End of Days

I went to Universal Animation Studios (formerly Universal Cartoon Studios) today. Boxes were stacked in the hallways. Most of the offices were empty. One of the remaining staffers said to me:

"We're finishing the last episodes of Curious George. All the shows have been shipped now, and the last designer is finishing up this week or next. We'll be in post on the show until next March, but we'll be moving to a corner of the black tower's twenty-fifth floor in the next few weeks. Universal will be renting out most of the floor to somebody else."

"... I don't think Universal is making any announcements about closing Universal Animation Studio. They're just not going to have any shows, or do any productions, or have any executives. Recently they haven't had much interest in doing animation. They want to pick up produced projects, but they aren't going to be creating anything here ..."

Which is a shame, since UAS has done some pretty good work over the years.

The studio came into existence in the early nineties, a couple of years after Warner Bros. Animation sprang back to life with Tiny Tunes, and Disney TVA was moving into high gear. The last of the slower-witted congloms realized there were tidy sums to be made in television animation. Universal set up its own studio, followed by Viacom with Nick a couple of years later.

Universal, back in the day, proclaimed that it wanted to be a major television producer, and it recruited artists and directors from Warners and Disney. But outside of the perennial money spinner Land Before Time, nothing really took off. U never achieved its own Pinky and the Brain or Duck Tales, never became a major teevee animation producer.

And it's always seemed a little sad to me, because the potential was there. The place just never got running on all eight cylinders.

Adios, Universal Cartoon/Animation Studios. It was fun while it lasted.

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No Monsters V. Aliens II

Today DreamWorks Animation reported that less money was rolling in. No big surprise there, since no newer features have been released in recent months.

No big surprise there. This also wasn't a huge surprise:

... [Chief Executive Jeffrey] Katzenberg also disclosed that the studio did not plan to produce a sequel to "Monsters vs. Aliens," which generated $380 million at the box office but did not fare well in some key international markets. Asked why, he said: "I'd like to tell you there's a perfectly rational, clear and easy answer as to why not, but there isn't."

“There was enough of a consensus from our distribution and marketing folks in certain parts of the world that we would be pushing a boulder up a hill ...”

I've got an explanation: The Three Dee was first rate, but the characters, gags and story didn't gel and catch fire the way Kung Fu Panda did. Mostly, however, MvA was America-centric. How many people in Asia or Europe know what the hell Area Fifty-one is? Or care? And American troops and American Presidents aren't quite the ... uh ... crowd pleasers in other countries that they used to be. And Monsters had plenty of all those things.

(You'll note that the picture did fine in the U.S. of A. But not so fine everywhere else.)

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Astro Boy Muscular in China

Okay, so it had a lacklustre launch stateside, but the Middle Kingdom is a whole different story:

"Astro Boy" set a new opening weekend box-office record in China for a CG-animated movie, its producers Imagi International Holdings announced.

Industry estimates indicate since opening last Friday on approximately 1,100 screens across China, "Astro Boy" has recorded $5.9 million in box-office receipts, topping the weekend box office chart and setting a new mark for the opening weekend box office of a CG-animated feature film on the Mainland.

That record was previously held by "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," which had an opening gross of $4.4 million ...

It's more than likely that breaking records in China isn't going to push AB into Ice Age territory worldwide, but every national market helps, does it not?

I haven't seen how the picture is doing in other Asian markets, but it will probably fly higher than its sputtering liftoff in the U.S. and Canada last weekend.

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DreamWorks Moves

DreamWorks was part of my appointment calendar today (and yes, I swing by a lot. There are a lot of buildings to hike through.) One tidbit:

"They changed the release date for Puss'N Boots, moved it up, and a whole bunch of us got moved, I think it was two hundred people. I was over on the other side of the campus, but now I'm in the Lakeside Building. I get moved so often I forget which building I'm in ..."

The constant shifting of personnel would make me crazy. I stayed in one office for years at the Mouse House. I knew old-timers there that had been in one office for flipping decades.

Different companies, different management styles ...

One story artist I came across offered the opinion that at some point, story artists won't be drawing boards anymore, even on Cintiqs. He thinks the boarding process will evolve to three-dimensional boards with the modeled characters and rudimentary, three-dimensional sets, and that boards in the Snow White and Dumbo style will cease to exist. His words: "This won't be happening soon, but in five to eight years. I think it's inevitable."

Me, I'm not too sure. I mean, live action has done three dee boards for a while now, blocking out camera angles and positioning characters, but in live-action it serves a somewhat different purpose. I think hand-drawn boards will remain the coin of the realm, at least for the first pass.

Sigh. Like so many other things, I am probably wrong.

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Most Pirated Movies

Torrent Freak tracks the most down-loaded movies ...

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘Paranormal Activity’ tops the chart this week followed by Pixar’s ‘Up’. ‘The Tournament’ completes the top three.

And the other faves for downloaders?

4) Public Enemies

5) Surrogates

6) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

7) Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

8) Moon

9) Four Christmases

10) G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

The point here is that downloading these moving pictures is ... uh ... illegal. Because it's theft.

Now you can dress this up with any philosophical trappings you like: "It's a blow for internet freedom!" "We're taking down the evil conglomerates!" "The assholes will never miss the money, they're rich anyway!! And besides, they deserve it!" ... (etc.)

The problem is, if the practice becomes widespread enough, the movie industry will drastically change ... and not for the better. Industry employees will have to find other ways to make their livings, because the structure of the motion picture business will be different in unpretty ways. The cash flows that support pensions, residuals, and health care will be reduced to anemic trickles.

I don't know what the solutions to downloading are, but solutions will emerge. One way or the other.

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Live Action?

The New York Times details Disney's big push for the oncoming Christmas Carol:

What does it take to persuade the world it needs yet another “Christmas Carol” adaptation? Apparently, a whole lot of hard sell. ... Disney’s studio is backing the movie’s Nov. 6 release with one of the most elaborate and expensive marketing campaigns in its history, at least for a live-action film.

Uh ... live-action? Okay, if the Times says so. But the gray lady also points out another daunting barrier.

... [T]he studio is replowing perhaps the most overplowed piece of intellectual property in history. The 1843 novella about a greedy curmudgeon who is visited by three apparitions on Christmas Eve is old enough that it is public domain, and it has been adapted for stage, television and film more than 50 times in recent decades, including an all-dog version.

Plus one with Mr. Magoo. And another with Mickey, Donald, Goofy and Scrooge McDuck. But of course, those two were animation, and this entry is live-action.

And I've really got no idea how it will do when it's released next month, none. The story's a good one, but face it: the book has been done six ways to Sunday. The 3-D of this edition will be a plus, and Robert Z.s previous motion capture films have done respectable business. Polar Express, whether you like it or not, has been a solid money-maker.

So who knows? Maybe Disney's publicity department is right that CC is one big three dimensional thrill ride, and audiences will lap it up. The Mouse is certainly putting enough money behind the idea to make it viable. I suppose by the holiday season we should know, yes?.

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There Is Life After Disney!

From the time I was a little boy, I've heard tales of Disney employees who were banished from the Magic Kingdom and became embittered, angry human beings. (Vance Gerry once told me about a story artist who got his pink slip, got drunk and staggered out of the animation building to scream an angry tirade under Walt's window.)

