Where TAG Members Work in September '13

Numbers in square brackets are the numbers working at that studio, out of 2,838 total employed.

Despite the DreamWorks Animation layoffs last winter, animation work at other studios continues to expand.

Nickelodeon has multiple projects in work, and Disney TVA is sub-contracting half-hour series to smaller L.A.-based studios. (Why they don't house some or all of these projects at Disney TVA-Sonora or Disney TVA-Empire might be known to others but certainly not us. The Mouse has its own strategies.)

Fox Animation currently is producing Family Guy and and American Dad at its Wilshire Boulevard studio, and both shows have been picked up for new seasons. Film Roman work on the next season of The Simpsons and a new order Spider Man; Hasbro/The Hub has two shows in the same building on Hollywood Way.

Over the hill in Culver City, Sony Pictures Animation is developing multiple new theatrical projects. (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs must wrapped and gets a release this month.)

On Flower Street in Glendale, Marvel Animation continues to work on two super hero series (with a promise of more to come) and two blocks down DreamWorks Animation TV is prepping several unannounced series, all of which will shortly move to a new space on Central Avenue in Glendale. (Oh yeah. DWA is also doing a number of features.)

A quarter-mile distant, Disney Toon Studios develops new Tinkerbell and Planes features.

Independent studio Bento Box is finishing an initial order of the prime-time Murder Police, and continuing work on Bob's Burgers. Independent studio Wild Canary Animation is starting on a Disney Jr. show. (Then there are independent non-union studios like Renegade Productions, Fox ADHD, Rollman Entertainment, Moonscoop, Rough Draft and Titmouse that we don't track.)

Taken altogether, there is a lot of activity in animation right now. Perhaps the most amazing part is that the amount of employment is within a cat's whisker of where it was in the mid nineties, when everyone and his rich uncle were making hand-drawn features, and Warner Bros. Animation and Disney TVA were bursting at the seams.