The DreamWorks Dally

This morning, I spent ten minutes in the DreamWorks parking garage trying to find a parking space.

Every slot was taken. I finally gave up the attempt when a guard said: "Oh yeah, we're kinda jammed. You can drive around behind the Lakeside building, I think there's some spots there."

But since the Lakeside Building was a quarter mile away and I didn't have another quarter hour to kill, I drove to Disney Television Animation two blocks away and toured through that. (DTVA is doing fine, in case you were wondering.)

I had better luck finding a parking slot at the 'Works after lunch ...

Every building of the DW campus is bursting with activity. Monsters and Aliens, Shrek, Madagascar Deux, and on and on. DreamWorks' Lakeside Building is getting enlarged, and the administrative staff is gone from the upper floors.

But down on the lower levels, artists are working, with animators hand-drawing new material for the DVD of Kung Fu Panda, the original.

"This has been a fun project. It should go on to late July. Then who knows? Maybe we can get on Princess and the Frog at Disney..."

Who says hand-drawn feature 'toons are dead? They're just hibernating.

For the first time in a while I laid eyes on a digital ink-and-paint crew hard at work on traditional animation in one of Lakeside's big rooms. The color set-ups for KFP glowing off their lcd screens knocked my garters off. They're damn pretty.