So it's always nice when there's a story about an ex-Disneyite who goes on to make good ...

Bolstered by an investment from Rogers Communications, one of Canada’s largest media companies, the budding new-media mogul Michael Eisner is expanding his Web video studio.

Michael Eisner, the former chairman of Disney, controls a Web video studio called Vuguru that will become its own company.

The studio, named Vuguru, is currently held within Mr. Eisner’s media investment company, Tornante. In a deal expected to be announced on Monday, Vuguru will become its own company, and Rogers will become a minority stakeholder. The terms of the multimillion dollar investment by Rogers were not disclosed ...

In 2007, Mr. Eisner nurtured one of the medium’s first scripted successes, a murder mystery series called “Prom Queen.” Since then, he has introduced, among others, a mockumentary about a fledgling rock band and a sports-themed comedy. A new edition of “Prom Queen” and an adaptation of the young-adult book series “Pretty Tough” are scheduled to come online later this year ...

This should be a testament to the truism: "There is life after Disney. You have only to believe." (Just ask Bill Mechanic, John Lasseter, and Kurt Russell. Maybe even Jeffrey K.?)

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Warners Flexes Animation Muscles

Over the past five months, Warner Bros. has ramped up its teevee animation division, going from a couple of series and a handful of artists, to a facility on the Warner Ranch that is filled to capacity with five series and multiple dvd features.

And now, apparently, the theatrical side is stirring to life:

Warner Bros. is strutting back into animation.

The studio is in final negotiations to acquire a pitch centering on a peacock from writers Austin Winsberg and Heath Corson.

... The move marks a bolstering of animation efforts for Warners., which was once very active in the sector but had since scaled back its theatrical efforts ....

I think that theatrical animation's broad-based success -- despite this weekend's unhappy results -- has a lot to do with Warners continuing involvement in theatrical toonage, though I'm sure they're mid-90s train wreck in Glendale left a sour taste in their mouths.

But nothing seduces a studio like the prospect of Big Bucks. The 1990s was then ... and this is now.

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Knowledge

On December 29, 1973, my father fell down in the driveway of his La Crescenta house and knocked himself out. A few minutes later, I discovered him on the asphalt, groggy but conscious, and hauled him to the emergency room of Verdgugo Hills hospital.

Dad was drunk. Also uncooperative and belligerent. The ER staff and doctors patched him up, gave him a sheet with a box marked "possible head injuries," and sent him on his way.

I was fresh off active duty with the U.S. Navy and utterly clueless about head trauma and things like "subdural hematoma." If I had known then what I learned a little while later about blood vessels bleeding inside cranial cavities, I would have gotten him admitted to the hospital, or observed him more closely after I took him home. But I didn't, and two weeks later he went into a coma because of a massive blood clot that depressed his brain activity, and died.

I don't bring this up to instigate a Pity Party (it's all long ago and far away), but to illustrate how knowledge and the lack thereof can impact our lives.

The more stuff you know, the better you'll be able to deal with life's curve balls when they come zinging your way. And the more stuff you don't know, the more you'll get blindsided on the broad, sunlit highway of existence ...

We started this blog for a number of reasons, but high on the list was the desire to dispense information to TAG members, also people who work ... or aspire to work ... in the animation industry. Because our core belief is that the more useful factoids you have at your disposal, the higher the odds are that you'll be successful in building a career in the animation industry. (Or any other industry ... or life ... for that matter. ) Witness the following comment:

Steve, story artists can't deal with or bring up an issue [storyboard artist, production board artist] they have no idea exists! I've been working almost 20 years in this classification and while the difference in the title has been noted in passing by me, I've never-til now-had it explained as you've done. If I ( & I'll hazard also my fellow story guys) haven't "pushed" for changes in the wording etc., it's not because I'm lazy or don't care or can't be bothered, but because I have been lucky-so far-to have my rate be over scale as I understood it and because I didn't freaking know about it. Really, these "pain in the butt" issues are ones I believe it's the duty of the professionals in our union to point out to us. As you have done here.

So while I've heartily agreed with all the times you've said "I can't do anything about [insert specific union violation here] unless a member complains/reports/brings it to my attention" in all those other cases, that reasoning doesn't apply here. In any case yeah, let's get it fixed..

To answer the specific point above, I will put into the Rolodex a proposal to get Production Board elevated from footnote status during the next round of contract talks. In the meantime, artists reading this need to remember the difference: Production Board scale rates apply to television boarding, Storyboard scale rates apply to features, and Story Sketch applies to board artists working as assistants to storyboard artists.

And as long as we're on the subject of professional (and general) knowledge, remember these things:

* WAGES: They are all over the map in Animationland. But benefits and wages are mostly higher in union shops. Benefits amount to $350-$375 above base-line wages.

(Here's some useful nuggets. 1) If you work hourly, you can be docked for time missed during the workweek, but if you are salaried, you get your weekly rate whether you're in the office for five hours Monday through Friday, or one hundred hours. And employers can't shift you back and forth from "salaried" to "hourly" so they can pay you less. It's got to be one or the other. If you are working a unionized animation job, you are likely some form of hourly employee. 2) You have the right under California law to share wage information with your peers, so go do it.)

* WORK ETHIC AND ATTITUDE: You can never be too upbeat or too hardworking. As for instance ...

[Fox Animation Studio's Vanessa Morrison's] positive attitude and hard work eventually won the attention of Tom Rothman, who took over Jacobson's production chief job in the mid-1990s. Under Rothman, now co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, Morrison rose through the creative executive ranks.

* SKILL SETS: If you don't have the right set of chops, you are less likely to get hired by the animation studio of your dreams. Today Maya wizards, Renderman experts, and other software professionals have bigger strike zones in the hiring ball game than folks who have skills as, say, cleanup artists. The Digital Age is hard upon us; the carbonite era, not so much. Like it or not, you have to deal with this reality. But the more arrows you have in your quiver, the more employable you will be.

* ROUTES INTO THE BUSINESS:Production Assistant, intern (see Ms. Morrison, above), Trainee, Big Shot from a related business coming in on red carpet, Mom and Pop effects house into big animation studio, the roads to Animationland are almost -- but not quite -- infinite. Use your contacts and network. Timing and perseverance are often everything.

* LUCK: If you have lots of it, you'll need less of the other items listed here. If you have less than you'd like, you're gonna have to do some kind of workaround. Most people encounter good and bad fortune in the course of a career. The folks who know how to deal with bad fortune -- and bounce back from it -- win.

Lastly, don't take things too seriously. The best times I've had in this business is when I've been light-hearted about whatever situation in which I've found myself. If you recognize that you are not going to end up with the career arc you envision fresh out of Cal Arts or Ringling at the ripe age of twenty-two, then you will be a lot happier when the down drafts happen.

Remember: Nobody gets out of this space-time continuum alive, so make it part of your purpose to enjoy yourself along the way.

And now, please turn in your hymnals to Page 333, and we'll all sing ...

