending too much time micromanaging his studio’s productions.

Chief Executive Officer of DreamWorks Animation SKG, Jeffrey Katzenberg at the 34th annual Annie Awards.
Image copyright© obe-mediaone.

Around town, DreamWorks Animation is occasionally referred to as “little Disney” because of the high volume of former Disney animation staffers working there, for example former Lilo and Stitch cowriter and director Chris Sanders now works there. If that wasn’t enough, DreamWorks Animation was built right next door to Disney’s Flower Street facilities in Glendale.

As you might imagine, this leads to a great deal of respect and mutual admiration between the two animation companies. Katzenberg and Disney’s Bob Iger have even struck up a professional relationship, and occasionally dine together.

The same cannot be said of the way lots of Southern California animation professionals feel about the product coming out of Palo Alto-based PDI/DreamWorks, creators of the Shrek franchise.

Die-hard traditional 2D animators often derisively refer to CG animation as being little more than “puppetry with a computer.” Quietly and off the record, because you never know when you may get a job at DreamWorks, both 2D and CG animators based in and around LA lament the quality of the character work and animation in nearly all of DreamWorks CG-animated films.

Speaking of Shrek the Third, a highly regarded CG specialist said, “They (the characters) don’t even move as well as puppets. The movie was an embarrassment (to the field of CG animation).”

Another CG animator added, “There’s no reason for CG characters to look and move that unappealingly.” He added that the advances made in CG software in the last few years makes animation of this quality inexcusable.

“They’re still turning out the same quality of work as the first Shrek,” which was released in 2001. “They seriously need to upgrade their software.”

And in Other (Real) News

The International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood has sent out the call for nominations for the 35th Annual Annie Awards. Honoring excellence in the field of animation, the Annie Awards are presented annually by ASIFA-Hollywood, and were originally begun by legendary voice actress June Foray.

The deadline to receive entry forms is 5 pm on Friday, October 5, 2007. For complete details, click here.

If you live in Southern California, or plan on being in the Los Angeles area the weekend of October 20-21, you may want to consider attending the Los Angeles Animation Festival (LAAF) —clever, eh?

This will be the first L.A. animation festival in more than six years. Festival organizers say that LAAF’s “how to get ahead in animation” promises to make it a singularly unique experience.

For complete festival details and to learn how to submit your work for consideration, check out LAAF’s website at this link.

C’ya real soon!