Diz Ramps Up

Spent a big part of my morning in Walt Disney Animation Studios hat building. I was there for a 401(k) meeting, but walked around after it. And I came across a lot of lighting technical directors in what had formerly been a first-floor conference room. A supervisor explained to me:

"We've got most of the available rooms filled. Management's trying to be creative with space. We've hired 80 new lighters, we're on a tight schedule, and there isn't a lot of places left to put everybody." ...

Another staffer upstairs said:

"We're doing more pictures now, more stuff is in development. Big Hero 6 is going to overlap with Frozen. Management wants to do one picture a year now. They're not going to be laying a lot of people off, because they're going to need them."

Sounds like DreamWorks Animation from a couple of years ago. ...

Moseying around the building, it was obvious there are differences at the Hat. Conference rooms are filled with tech directors. Animators work in newly-erected cubicles on outside decks and what used to be open-space common areas. Many of the newbies are over from (surprise!) DWA.

What a difference eight months makes.

Some of the newer recruits are, unsurprisingly, a wee bit dour and fatalistic. I got into a discussion with several about the long-term health of the business.

"There might be a lot of people working right now, but it's all short term. Jeffrey is sending more and more of it to India. He's building a new studio in China." ... "Artists in India are making five hundred dollars a week. How can anybody here compete with that?"

I countered that some of the work will go away, but much of it won't. I said that every studio that produces animated features is going to shorter and shorter schedules. Disney gives itself less than a year to create Frozen. Over the hill in Culver City, Cloudy With Meatballs will have maybe five months to produce Cloudy With Meatballs Two, hiring a hundred animators, and God knows how many lighters and other tech directors (in two countries) to get the project out. "Hard to job all your layout and animation out," I said, "when your deadlines are tight and you have to hit a release date."

The business, I told the group, is much as it's always been: Studios are happy to outsource, but then unhappy with the crappy results. I pointed out (like always) that nobody except Illumination Entertainment has made a high-grossing animated feature outside the United States, and I.E. doesn't outsource with low-rent subcontractors, but owns the MacGuff studio in Paris. The City of Light is where all the work is done. (And Paris, as we all know, is the Mumbai of Europe.)

There is one thing you learn after hanging out in the cartoon biz for decades: Don't try to predict the future, because you'll be wrong.

In 1979, I heard animators complain in front of the old animation building how the company putting the classic cartoon features on VHS cassette tapes was going to destroy Disney's re-issue market ... and hurt future production.

In 1985, I heard Diz Co. employees moan how the new regime was going to dissolve the feature animation department.

In 1995, I heard artists say how if they could only become a hand-drawn animator, they would be set for life ... because every studio* was making long-form cartoons and it was more secure than working for the government.

In 2000, I heard Tom Schumacher assure staff that the down-sizing at Disney Feature Animation was over and there weren't going to be any more layoffs.

In 2007, animators reported how Ed and John said Feature Animation layoffs would be "small." (They totaled 140.

In 2013, Southern california's visual effects industry was pronounced "mortally wounded" ...

Whatever you think the animation business will be like in 2019, you are off by a country mile.

* Disney, Dreamworks Animation, Turner Feature Animation, Warner Bros. Feature Animation. Etc.