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"Peanuts" 60th Anniversary

Maybe you haven't given this birthday much thought, since first and foremost it belongs to a comic strip, but let's linger for a moment anyway:

Jill Schulz: Because my Dad created over 18,000 comic strips touching on so many themes and covering every season ... we decided to celebrate for a full year ...

In November, the Gaylord Opryland Resort will unveil ICE! A Charlie Brown Christmas, which is a colorful, interactive ice sculpture experience ... Also in November, we’re introducing Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years, a commemorative coffee table book

On the animation side of the "Peanuts" legacy, Bill Melendez's studio -- which produced almost all the animated product that had Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the gang for the past 45 years -- will not be doing future half-hours, since the Schulz family is (allegedly) unhappy with the studio's recent work.

I'm informed that another studio got the new "Peanuts" gig. And I've no idea what the future has in store for the Melendez studio (which is still doing some "Peanuts" commercials.)

Sadly, Bill M. and Charles Schulz have gone to their rewards, so what are you going to do?

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Late October Derby

Now with fresh-baked Add On.

... goes to the horror flicks, not animation (and I turn out to be delusional about Astro Boy's performance ...).

Two animated features are in the Top Ten, but Cloudy is well past its zenith and Astro Boy doesn't pull in many eyeballs.

Where the Wild Thing Are is obviously not getting rapturous word of mouth, and doesn't look to be around for very long...

The October 23-25 field:

1. Paranormal Activity (Par) Week 5 [1,945 Runs] $7.5M Fri, Est Wkd $21M

2. Saw VI (LG) NEW [3,036] $6.9M Fri, Est Wkd $18M

3. Wild Things (WB) Week 2 [3,735] $4.3M Fri (-64%), Est Wkd $13M

4. Law Abiding (Over) Week 2 [2,890] $4.1M Fri (-45%), Est Wkd $12.5M

5. Couples Retreat (Uni) Week 3 [3,074] $3.6M Fri, Est Wkd $11.5M

6. Vampire's Assistant (Relativity/Uni) NEW [2,754] $2.2M Fri, Est Wkd $6.8M

7. The Stepfather (Sony) Week 2 [2,734] $2.2M Fri, Est Wkd $6.2M

8. Astro Boy (Imagi/Summit) NEW [3,014] $1.8M Fri, Est Wkd $7M

9. Cloudy/Meatballs (Sony) Week 6 [2,741] $1.4M Fri, Est Wkd $5.5M

10. Zombieland (Sony) Week 4 [2,447] $1.3M Fri, Est Wkd $4.5M

11. Amelia (Fox Searchlight] NEW [818] $1.3M Fri, Est Wkd $4M

What this does to Imagi's longer term prospects, well, you and I will just have to wait and see ...

Add On: The Derby ends about as one would expect:

Paramount's "Paranormal Activity" expanded from 863 theaters to 1,945 this weekend and sold a studio-estimated $22 million, making it No. 1 ... "Saw VI" opened to a disappointing $14.8 million ...

Sadly, animation's newer entries didn't shine this go-round, either here or abroad:

... "Astro Boy," which animation studio Imagi Entertainment produced at a cost of $65 million, opened to a dismal $7 million ... Overseas, Fox opened "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" in author Roald Dahl's native land of Britain to a disappointing $2.5 million.

Animation has been on a roll for the past few years, but these two low-gross openings reiterate the sometimes neglected wisdom that you have to make a movie that people want to see. Just because it's a hot genre doesn't guarantee success.

Add On Too: Overseas, toonage totals continue to grow.

Walt Disney and Pixar's 3D "Up," playing on 4,500 screens in 24 territories, ranked No. 1 in 10 markets, including the U.K. and Italy. Foreign cume through Oct. 18 was $295.8 million -- quickly catching up the $309 million grossed at the foreign B.O. last year by Disney/Pixar's "Wall-E." ...

Toon's worldwide cume is a boffo $588.6 million.

Disney's rodent toon "G-Force" registered No. 1 starts in German-speaking Europe. Overall, the pic grossed $12.5 million for the frame from 3,255 playdates in 44 markets. Cume through Oct. 18 was $127.9 million for a worldwide total of $246.2 million ...

So how is Astro Boy going to fare?

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DreamWorks et Disney

I wasn't planning to go to multiple studios today, but sometimes you do more driving than you want to.

At Disney By the 134, The Princess and the Frog, I was told by a Top Dog:

"We're completely done now. We just finished the color transfer, we've finished the music. Now we wait and see how the picture does. We're sandwiched between Avatar and the Chipmunks, so it's up to the audience now for how it does ...."

I told him I thought The Princess would open with good numbers. I am a positive, optimistic person ...

Elsewhere at the hat, a still-disgruntled animator wanted to know why the company was cutting artists' salaries the way they were. My analysis:

1) Because they can.

2) Because they've made the judgement that there's a big enough talent pool to draw on if somebody quits in a snit (i.e., the recessionary market will support the cuts ... because there are qualified folks out there who will work at lower wages.)

3) Because Pixar salaries are lower (based on available evidence) and management is trying to align the labor costs of the two studios a bit more.

I'm sure there are other reasons, but those are the ones I rattled off.

At Dreamworks, wandering through the story department, I found out a new factoid. Pacific Data Images, DreamWorks' studio outpost in the Bay Area, has its own story department.

Stupid me. For the last eight years I thought all the storywork was happening in Glendale. A board artist related:

"PDI has had a story group for a long time. We used to go up there for meetings. It's not real big. I think they have maybe fifteen artists ..."

One of the features that PDI story artists are now working on is Madagascar 3. It's in the early stages, but there are roughly equal numbers of artists working on the new installment up north and down south.

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Box Office Prognostications

Forbes Magazine has the weekend grosses figured out.

Exhibitor Relations expects Saw VI will earn $27 million and top the weekend's box office ... Paranormal Activity should come in second with $22 million ... Where the Wild Things Are should rank third this weekend, ... earning $33 million at the box office ... Astro Boy ... is expected to rank fourth with $13 million ...

I'm thinking AB will do more than $13 mill, but I might be thinking wishfully.

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Octolinks

Still more cartoon news in bite-size chunks.

Three European long-form animated features are up for "Best."

BERLIN -- Finnish Christmas film "Niko & The Way To The Stars," Ireland's "The Secret Of Kells" and "Mia And The Migoo" from French director Jacques-Remy Girerd are the nominees for best animated feature film for the 2009 European Film Awards ...

Blue Sky Animation is gearing up for their next feature.

Anne Hathaway, Neil Patrick Harris and Rodrigo Santoro are negotiating to lend their voices to "Rio," the next collaboration between Blue Sky Studios, Fox Animation and director Carlos Saldanha, all of whom are riding the $882 million global tsunami of "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs."

"Rio," which follows the adventures of a nerdy macaw who lights out from his small-town Minnesota cage for the exotic Summer Olympic city of Rio de Janeiro, is scheduled for an April 8, 2011, release. Like "Dinosaurs," it will be filmed in 3D digital animation ..

Not exactly animation related, but he catered to the same audience:

Soupy Sales, the rubber-faced, pie-in the-puss comic beloved by the Baby Boomer generation, died Thursday night. He was 83.

The funnyman's longtime friend Dave Usher said Sales succumbed to cancer at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx ...

