Titmouse

Titmouse, the studios for which are located in Hollywood and New York, has a few projects percolating.

... Titmouse is gearing up for the release of their first full-length movie, a new season of Venture Bros. is underway, and they’re New York animators just finished moving into a brand new studio. ...

Nerdland is the first feature that is fully theirs. Titmouse has done work for hire on a number of animated features in the past, but this is the first time they’ve made a full movie all the way through.

“We learned a lot,” [studio topkick Chris] Prynoski said. “I directed this one, and I think I’ll do a much better job on my next one because you learn… Also, because it’s low budget, we had to do it in between other jobs, so it’s not like I was full time only directing that movie and nothing else. It was kind of like having a part-time job, but it’s a really important part-time job.” ...

The Titmouse facility in tinsel town is located on Lexington Street, a tidy brick building with a spiffy front door and a long, modern lobby beyond it. There are administrative and executive offices past the lobby, but I've never seen much of them.

The building I know is around the corner and across a parking lot, and a whole lot dumpier than its brick cousin. The place looks as though it was once a factory structure sometime around Franklin Roosevelt's first term; now it houses animators, board artists, designers and writers. The place has a nice sandalwood aroma which a production manager told me comes from strategically placed deodorizers designed to cover up the smell of mildew.

I've never heard animation artists complain about the smell. (Mildew and sandalwood must go well together).

Titmouse, under the corporate name "Robin Red Breast", produces Disney TVA half-hours using a Guild contract. TAG no longer negotiates deals that cover part of a studio, but Titmouse (aka Robin Red Breast) has been a fairly active union employer. Disney outsourcers a lot of animation work to small sub-contracting studios and Titmouse has long gotten a generous portion of the work. But TM/RRB is a prolific cartoon factory, and the company is branching out far beyond the projects it does for the House of Mouse.