Good Times at Warner Bros. Feature Animation (circa 1995)

Right: Dennis Edwards and Peter Gullerud, by Peter Gullerud.

Warner Bros. Animation has been around, like, forever. But Warner Bros. FEATURE Animation was an entity separate and distinct from WBA. WBFA was born in response to the Disney Feature juggernaut of the early 1990s, and headquartered in a glossy high-rise on Brand Boulevard in Glendale, California. It's short, tumultuous life lasted approximately four years... WBFA occupied four or five floors of office space and was launched with high ambitions and high salaries. Ralph Eggleston, the art director of "Toy Story" and other Pixar epics, was there for a time. Bill and Sue Kroyer were there, along with a host of other big talents. In WBFA's first year, somewhere around eight or nine pictures were in devlopment, and Bob Daley, the head of Warner Bros., couldn't make up his mind about which of WBFA's projects he wanted to greenlight. This indecision went on for the better part of twelve months, and I watched staff morale slowly deflate like a tired balloon. The caricature above is from that time. Designer/story artist Peter Gullurud is listening to WBFA exec Dennis Edwards -- a quite decent gent, by the way -- declaim against unflattering caricatures.