Slash film is delighted to provide a tour of Disneyland's Club 33, the Disney Research Library and other Mousie points of interest:

... In the early 1960s as the New Orleans Square section of the park was under construction, Walt Disney decided he needed a bigger entertaining facility for various VIPs that came to the park. The apartment above the Fire Station on Main Street was too small to host elaborate events, so Walt decided to design a suite set back from the hustle and bustle of the park ...

Mouse Planet examines story development on Dumbo ... although no mention is made of the nasty little strike action that took place during production ... or the references to the strike allegedly in the finished film.

... In the original storyboard there was a psychiatrist, Dr. I. Hoot the owl. He is an owl in appearance, yet he behaves like a human being with no animal-like characteristics other than his appearance ...

Storymen Joe Grant and Dick Huemer ... wrote lyrics for a nightmare sequence for a Frank Churchill song called Pink Elephant Polka in May 1940 which may have inspired the later Oliver Wallace song that was used in the movie, Pink Elephants on Parade with lyrics by Ned Washington.

Nickelodeon slurps turtle soup.

... Nickelodeon has struck a $60 million deal with The Mirage Group and 4Kids Entertainment to acquire the rights to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," which was one of the biggest kids shows of the 1980s and even spawned a successful movie franchise. Nickeloden will produce a new cartoon series that it hopes to premier in 2012 and sister studio Paramount Pictures will release a new feature based on the series as well ...

The rosy-cheeked children of the British Isles get to make themselves a cartoon feature:

... [T]he Tate Movie Project appears to be one of those impeccably 21st century creations, designed to keep arts-funding bureaucrats, if no one else, on the edge of their seats. It's connected at one end to the 2012 Olympics – for whose benefit the Legacy Trust is funding the project – and at the other to "every child in Britain" who, if Tate director Nicholas Serota is to believed, will be contributing directly to the film ...

... [W]hatever the outcome, Aardman is the beneficiary of a chunk of money from the public purse. Can it really make a feature-length animated film for £4m? Sounds like credit-crunch economics are really kicking in ...

Just so long as they pay the kids more than 25 cents an hour.

And finally, over at SynchroLux Kevin takes on the question, What can animators learn from the music business?:

It sounds sooo seductive — shun the big blood-sucking corporations, create your own stuff, market and sell it yourself, keep all the rights, play your music locally, play for free until you build up a following, give your work away until you can sell your CDs, sell ‘em out of your car or on the web or at your free concerts. Soon you might be getting good live paydays, and you’ll keep all the money from your CDs, and your t-shirts yourself.

Have a glorious, end-of-week work experience.

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Schadenfreude

Not.

Today I walked into one of our fine, major animation studios. On the way out I found myself in the midst of a farewell party for an upper bracket manager who happens to be departing ...

I went up to a Wise Old Animation Artist who's been around as long as I have, and asked what was up with Mr. Whoosis (not his real name).

"He's leaving," came the reply.

"To where?"

"He's leaving."

"Ah. Pushed overboard?"

Silence.

Now, Mr. Whoosis is somebody I know only a little. A while back, I had a semi-uncomfortable meeting with him where he was being testy with an employee who was leaving for another job. (I was there to observe ... and support the employee. I mostly kept my mouth shut.)

So now the exec is leaving, handed his pink slip by a management team that has decided to downsize him out of a job. As I digested this information, my reaction surprised me:

"Somebody else losing their job? Bum. I only wish the guy could keep his gig. This is a terrible time to be unemployed ..."

When I was young, I was delighted when someone about whom I wasn't crazy got it in the shorts. But not today. I am older now, and the idea of having somebody eat it for the sheer joy of seeing a person suffer just doesn't jazz me the way it used to back when I was thirty. I've been laid off, and I remember how painful it was. And I'm not keen to see pain visited on others, no matter who that other is.

Schadenfreude is sometimes sweet, but usually for about thirty seconds. After that, the bitter aftertaste sets in.

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A celebration of Derdad Aghmalian: Sunday, October 25

Derdad Aghamalian passed away on September 10th, 2009. He worked in the animation industry for over 20 years as a color stylist for DIC, MGM, Universal, and Marvel. Outside of animation, Derdad was a world-renowned painter, illustrator, and stained-glass artist. He had many dear friends in animation, and will be remembered for his sense of humor, his creative vision, and his transcendent character.

-- Leonard Drorian

Please join us for an evening in remembrance of Derdad Aghamalian’s life and art.

This will take place on Sunday, October 25 from 5:30 pm to 8 pm, at the Brand Library Recital Hall, 1601 West Mountain St. in Glendale.

For more information, please call Tamara at (818) 209-0030.

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October Studio Roundabout

Today was Sony Pictures Animation day on the Hulett studio tour, where I was told:

"We're working on Hotel Transylvania as the next theatrical feature. We've also got Open Season 3 going, and some other projects in early development. Sony was happy with the money that OS2 has brought in, and they've okayed scripting and boarding on another one ..."

..."We've got six months to get Open Season 3 up on boards and ready. We're working with the writer, who's good about working with the board artists, real collaborative. But we're moving fast ..." "... They are animating the Open Seasons in Texas, and theyre making money because they've kept the costs down on them."

I got to see some of the character development for Hotel Transylvniai going on upstairs; the characters look edgy and fun (whether they stay in the picture when story beats are worked out is another story.) ...

Yesterday at Disney Television Animation Sonora, I was happy to see that crew for the new season of Inspector Oso is trickling back to work. And the new show they haven't yet officially announced? Designers and story artists are coming aboard, and Story Booking is proceeding at a high rate of speed.

So while DTVA Sonora has lots of square footage that is empty, at least a few productions are rumbling to life. (There's a lot more artists working upstairs at Disney Toons.)

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Shrek the Musical Departing Broadway

Mmm. Shrek on the Great White Way doesn't seem to have the staying power of some of the other musicals based on animated features.

"Shrek the Musical," the first legit outing from DreamWorks Theatricals, will shutter Jan. 3 after a little more than a year on the boards.

With the production long prone to significantly fluctuating weekly grosses, many legiters suspected a closing date soon after New Year's (and after holding on for the traditional holiday sales boom). In recent weeks "Shrek" has regularly played to auds at about 60% of capacity or less ...

I'm sure that the boys and girls at DWA were hoping for run along the lines of ... oh ... Lion King?

This blockbuster stage musical thing isn't as easy as it looks. It's not enough, apparently, to have a blockbuster cartoon as your launching pad. You must also have tunes, choreography and a book that people want to see.

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Season of Awards

Pixar/Disney's John L. picks up an award that has never gone to an animation person before.

The Producers Guild of America will honor Disney/Pixar animation whiz John Lasseter with its 2010 David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Motion Pictures at the 21st annual PGA Awards ceremony on Jan. 24 at the Hollywood Palladium.

Lasseter, who holds the title of chief creative officer at Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, is the first producer of animated films to be awarded the Selznick, which is given in recognition of a body of work ...

Congrats to John. (I'm so old I can remember when Mr. Lasseter was the young wipper-snapper at Disney, running around with a super-eight movie camera acting as animator-board artist Randy Cartwright's camera operator when Randy took his walking tours of the studio, back in the early eighties.

