David Koenig
Thursday, August 14, 2003
Unfortunately, the latest installment of Survivor doesn't take place at some remote tropical island. It takes place a lot closer to home… in beautiful downtown Burbank, under a giant Sorcerer's hat, at the Walt Disney Feature Animation building, where last week another group of stressed-out castaways were voted off the show.
Forget the official Disney line that Feature Animation boasts a staff of 1,000 to 1,500 artists. In Burbank, there are only about 60 traditional “2-D” animators left who actually pick up a pencil or a paintbrush, counting Layout, Animators, Clean-up and Background artists… and Disney has no 2-D projects currently in production for them to work on. (Disney has a like number of survivors holding on in Florida, where a half 2-D/half-CG (computer graphics) project tentatively called My Peoples is underway.)
The vast majority of Feature Animation's artists have been reassigned to a computer or shown the door. It all points to Disney's next two animated features (this fall's Brother Bear and next spring's Home on the Range) being their last.
The latest cutback came two weeks ago, after 13 traditional animators submitted five scenes they had done on computer to vie for six “3-D” spots left to cast on Chicken Little. “The real controversy of this,” noted an onlooker, “is that they were pitted against one another and the playing field wasn't fair. Those who just finished the training program called 'Boot Camp' were up against those who finished Boot Camp six months ago and had more time to finesse, complete and present a more finished test. Also, they purposely entered more people into the training program, anticipating that the majority would fail at learning the computer. Well, they were terribly wrong! They all did great. Now they're worried because they don't know what to do with them because they already hired animators from The Secret Lab (Kangaroo Jack, the dragons on Reign of Fire). They hired them on the superficial qualities that they could do a lot of footage. Forget the fact that they can't do a lot of character footage!”
Last week, six of the animators got the openings on Chicken Little. It looks like the other seven will get the boot. Consider the loss of talent:
- Randy Haycock – character animator on Aladdin, Pocahontas, Lion King, Treasure Planet; supervising animator of Hercules' Baby/Young Hercules, Tarzan's Clayton, Atlantis' Princess Kida
- Richard Hoppe – animator on Black Cauldron, Beauty & the Beast, Tarzan, Atlantis, Treasure Planet
- James Lopez – animator on Lion King, Pocahontas; supervising animator of Hercules' Pain, Emperor's New Groove's Tipo
- Shawn Keller – started in 1970s, character animator on Black Cauldron, Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Co. , Little Mermaid, Treasure Planet; supervising animator of Atlantis' Cookie and Preston Whitmore
- Mark Pudleiner – character animator on Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan, Hercules, Emperor's New Groove
- John Pomeroy – started in 1970s and worked on Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Rescuers, Pete's Dragon, before leaving with Don Bluth; returned to Disney in 1990s to serve as supervising animator for Pocahontas' John Smith, Fantasia 2000's Firebird, Atlantis' Milo, Treasure Planet's Flint
- Dougg Williams – character animator on Tarzan, Atlantis, Treasure Planet
Officially, most of the seven still “work” for Disney, since their contracts all end at different times (some extending into next year). But don't expect many of them to latch onto new projects too quickly, considering Michael Eisner's official decree: “2-D is dead.”
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