Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Sunday, December 03, 2006
For Disney, Something Old (and Short) Is New Again
MOVIEGOERS who have become inured to pre-show car ads and trivia quizzes may soon get something old enough to seem new: cartoon shorts.
After a hiatus of nearly 50 years, Walt Disney Studios is getting back into the business of producing short cartoons, starting with a Goofy vehicle next year. The studio has released a few shorts in recent years — “Destino,” “Lorenzo” and “The Little Match Girl” — but those were more artistic exercise than commercial endeavor. The new cartoons, by contrast, are an effort by a new leadership team from Pixar Animation Studios, now a Disney unit, to put the Burbank company back at the forefront of animation with a form it once pioneered.
“The impetus comes from John Lasseter, who takes the idea from Walt Disney and 100 years of film history,” said Don Hahn, producer of “The Lion King” and “The Little Match Girl,” in a recent interview at his studio office. “Shorts have always been a wellspring of techniques, ideas and young talent. It’s exactly what Walt did, because it’s a new studio now, with new talent coming up — as it should. I think the shorts program can really grow this studio as it grew Pixar, as it grew Walt’s studio.”
Although audiences today are more familiar with his feature films, Walt Disney’s reputation was originally built on shorts. In the 1930s “A Mickey Mouse Cartoon” appeared on theater marquees with the titles of the features, and Disney won 10 Oscars for cartoon shorts between 1932 and 1942. He used the “Silly Symphonies” to train his artists as they geared up to create “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” But after World War II Disney phased out short cartoons because of rising production costs and the minimal amount theater owners would pay for them.
Mr. Hahn said the new shorts would be screened in theaters along with Disney films. “You pay your 10 bucks to see a movie,” he said, “and you get a surprise you hadn’t counted on.” The new shorts will be done in traditional 2-D animation, computer graphics or a combination of the two media, depending on the story and the visual style.
This is not the first attempt at such a revival. Warner Brothers, for example, tried to bring back the classic Looney Tunes characters in new shorts in 2003, but they proved unsuccessful and most of them were never screened theatrically.
View full story.Disney to cut 160 workers in animation
December 2, 2006
Walt Disney Co. said Friday that it would dismiss about 160 of the 800 employees in its feature animation unit as the company slowed production at what once was its crown jewel.
The 20% cutback comes nearly a year after Disney purchased Pixar Animation Studios, maker of such computer-animated hits as "Cars" and "The Incredibles." Pixar executives including creative guru John Lasseter took control of the Disney group, aiming to revive an operation that was a crucial profit center before it lost ground to other studios.
"With John Lasseter from Pixar being put over the division, and the much brighter track record they've had, he's going to keep his guys and his projects first," said David Koenig, an author of books on Disney.
The number of artists, technologists and production managers in Burbank will be reduced. A separate TV animation unit is unaffected.
Employees said they were told that because the average production time for the Burbank company's animated films was expanding from 12 months to 18 months, fewer staffers could handle the workload.
"The management team at Walt Disney Animation has determined that each film will dictate its own appropriate production schedule," Disney Studios spokeswoman Heidi Trotta said. "The result of this necessitated a reduction of staff."
Hundreds of the division's employees are members of the local animators guild and are covered under a collective-bargaining contract. But management can choose whom to fire based on skill level instead of seniority, guild business representative Steve Hulett said. Notification of those affected is to begin the week of Dec. 11.
"Everybody's wondering who's going to be getting the ax," Hulett said.
View full story.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Excerpt taken from Wikipedia under "Flash cartoons"
Flash animation in professional studios
Although Flash animation creation is generally much easier and less expensive than traditional animation techniques, the amount of time, money, and skills needed depends on the chosen content and style. Distribution via the Internet is very easy and cheap compared to television broadcasting, and websites such as Newgrounds and UGOplayer host Flash animations for free. Many Flash animations are created by individual or amateur artists, though it does require enough technical expertise to use Adobe Flash. Some web Flash animations become popular enough to air on broadcast television, on channels such as MTV and G4TV.
In recent years more and more studios doing animation for TV use Flash, especially since some recent drawing styles are easier to do in Flash than with other techniques. TV series also benefit from Flash's ability to organise a large number of assets, like characters, scenes, movements, and props for later re-use. Because Flash files are a vector file format, they can even be used to transfer animation to 35mm film without any compromise in image quality when bringing the cartoon to the big screen. This opportunity is used by several independent animators world-wide.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Animators Start 2-D Movie Studio
Monday, August 28, 2006 03 50 PM
Tom Hignite knew something was off when he went to the Disney studios in Florida three years ago and saw empty easels instead of animators working on a film.
Hignite later heard they had been laid off — since fans were going to see more computer-animated movies and box-office sales had been lagging for classic hand-drawn, or two-dimensional, movies.
Having gone to school for art, he didn't want 2-D films to die. He had been successful owning a home building company in southeastern Wisconsin, and decided to put money into a studio that would make only 2-D cartoons.
So in 2004 he started Miracle Studios in Polk, about 30 miles north of Milwaukee. He hired 12 animators, who have worked at Disney, Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros. They also sometimes work from Hignite's Richfield home.
"If I could do something in a small way to keep this art alive ... it just struck me as a good time to do it," Hignite said.