My, how time flies.)

Disney in the early eighties. A volleyball tournament between the animation crew and front office staffers -- headed by then Chairman of the Board Ron Miller. Randy Cartwright is the director of photography, animation director John Musker performs the play by play. I have no idea where John Lasseter is ... but he's around somewhere.

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The Endless Tink

The L.A. Times interviews the directors of Disney's next c.g. feature -- Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure. (Okay, it's a dvd release, but it's still the next long-form cartoon, out at a retailer near your on October 27th.)

Klay Hall: It started when John Lasseter took over as the chief creative officer for [Walt Disney Feature Animation]. He sat down with myself and the rest of the directors and producers, and we talked about what this whole [Disney Fairies] world could bring to film. We landed on the idea to go with four stories based on the seasons.

Hall: [Tinkerbell's] original inspiration was the Blue Fairy. She went through several forms all the way up through Marc Davis' designs in the early ‘50s for the "Peter Pan" release in 1953. We started there, with the Marc Davis design, the classic Tink. Everyone’s familiar with the iconic figure from the theme parks. She’s on so many products in her little green skirt and pompoms on her shoes and a little bun in her hair. We felt it was important to not only embrace the classic Tink, but to give her a fresh look in these new films ...

The new flick was playing on one of the plasma screens when I strolled through a few days back. There's a couple of big, comical trolls in the movie. When I squinted at them and said "Trolls?", a staffer said.

"They don't want this just to be a little girls' movie, because that's the way the first one skewed. This time their broadening the franchise's appeal to boys with these non-fairy characters."

So here's hoping the trolls do the trick, and eight-year-old boys will put down their game devices and flock to this new installment. Word around Disney Toons is that the series could end up doing way more than five Tinkerbells.

All depends, I guess, on how the dvd sales hold up.

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Even Monkeys Shun the Uncanny Valley

Kevin points out an interesting study that might have something to say to animation producers.

Apparently, monkey's don't like the Uncanny Valley, either. As the study summary states,

In the experiments, the monkeys, which normally coo and smack their lips to engage each other, quickly avert their glances and are frightened when confronted by the close-to-real images. When asked to peer at the less close-to-real faces and real faces, however, they viewed them more often and for longer periods ...

The summary goes on:

Movie-goers may not be familiar with the term, but they understand that it is far easier to love the out-of-proportion cartoon figures in the “The Incredibles,” for example, than it is to embrace the more realistic-looking characters in “The Polar Express.”

Ah. Now I know why Snow White's Prince and the Fleischer's Gulliver make my skin crawl.

You can check out Kevin's full post on the study here.

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Brave Thinkers!

Animation impresarios (and South Park masterminds) Trey Parker and Matt Stone have been named Brave Thinkers (in a large and diverse field of movers and shakers) by The Atlantic:

... [T]he pair has produced one of the best satires on television, while achieving new standards of vulgarity and political incorrectness. Parker and Stone have risked alienating advertisers and audiences alike with an ambitious, comprehensive offensiveness that lampoons the tired culture war and the cycle of moralizing protest and hypocritical hyperventilating it sets in motion. In the process, they’ve shown that there’s an audience for smart political satire ...

Trey and Matt have disdained the union thing, but I admire them anyway. They've been sinking harpoons into sacred cows of the Right and Left for a dozen years. How could I not like them, since my teenaged son thinks Team America: World Police is one o the finest pieces of film-making ever created by the mind of Man.

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A History of The Yellow Family

The New York Times' Lisa Tozzi questions John Ortved about his new, fat book about all things Simpson:

The most telling anecdote I have is that one of the people I sat down to interview was Rupert Murdoch, and I asked him, “Rupert, how much money has ‘The Simpsons’ made for you?” And he just sat back, smiled and was like, “Let’s just say it’s a lot.”

Which is, pretty much, the nub of the matter.

Rupe's a conservative. But his first love is raking in the long green. This explains why Lefties like the Simpsons crew and the horrid Seth McFarlane are allowed to romp free in the bowels of News Corp.

They are robust profit centers.

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Handicapping Astro Boy

The end of the week, Imagi's Astro Boy hits 1200 3000 American movie screens, and the big question is, how will it do? The answer to that question will help determine the viability of Imagi as a force in the AnimationLand.

"Astro Boy" was completed in June. Many fans of animation around the world are eagerly waiting to see the film -- a proof that Imagi US$40 million outlay to promote the movie has not been in vain.

But some observers are wary of the company itself as it has had to climb stiff hurdles to be where it is today. In January, it conducted intense negotiations to secure a bridge loan facility of up to US$16.6 million ... [And] sources in the industry point out that the profit-sharing deal between Imagi and Warner Brothers -- the distributor of "Astro Boy" -- does not favor the Hong Kong company ...

Imagi, as indicated above, hit a rough patch early this year, but it's hung onto the large office space it leases at the Sherman Oaks Galleria. As a studio rep told me: "The company intends to press on with Gochomon whether Astro Boy turns into a mega blockbuster or not ...." (We'll see how that turns out.)

My guess is that the film will perform well domestically. Reviews have been encouraging, and high-end animated features have been on a roll of late. Plus the people I've talked to who have seen it maintain Astro Boy delivers the goods.

However, there is my definition of "performing well," and the definition that Hollywood's slide rule brigade carries around in its head. Is $120 million enough? $140 million? I have no earthly idea.

My guesstimate is that Astro Boy will collect between $60 and $85 million from the citizens of the U.S. and Canada, and another $100 to $150 million in the rest of the world. Is this enough to have the owners turning handsprings back in Hong Kong? Your guess is as good as mine. Probably better.

Come the weekend, we'll apply the Koch Box Office Calculator to AB's initial grosses, and decide if my prognostications are realistic or delusional. Up until now, its been mostly American animation studios that have raked in big bucks across the globe, but that could always change.

Nothing, after all, is forever.

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Disney TVA at Frank Wells, the Building

I whiled away a fragment of the afternoon on the third floor of the fabled Frank Wells Building, on Disney's Burbank lot. Part of Disney Television Animation resides there. (And the rest? It's over in Glendale on Sonora Street.)

Phineas and Ferb is the main production happening at FWB right now, but there is also Kid Buttowski (formerly Kid Knievel ... but the rights to the Knievel name ... so I'm told ... couldn't get cleared, so it's that other title.) And Inspector Oso is back in work, with the bulk of its crew returning mid-November.

But I got some happy infoformation from an artist on Buttowski:

"You know, they've made a real effort around here to put people on other shows when their assignments are over. When artists came off Phineas a while ago, they tried to get them work on other series, to tide them over until a new order got started ...".

I told the artist this was good news, (See? It isn't just gloom and "week to week" in teevee animation.) But it would still be nice to see more cubicles occupied up there on FWB's third floor.

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Motion Comix!

The L.A. Times (and You Tube) get a bit breathless as they tell us of the Next. New. Thing.

The future is now for motion comics

...[W]hat is that, a moving comic book? Yep! But isn't that ... animation?

