Since I've been negligent visiting studios this week (sometimes e-mail and phone calls change your plans), I made a larger than usual effort to get my rear portion out of the office chair and into the workplace this morning and afternoon ... starting with Disney Animation Studio.
The Princess and the Frog animators have pretty much wrapped work on the picture, but the cleanup folkss soldier on.:
"Almost all of the cleanup people are done the end of July. A few will stay on into August. There's a short to work on, and maybe something after that. But most of the crew will come back in eight or nine months for Winnie the Pooh..."
Four miles east in Glendale, lots of work is going on with How to Train Your Dragon and Shrek 4 I came across two animators looking at S4 character animation and they opined that the upcoming Shrek was a return to earlier form. (Neither had been thrilled with 3). And Puss in Boots which has been in work for what seems like ever, is now in a higher gear.
"Puss in Boots wasn't at the top of the studio's priority list for a while. A lot of the people working on it got pulled off onto pictures that were closer to release. But we finally got a script that is really funny, and now we're boarding it with the idea of making the visuals different from Shrek, even though there's a Shrek character in it. (Puss is the only one from the Shrek franchise.) Since the story is there now, we're concentrating on staging, setting and characters ..."
And what does the story encompass? Here's what Antonio Banderas (Mr. Puss-In-Boots) says:
They’ve been working very, very heavy on the script for almost three years… it looks unbelievable. It looks really, really cool… I’m very happy with what I’m doing [with the character]. In a way, it’s easy work because I know the parameters of the character. I know how to move him around.”
“We’re going to go from the time he’s a very little cat, so you see actually why and how he becomes an adult killer, and the reasons why he ends up on that path… It goes away from that kind of use of popular culture that ‘Shrek’ has. It goes in a different way, and the movie sometimes gets almost emotional, I may say, and it’s kind of epic… It’s going to surprise people I think; they’re not going to expect what we’re going to do.” ...
I'm so old I can remember when Jeffrey K. used to say: "No period pieces! We only want contemporary animated features. No fairy tales!"
But that was a long time ago, way back then. And this is now ...
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18 comments:
Hi... just happen to cross your site...
Im planning to go to Tokyo or Hong Kong Disney this Christmas. Hoho and I found some stuffs from Hong Kong Disneyland here as well:
disneycloth.cwahi.net
I will definitely take tones of photos there!!!
Someone please remove the above spam.
But he's going to take tones of photos!
I stand corrected. It should stay.
tones and tones and TONES!!!!!
I can hardly sit still!
I can't wait to hear how the photos of Tokyo or Hong Kong Disney will turn out this Christmas!!!
I'm exploding with anticipation!!!
December can't get here soon enough !!!
Hoho and I found some stuffs from Hong Kong Disneyland here as well:.
I just got off the phone with Hoho and he said you're an insufferable wench who just bitched and complained the whole flight, and he'll never travel with you again. He said you can have the stuffed giraffe back.
I was going to take down the spam comment, but this is more fun.
I hope he takes tones of photos of Hoho's hoo-hoos.
"most of the crew will come back in eight or nine months for Winnie the Pooh..."
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8 or 9 MONTHS!? Yikes, that's a long layoff . (that's long enough for a lot to change and most people will have gone on to find other jobs. Who waits around for a call-back in 8 months ?)
Oh, well, glad that Hand-Drawn Animation has "returned" (sort of) to Disney.
Yeah, they might go off and get jobs at those other 2D feature studios.
Oh wait...
"that's long enough for a lot to change and most people will have gone on to find other jobs. Who waits around for a call-back in 8 months ?"
Animators.
The 'character animators' that have been laid off AFTER completing their 'frog' assignment WILL NOT be called back for 'pooh'.
The company is going to stick with the smaller crew for the movie.
At least that is what some in-house artist can commented on.
So the layoff time will be much longer for those who have recently been laid off.
Unless they also can animate in 3D. Maybe then they will be hired back to work on 'R' if the need happens.
The princss and the frgo are unwatchable....next please.
2D character animators that were laid off after FROG were told it will be 2 years before they'll have a chance to be hired back for the next 2D feature.
I don't think those animators will be "waiting around for a call back."
I don't think those animators will be "waiting around for a call back."
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Exactly my point.
However, up above someone else wrote:
"But most of the crew will come back in eight or nine months for Winnie the Pooh..."
which seems like a ridiculously long time (9 months) to lay-off an entire crew and then somehow expect that most of them will still be available to come back , especially if it is as you say that they were told it will actually be more like 2 years before they might be hired back ... which is even more ridiculous. "The Crew" of Princess & Frog is not coming back. Maybe "some" of the crew will come back if they're not working elsewhere or haven't left town again , but the entire crew that made P & F is not coming back.
The glorious "return" of hand-drawn animation to Disney is kind of a public-relations lie if that's the case. Disappointing, but not unexpected.
"But most of the crew will come back in eight or nine months for Winnie the Pooh..."
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To clarify:
I believe they were referring to clean-up artists being hired back. After FROG they kept a full crew of 2D character animators to animate "POOH".
Some of those animators will work on Rapunzel while others will twiddle their thumbs for a year until "POOH" is ready for animation.
Then after POOH, 2 years down the road, they plan to hire a few more animators to for the next 2D feature.
As far as clean-up artists, the studio unfortunately sees them as slightly bit more expendable than animators. Especially since they contracted out a good portion of clean-up for FROG.
Bottom line, no one should be sitting on their hands with a "promise" of being hired back. We've all heard that song from Disney and other studios before.
Disney's move to acquisition Marvel has been on discourse today. The release of Winnie the Pooh's sequel will be replacing simple and interesting stuff like Winnie the Pooh Coloring Pages, my kids' favorites. whatever..!
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