It's reported that ...
Steven Spielberg is reuniting with DreamWorks Animation to develop an animated miniseries about the world of the future.
Dubbed "Future Ea[r]th," the potential project will use animation to speculate what life on Earth might be like over the next 25 to 100 [y]ears ...
Mr. Spielberg, of course, has had numerous successes with television toonage (Pinky and the Brain, andTiny Toons among others.)
He's also had some, ah, non-successes. There was the television series Family Dog, which had a troubled production history and did not go swimmingly. (Staffers told me episodes were under-length and voice actors did ad-libbing to add needed time.)
Then there was DreamWorks short-lived Television Animation unit, headquartered in Encino on Ventura Boulevard. The ill-starred production group was the victim of bad timing. It jumped into television work just as the sector was cratering; a possible production alliance with ABC never happened when Jeffrey Katzenberg's non-friend Michael Eisner purchased the network for Disney; lastly an ambitious animated mini-series entitled Invasion America did not take flight. (Staff said that Steven S. was not happy with the cheap look of the show, and there were rumors that a producer had a sweetheart deal with a less than stellar overseas production house. [Staff is always telling me stuff. Comes from lurking around animation studios so much.])
But now animation for the home screen appears to be back on the agenda. Mr. Spielberg has never lost his love for Cartoonland.
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23 comments:
A miniseries about endless war, famine, disease, and rising sea levels. Awesome!
Don't forget the bad films and flops Balto and We're Back. Speilberg's a great director (Hook, 1941, Amistad, Always, AI, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), but his track record in animation is pretty wobbly.
----(Pinky and the Brain, andTiny Toons among others.)
These shows were ugly and cheaply done....I don't expect any REAL quality from Speilberg in the television arena......ever.
Tiny Toons was pure crap. And a notch above both garbage like animaniacs, freakazoid, and pinky and the brain.
THAT SAID, the quality of those shows was a notch above most of the OTHER crap produced for TV at the time. Especially junk by DIC. Little kids liked this stuff, and it's probably fondly remembered by a certain generation.
But that doesn't make them good.
And if anyone thinks Speilberg did anything other than rent his name out onto these projects, they'd be sadly mistaken. Speilberg loves animation, but doesn't have the patience to deal with it.
Ya hear that Steph-foosh??
Make everyone wrong and spend some REAL money and hire local artists to do quality instead of overseas HACKS!
What am I saying? Not even Steph-foosh's "people" will be reading any of this.
steve, i like you and your writing, but for some reason it irritates me when you spell out TV as TEEVEE and 3d as THREEDEE...i know its your personal style, but i wish you would stop doing it...
Guess I'm the only here who wishes Spielberg would team up with Tom Ruegger again, so we can re-live the glory days of Animaniacs and Freakazoid.
Aw...
I like Steve's writing style.
Oh....about the "Hacks" I meant hire GOOD people over here.....not HACKS over here.
The whole thing is to eliminate the Hacks....where ever they are.
Spend money on really talented Animation Guild members foe a change.
@anonymous 6:42 you're not the only one. I'm part of the generation that remembers it fondly.
>Spend money on really talented Animation Guild members foe a change.
really talented people. guild membership not a requirement for talent.
"really talented people. guild membership not a requirement for talent."
Not in an absolute sense, perhaps, but it's a damned good place to look.
(An odd posting for a union blog!)
Jeez....O.K.
Here, I'll list it specifically.
How's about someone hiring only the talented skilled Animation Guild members for a change....instead of ANY Hacks,anywhere.
It would be nice to see some MORE quality out there.
All it takes is either checking out their previous work or give them a test if you're suspicious of their abilities.......for whatever reason.
Oh, and I know I've now opened up another can of worms with the "testing" thing now.....watch the fireworks folks.
"I know I've now opened up another can of worms"
Yeah, you did.
There may be certain job situations where certain specific skills and abilities are necessary for which a brief test might be justified, but the practice has been abused and overdone. It has become almost universal.
Because somebody, somewhere, faked some portfolio drawings, thousands of us have been burdened by these tedious, nerve-wracking wastes of time and effort. It's a lazy way for clueless producers to fill a job opening that, as often as not goes to a friend or former colleague of the director.
What's wrong with using portfolios, reels and production experience? What's the worst thing that can happen? Someone who seemed to be qualified couldn't cut it. Guess what? that happens even in situations where tests are given. No company ever went out of business because they "wasted" a couple of paychecks.
Tiny Toons had the highest TV animation budget at that time-about 500,000 an episode. If it "looked like crap" or was "ugly" (and I agree-a lot of it sure did) it was a combination of things: the OVERSEAS studios mainly, where oversight & follow thru was just not nearly good enough to ensure that drawings on storyboards and full character layouts from the best talents around were followed through. If you want to lay blame, don't even think of laying it at the feet of the crews. Those guys were top notch cartoonists.
The final models and BGs, color styling etc were approved by the producers so I'll leave that "blame" to your imaginations or your desire to look it up.
more importantly, one couldn't just conjure up the ghosts of wb past to create something nearly as fresh. it was too specific an ethic to attempt to bring back to life, especially within the confines of the same basic characters and notions of animation. wb theatricals were a reflection of their time, like all good art. the equivalent in the 80's and 90's was simpson's and ren and stimpy. fresh, and reflecting the time they were created. tiny toons was manufactured. certainly a strange place for spielberg to express an interest in animation. family dog perhaps was too painful. his loss, pixar's eventual gain.
tiny toons was manufactured. certainly a strange place for spielberg to express an interest in animation.
Not that strange, considering:
Spielberg gave us Balto and We're Back because he wished he'd made the "good" Don Bluth movies, he bought Katzenberg and created the 2-D Dreamworks because he wished he'd made Lion King; and he produced Tiny Toons and "Roger Rabbit" because he wanted to show us how much of a "fan" of vintage-WB he believed he was.
Total score, 0 for 4.
Beware of a clueless fan-wannabe with money. No power of reason can stop them.
'The illusionist' is one of the best looking "overseas hack" films I have ever seen. Anyone who thinks L.A. animation always goes hand in hand with quality animation, surely is joking. Look at the animation coming from Pixar, Blue Sky, Reel EFX and many more medium and smaller sized domestic animation shops. I'm sure that was not what the commenter meant.
Granted Spielberg hasn't had a good record with animation and his efforts into Indiana Jones 4 was certainly not the Indy we all loved and enjoyed.
This is Anonymous from:
Friday, April 09, 2010 1:01:00 PM
I love it! You folks are INTELLIGENT posters on this blog! A breath of fresh air!!
As you've seen sometimes we get what must be children posting on here.
I'm surprised all of you are bashing on Spielberg's animated works. I have always felt that shows like Tiny Toons and Animaniacs were some of the finest animated cartoons ever made (especially when compared to what's produced nowadays...)
Also, even if We're Back wasn't a masterpiece, it was pretty nice.
As for Balto, it's my personal favorite animated films from all time : amazing soundtrack, strong characters, quality animation, good story...I really don't see what people are finding wrong in this film. The only real reason it flopped was because Toy Story was released at the same period, which was an event (considering it was the first CGI animated film...) and because Universal never made any efforts to advertise it properly.
By the way, I am the webmaster of several sites dedicated to animated films and series, with my site Balto Source being the most popular (by far!) This film definitely has a strong fan following, not as much as The Lion King but not far...
Balto Source
So, to come back to the topic : about Spielberg coming back to animation, I say YES!
Both balto and we're back were just plain awful. They have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Hell, even the ugly Tiny Toons looked better than those two disasters.
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