Actually NO. Animation, as it is defined today, is hundreds of thousands of animation cells drawn by a studio of animation artists who adapt ONE creator's work to a simplified version -- a version that has as few actual lines as possible. Done well, it can be brilliant -- BUT, it can never be the original artist's work ...

On [October 28] the first "true" motion comic, the first issue of Marvel's "Astonishing X-Men," will be presented in a world premiere at 14th Street-Union Square as part of MarvelFest NYC 2009. It will be outdoors and projected -- yes, I did just say "projected" -- on the side of the massively large, now closed, Virgin Megastore ....

Actually, YEAH. It is animation. Slightly different animation than we've been used to, but animation.

See, there was this other cartoonist/ comics artist, big in his day, who invented the whole genre. He did stuff like this:

All hand-drawn by one artist, just like "moving comic books." And if you can find people who think this isn't animation, you send them to me and I'll help them get their heads screwed on right.

Motion Comics. That art-form the old comics artist Winsor McCay was practicing a century ago ... back when he invented it.

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Unfair?

One click down, Arlo says:

What doesn't go together(to me) is stating that we live and suffer the consequences in a corporatist state and it is wholly unfair, as Steven has (correct me if I'm wrong here Steve), and then mention that we should be completely beholden to that state of affairs.

Allow me to correct the wrongness ...

I don't believe in, and have never said, that corporatism is unfair.

It is simply our present reality. And I point out what I think is wrong about it -- but nowhere do I state it's not fair. What I think corporatism has given us is ...

1) A great concentration of wealth. (And which I think is unhealthy for the majority of the country).

2) Socialism for mega-corporations (i.e., Those lucky duckies which are "too big to fail" as defined by the corporate media and the government and therefore get billions in tax payer dollars.)

3) Free enterprise and "creative destruction" for the middle class and poor (i.e., those without the power of K street and million-dollar political donations.)

Do I think any of this "unfair"? No, I simply think it's the country as it exists today.

For the record, I don't believe in "fair" or "unfair" because I don't know how you define those words. One individual's idea of "fair" is most likely not another's. What I believe in is leverage, defined herein as "the power to achieve your perceived goal."

If you have leverage, you can make your own "fair" reality. And if not, not.

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A Fine Example of "Unfair"

Since we're talking about bad and unfair things ....

[The American Family Association] is slamming 7-Eleven for choosing to stock the November issue of Playboy, which will feature cartoon character Marge Simpson on the cover.

"Most American dads know the dangers that porn represents to young males," AFA Special Projects Director Randy Sharp said in a press release. "It’s irresponsible of 7-Eleven to display porn in front of boys who pop into 7-11s for a hot dog or a Slurpee."

Marge Simpson? Porn? I think not.

Besides, I believe it to be a good thing that "This is the closest [little Alex and young Johnny] will ever get to finding out if the carpet really does match the blue drapes." Don't you?

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The Piracy Thing

Though we've talked about internet pirates before, the IATSE is focussing on it as never before, as are the talent guilds. And it isn't just them:

Piracy is the entertainment industry's biggest headache, according to two of its most prominent players -- WME topper Ari Emanuel and Walt Disney chairman Robert Iger.

"It's really important for us to get into a discussion about piracy because if we don't get a handle on it, the industry will go away," Emanuel declared ...

"In South Korea, it obliterated the secondary market so much so that we closed our home video operations," Iger added ...

There is a tendency among the world's population to take a "who cares?" attitude toward the piracy thing. IA officers, attending conferences overseas, report that lots of foreign officials maintain a "If big American conglomerates get ripped off by piracy, that's a good development, yes?"

In point of fact, the development sucks, because the final outcome will be that the movie and television businesses end up going the way of the record industry, watching their business models get shredded, witnessing entertainment profits shrink to non-existence.

For citizens not in the movie and teevee business, this negative outcome would be an inconvenience. For those working in features and television, it would mean full-blown disaster. The wage and residual structures that have existed for half a century would slowly dissolve, the studios would restructure, and the pension and health plans that entertainment employees have relied on for five and a half decades would weaken and shrink, perhaps irreversibly.

So yeah. Internet piracy could end up being a major deal.

The problem is, none of the conglomerates really know how to effectively combat this big, ugly vulture. As internet broadband increases around the globe, more and more people dip into the deep trough of content and help themselves without paying a centavo or pfennig. It's just Rupert, Bob Iger, and Sumner Redstone after all, and they're already rich. So who cares?

Welll, anybody who works in the entertainment business, that's who. Because if there's no enforcement of copyright law, if internet pirates remain beyond the reach of law enforcement or significant penalties (Big fines? Long jail sentences?) employees in the movie/t.v. biz are going to be in deeper trouble than they already are.

And anybody who is paying attention knows they're not in the catbird seat now.

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Weekend Turnstiles

Where the Wild Things Are lumbers to the top of Friday's box office with a robust $12 million, while Law Abiding Citizen finishes a distant second with $7.7 million ...

On the lower rungs of the Top Ten ladder, Cloudy with Meatballs earns $2.2 million while the Toy Stories squirrel away $825,000 ....

Add On: Where the Wild Things gallops to a strong weekend finish:

The Spike Jonze-helmed "Wild Things," based on Maurice Sendak's children's classic book ... gross[ed] an estimated $32.5 million from 3,735 theaters. Overture Films saw its biggest opening yet with Jamie Foxx-Gerard Butler starrer "Law Abiding Citizen," which took an estimated $21.3 million from 2,890 to place No. 2. ...

Sony's 3D toon "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" dropped 30% in its fifth frame with $8.1 million at 3,037 playdates ...

"Cloudy" has cumed $108.3 million, becoming Sony Animation's first title to surpass $100 million.

Disney's 3D double bill "Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2" grossed $3 million at 1,489, pushing cume to $28.6 million. The Mouse extended the toons' slated two-week run until the launch of Robert Zemeckis' 3D title "A Christmas Carol" on Nov. 2 ...

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New pictures of our art gallery, etc.: 3 of 3

Last month our art gallery had a "soft opening" of Ralph Hulett Christmas card art. (Click the thumbnails for higher-def versions of these photos.)

And below, our board room.

Thanks again (and ©) to Jeffrey M. Kalban and Associates for permission to use these great photos. Stop by sometime and we'll show you around.

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Derby Races Near and Far

Animated features appear to be doing well in domestic and foreign venues:

Disney/Pixar's "Up" continues to live up to its name, as the toon remains the dominant title of the fall overseas. For the second time in three sessions, "Up" easily won, this time with $21.8 million for the Oct. 9-11 frame at 3,500 playdates in 25 markets, led by a $10.2 million British debut and a $2.3 million Benelux launch.

"Up" is now the fifth best international performer of the year ... Foreign cume ,,, has reached $258.5 [ok, not weekend] million as of Oct. 13, or $35 million short of the domestic total. It has now joined 92 other films that have cleared the quarter-billion-dollar mark in overseas grosses this year and looks likely to wind up its run in the more exclusive club of 37 pics with at least $400 million in international grosses ....

"G-Force" also showed some pull for family audiences with $8.4 million at 2,575, led by a $3.8 million Spanish launch, to lift the foreign cume past $112 million ...

Domestically, cartoons are also holding their own, with Cloudy Mit Meatballs and Toy Stories both in the Top Five.