So far they've finished a book called "Miracle Mouse" and plan to use the proceeds for an animated film based on the book.
Steve Hulett, a business representative for the Animation Guild, said major studios that worked on hand-drawn feature films used to employ 2,000 to 3,000 people in the mid-1990s, but that number has dropped to a few hundred.
Some companies still produce hand-drawn films, but contract some or all of the animation to other countries. The emergence of computer-animated films such as "Shrek" and "Finding Nemo" raked in big bucks, causing the industry to veer away from 2-D, he said.
"I think the market is heavily tilted to computer-generated imaging," Hulett said. "I don't see that changing for the foreseeable future."
But Sarah Baisley, editor in chief of Hollywood-based Animation World Network, an online animation news service, said even though 2-D films aren't being produced as much, that doesn't mean 2-D is dead.
She said other countries have become more involved in animation such as France, Germany and Canada, with some even giving subsidies, grants and tax incentives to help support the industry. About 20 European features are coming out this year, but they don't have the marketing savvy of U.S. studios, Baisley said.
She said Bill Hanna of Hanna-Barbera was one of the first to contract studios in other countries in the 1970s and since then studios have followed suit.
Los Angeles area animation house Film Roman Inc., which produces "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill," is working on a Simpsons film and another 2-D film by Rob Zombie called "The Haunted World of El Superbeasto."
Scott Greenberg, the company's president , said they have 300 or 400 animators working on their television and DVD productions. They do much of the animation in the U.S. but some is sent elsewhere, like to AKOM Production Co. and Rough Draft in South Korea.
"We do as much as we can in the U.S.," he said.
Just Watched Castle in the Sky - Don't Let 2-D Animation Die!
by Mark Rollins
Nov 28 2005 12:00AM
This image, showing the aformentioned castle itself, shows just a small bit of the magic that can be brought forth in 2-D animation. This picture and all the detail within it was done by hand.In case you haven’t heard, Disney has announced that they will no longer be doing traditional hand-drawn animated films. Disney/Pixar’s soon to be released feature Cars will mark the end of their partnership, and probably begin a war between the two computer animation groups. With CG films such as Dinosaur and Chicken Little being the new standard of animation with Disney, it is clear that Pixar’s films, such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo, are the true family classics.
Which leaves us with an important question: is 2-D animation dead? I certainly hope not. Recently, I discovered a 2-D anime masterpiece that was marketed by Disney called Castle In The Sky. I absolutely could not believe what a fantastic work it was. It takes place in a world that is too primitive to be futuristic, but too advanced to be in the past. I realize how confusing that is, but it is a world dominated by city-sized airships, floating islands, and steam-based technology. Think Jules Verne meets George Lucas.
The story begins when a group of sky pirates led by Dola and her crew of mama’s boys attempt to kidnap Sheeta from a gigantic airship. Sheeta is being held by foreign agents led by Muska, and she sees the attempted abduction as a chance to escape. Unfortunately, she falls off the airship, only to be miraculously levitated by her magical necklace. She is then found by Pazu, and together they are chased by pirates and the military. They soon discover that Sheeta and her necklace are the key to Laputa, a fortress powered by an advanced technology that floats in the clouds.
Although Disney released a translated version of this story in 2003 with such voices as Anna Paquin (Sheeta), James Van Der Beek (Pazu), Cloris Leachman (Dola), and Mark Hamill (Muska), the original version was released in 1986, three years before Disney’s 2-D animation boom with The Little Mermaid. Writer and Director Hayao Miyazaki created an ahead-of-its-time masterpiece that combines elements of both fantasy and science fiction and pushes 2-D animation to its highest level.
What makes it work is the fact that no 3-D animation is used. Even if such advanced technology had been available during that time, it would cheapen the effect. Remember how Titan A.E. tried to integrate the two elements, with 3-D rendered spaceships that looked too advanced in comparison to the cartoonish characters? There are several scenes in the film where we see robots, and I couldn’t help but think that a modern animation director would have rendered them in 3-D. If they had, then the whole film would simply not look as beautiful as it does.
Disney Returns To 2-D Animation
This year will see a record number of computer animated films released in theaters. Only one of those is made by Pixar, which means most of them probably won’t be very good (Weinstein Company, I’m looking at you). 3-D CGI is officially no longer a novelty, which may mean that audiences are ready to get over it and make room for mostly dead 2-D animation to return.
Disney is betting on it, and Variety says they’re returning to 2-D animation for the first time since 2004’s Home on the Range. They’ll do it with a movie called The Frog Princess, being developed by John Musker and Robert Clements. They’re the guys responsible for Disney 2-D classics like Aladdin and The Little Mermaid. The interesting thing here is that both Musker and Clements abandoned Disney several years ago, and only recently returned after the very public merger of Disney and Pixar, which put people like John Lasseter in charge of Disney’s animation division. With the help of Pixar’s team, it looks like Disney is regaining its reputation as a haven for great animation talent.
Don’t think that means Disney’s slowing down on releasing more 3-D CGI movies. Their upcoming slate of computer animated movies includes Meet the Robinsons, Rapunzel, Joel Jump, and the next Pixar movie Ratatouille.
View full story.