At DreamWorks Animation's Campanile Building

For a long while now, I've been tramping around the capacious Lakeside Building at DreamWorks, figuring that was where all the story artists and production people hung out.

Wrongo. ...

It had escaped my notice that story crews still inhabit other structures on campus. And I had the good fortune to visit with artists working like made on Sherman and Peabody and a few other features-in-work.

"Rob Minkoff is a mellow director, fun to work with. But we're up against deadlines for our sequences, have a bunch of pitch meetings coming up, so we can't spend a lot of time talking to you, Hulett."

There are a poop-load of features in various stages of becoming: The Croods is well into work, Rise or the Guardians is halfway through the production process at this point, and Madagascar the Latest is finishing up. (I was told: "Russia is hot to see it." Russia likes its animal pictures, I guess.)

There is a squadron of other features are lined up on the tarmac, but I won't bother rattling them off, since you can see most of them listed here. (It dawns on me that by 2014, DWA will have thirty animated movies out in the wider world. By contrast, Disney's fifty-first feature -- after 73 years, came out last Spring.)

Strangely, I ended up talking to various immigrants from other studios about:

1) The tight schedules and unpaid overtime in Televisionland.

2) That Arthur Christmas wasn't a half-bad movie. What's wrong with Sony management?

3) How you need to be focused and on-task doing boards for DreamWorks animated features. ...

Somebody invited me to lunch at the commissary, but I declined, electing to dine at a greasy spoon in nearby Burbank instead.