As of Thursday, Cloudy had hit the century mark, and the Toy Story reboots had collected $25.5 million. The chart (as of yesterday):

Couples Retreat -- $45.4 million

Zombieland -- $54 million

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs -- $100.2 million

Paranormal Activity -- $13.5 million

Toy Stories 3-D -- $25.5 million

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Topics of Concern

Yesterday I was at one of the major animation studios when an industry veteran comes up to me. He says:

"Steve, end of the week I'm out of here. I've got a job offer from Blank, and I'm taking it. They want to do animated features and they're looking to hire people with experience.

"I just haven't fit in around here. I'm working for the same money I was making fifteen years ago. I'm back to doing support work. But I'm getting my hours, and I've been working the last ten months, so I can't complain. A lot of people haven't been had jobs ..."

Overall, the mood of the cartoon biz is ... tense. People who are employed hunker down and hang on to what they've got. People who aren't pick up freelance, cash their unemployment checks, and keep looking. I've been working with a group that's been pushing a non-union place to organize. One of these folks e-mailed me complaining that they'd heard I had d mentioned their name in public, and "Please keep your mouth shut. I don't want anybody knowing I'm collecting rep cards ..."

At yet another studio, the old chestnut: "We're cutting staff, everyone has to work more efficiently, and by the way, we have no money in the budget for overtime" has circulated far and wide.

As I told several artists over lunch, "Studios are cutting costs in every direction. There's work out there, but nobody gets retained when it's done. The last scene or storyboard is turned in, they are out the door."

And I ran across a DreamWorks Animation employee who said:

"I'm getting laid off at the end of this picture. The rest of the guys in the department got picked up for new shows, but I didn't get slotted ..."

So even DreamWorks has the occasional layoff, even as new hires arrive in other departments.

Like I say. I've seen happier days.

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Linkages de Animation

Photo: Cesar Rubio (Walt Disney Family Foundation)

An amusement park of animation links, starting with ...

China's plans for creating major toonage:

Beijing is going to raise 50 billion yuan to build up Chinese Animation and Game City as China's "animation Hollywood and Disneyland".

Besides, Beijing will provide 100 million yuan each year as financial suport for the Animation city which is located in the former site of Shougang Group, China's eighth largest steel maker.

In the 83-hectare area, the Animation city will include six major function areas such as theme park, trade management center, research and production center, business service platform, office building, hotel and living area ...

Speaking of expansions, Fox looks to extend its cartoon empire.

Fox has picked up a new animated series developed by Jonah Hill as the network continues to expand its “Animation Domination” line up.

Hill – who is perhaps best known for his roles in “Superbad” and “Knocked Up” – will be a featured voiceover actor on the show in addition to developing the script with writers Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul. Hill, Mogel and Paul will also be onboard as executive producers. The series revolves around a 7-year-old socialite who behaves like an adult but is forced to attend a public school ...

And TIME magazine overviews the king of Fox's Animation Domination (Is that a cartoon rabbit in leather? Snapping a whip?)

... "Family Guy" is "The Simpsons" on Red Bull, with a dysfunctional family--the Griffins of Quahog, R.I.--but twice the outrageousness and thrice the pace. Its signature move is to cut away from a story line for a non sequitur gag (a pop-culture parody, a celebrity spoof, a Star Wars reference). The Simpsons is a satire, but it's rooted in its family. Family Guy is less a half-hour narrative about characters than a delivery system for unconnected jokes the writers can't bear to part with ...

Reviews for Astroboy -- launching October 23rd here in the U.S. -- begin to come in.

The anxiety of influence is a palpable force in "Astro Boy," although it owes just as much to "Wall-E," "The Iron Giant" and "Pinocchio" as it does to its source -- Tezuka Osamu's 1952 manga that spawned multiple cartoon series and bequeathed contemporary anime with a hefty chunk of its DNA.

... [T]he film easily should draw sizable family crowds and hold their attention well; whether it sticks in their memory is another question.

Oh. My. God. After all the breathless projections that there would be five contenders for Best Animated Feature this year, turns out there could be only three.

... This Oscar race will only have three nominees, as usual. Today we hear from a spokesperson for Funimation that "Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone" ... is not a contender. It is ineligible because it opened in Japan in September 2007 ...

This brings the list of entries that we know about to 15. According to academy rules, if there are eight to 15 entries, there can only be three nominees in the race,

Story artist Ed Gombert posts more story art -- this time from The Hunchback of Notre Dame -- from Disney veteran Vance Gerry. (Go look at all of it.)

Lastly, Meon posts photos of the opening of the Walt Disney Museum up at the Presidio in San Francisco, and the Wall Street Journal details some of the exhibits within it.

... The last galleries of the museum cover the rebuilding of the studio and the success of Disney's nature documentaries, such as "Seal Island" (1948); the animated features "Cinderella" (1950) and "Lady and the Tramp" (1955); and hit movies such as "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1954) and "Mary Poppins" (1964).

On display are more family photos and personal artifacts, such as replicas of cans of Walt's two favorite kinds of chili and the miniatures he loved to craft in his spare time. A ramp leads downward to a 12-foot-diameter model of Disneyland ...

Enjoy your weekend.

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The Girl is Numero Uno

The gift to Diz Co. that keeps on giving:

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment's new 70th anniversary edition of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" topped the national video sales chart its first week in stores ...

Eight years ago, when "Snow White" was first released on the then-nascent DVD format, the release set a new one-day sales record for DVD of 1 million units ...

Snow White was released in December, 1937, became an immediate hit, and made Disney a major force in Hollywood. It also grossed $8 million. While this seems paltry today, it made Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the highest grossing feature in Hollywood's (then) twenty-five year history*.

SW has been making big money ever since. Its theatrical gross, after re-releases that extended from the 1940s to the 1990s, totals $184,925,486.

And that, of course, is only part of the cash flow. There have been millions from merchandising and hit records, millions more from video releases. SW, rolled out on VHS in 1994, sold fifty million video cassettes worldwide. It sold millions of DVDs in 2001, and now hits the top of the charts yet again with its Blu-ray release.

There's only one other film from the 1930s that has had similar success to Snow White, and that's the big-budget Civil War epic titled Gone With the Wind. Outside of the Clark Gable picture, no other live-action film comes close.

Not bad for an 86-minute film that has no flesh-and-blood actors in it.

* Not counting Birth of a Nation, which probably made more, but for which there is no definitive accounting.

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New pictures of our lobby: 2 of 3

Courtesy of and © Jeffrey M. Kalban and Associates, images of our lobby at 1105 N. Hollywood Way (click the thumbnails for full-sized pix):

Final installment on Saturday.

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Production Boards

Once every ten years this issue comes up, so I roll it out here.

The TAG contract has two similar-sounding classifications.

One is "Production Board."

The other is "Storyboard."

Here's the difference between the two classifications ...

Storyboard is a classification used in animated features. Storyboards are single drawings pinned up on a cork board and are usually closeups or medium shots used for continuity in a long form cartoon. They don't incorporate layouts or camera moves.

Production boards are two or three panel-type drawings on big sheets of paper with dialogue and action written below them on the production board sheet. The drawings contain camera directions, indications of action, and down-sized layouts. They also have the characters in longshot, medium shot or closeup, as needs dictate.

Here's an example of a Production board, grabbed off the intertubes, produced by Film Roman for Marvel ... long before Disney bought them.

The Production Board rate is a footnote in the contract with three (***) astericks that reads:

"Producer agrees to pay to the Production board classification the key rate of 15% above minimum at all times as provided."

What this means is that production board artists have minimums 15% above those for storyboard artists ... because they are doing all those extra little goodies: layouts, camera directions, actions for the characters.

Don't ask me why the classification is a footnote, because I have no idea. It was that way when I arrived. And if I'd had my wits about me three months ago during contract negotiations, I would have proposed that it stop being a footnote and start being an actual classification in the body of the contract.

So much clearer.

The reason I bring this up now is because studios -- every once in a while -- use the storyboard rate when it's Production board that's the correct choice. Rule of thumb: Production board = teevee; Storyboard = feature.

Thank you for your time.

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Handicapping the Oscar Race

The L.A. Times says the "Best Animated Feature" nominees will be Up and everybody else:

A lot will depend on what makes the official list, which will be revealed in mid-November. Deadline for entries is Nov. 2. Thereafter, a screening committee views submitted fare, grading the films with scores 10 (best) to 6 (poor). Movies with an average score of 7.5 or better are eligible for nomination.

The Times thinks Oscar dynamics are changing:

Animated films have been gaining esteem among Oscar voters in recent years. Until the early 1990s, none was ever nominated for best screenplay, but five animated movies pulled off screenplay bids since: "Wall-E" (2008), "Ratatouille" (2007), "The Incredibles" (2004), "Finding Nemo" (2003) and "Toy Story" (1995).

Since screenplay contenders often score noms for best picture too, it looks like an animated movie may cross over soon ....

Nominations are one thing. Actual awards are another. I don't see animated films winning any writing or Best Picture Oscars anytime before the turn of the next century. I just can't see actors voting for a movie with no actors in it. And I can't see writers giving the nod to a film not written under a WGA contract, no matter how good it is.

Maybe I'm too much of a cynic. I would really like to be wrong.

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Laying Down Enough Chips

A commenter below says: "If you lay down enough chips ... (you produce films that are successful)" ... or something.

That's a variant of the ancient and well-loved saying: "Put enough monkeys in front of enough typewriters, and one will produce the works of Shakespeare." ...

Mais non ....

Nitwits don't run large enterprises for very long because they tend to run those enterprises into the ground. It becomes fairly obvious, fairly fast, that these folks aren't up to the job and they get replaced. Even the competent, and borderline competent, often have short runs. The market is an unforgiving mistress.

What does happen -- further down the food chain -- is that middle managers are often promoted out of their area of competence and remain in place for years because the boss who promoted them doesn't want to admit her or his mistake.

But at the top? Life is often brutal, ruthless and short (much like a peasant's existence under Genghis Khan).

But let's crank it back to specifics; specifically, the movie industry. I give you, as Exhibit One, the Bubble Factory.

The founder of the Bubble Factory was Sidney J. Sheinberg, the respected longtime president of MCA Inc., who ran that company for decades with Lew Wasserman, the chairman, and an eminence grise in Hollywood ...

Mr. Sheinberg started the Bubble Factory with his two sons, Jon, 39, a former talent agent and studio executive, and Bill, 36, a lawyer and former television executive. The production company was fully financed by Seagram.

Even by Hollywood's lavish standards, the deal forming the Bubble Factory was, as Mr. Sheinberg told The Los Angeles Times in April, ''the most lucrative afforded an autonomous entity by a studio.'' Most details of the deal were never disclosed. But it included an extraordinary provision that gave the Bubble Factory the right to give a green light to three to four pictures a year, for five years, each costing $35 million to $40 million, without studio approval ...

So. Dear old Sid (et famille) was given plenty of chips. In fact, he was pretty much given a blank check, with which he could return to the cashier's cage again and again.

And what happened?

One flop followed another: ''Flipper,'' grossed $20 million; ''McHale's Navy,'' about $4 million; ''That Old Feeling,'' about $16 million. At Sony, the Bubble Factory produced ''The Pest,'' which grossed $3.6 million. The company also has a Tim Allen comedy, ''For Richer or Poorer,'' which will be released by Universal later this year ...

Anybody remember For Richer or Poorer? I thought not. And guess what happened to the Bubble Factory? As the New York Times wrote twelve years ago:

'BUBBLE POPS AT U'' shouted the front-page headline in The Daily Variety last week. To the world outside Hollywood, the words were gobbledygook. In Hollywood, the headline made perfect sense and confirmed the rumors: the Bubble Factory, a two-year-old production company, was severing its ties to Universal Pictures ....

Let's recap: The Bubble Factory was a company with money, prestige and freedom. It ended up failing because it wasn't headed by a person that was able to create entertainment that resonated with the people who went to the movies.

In the 1930s, producers thought they could replicate Walt Disney's success by hiring away his staff. An obvious idea, but one that didn't pan out too well. In the nineties, the money men believed that Sid Sheinberg, who had helped launch Stephen Spielberg and worked at Lew Wasserman's side to build a movie and television empire, could create motion pictures that people would flock to see. Turned out they were wrong again.

There's a reason that only a chosen few are showered with riches when they deliver hit features. Few can do it with consistency. It takes, in the final analysis, something more than an infinite number of poker chips or lots of monkeys at many typewriters. It's a matter of talent ... and timing ... and being in sync with popular tastes.

You don't have those qualities, all the chips in the world won't make you Master of the Movie Universe.

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The Amazing, Expanding DD

Wait a minute. Wasn't Digital Domain having a problem making money? Apparently that was then and this is now.

On the heels of the recent announcement of its plans to open a visual effects studio in Vancouver, BC, Digital Domain (DD) is enlarging its footprint further. The Venice-headquartered, Oscar-winning visual effects house is working with parent company Wyndcrest Holdings to build a digital production studio in Port St. Lucie, Florida.

The new studio will create original content for animated feature films and video games. Plans are in the early stages, and Digital Domain expects to begin operations in Florida next year. ...

You see? The power of animation is so great, so all encompassing, that even studios that never turn a profit expand to other countries and states, in search of that elusive positive cash flow.

And where better to do it than Florida, the Mumbai of the United States?

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Dindal Jumps to Live Action

Mark Dindal, director Cats Don't Dance, The Emperor's New Groove, and Chicken Little is saddling up to direct a live-action flick:

Walden Media is ... tapping Mark Dindal to helm live-action family comedy "Housebroken." ...

"Housebroken" will center around a newly married couple's talking pets, who must adjust to living together under one roof. Walden is looking for a scribe to work with Dindal ("Chicken Little") on the script, originally penned by Adam Sztykiel ...

Mark was a long-time Disney Feature Animation guy, departing the studio to direct Cats Don't Dance for the short-lived Turner Feature Animation. He then returned to Disney for the hand-drawn Emperor and the CGI cartoon feature Chicken Little.

CL is the Mouse Hose's highest domestic grosser in the c.g. feature department, and Emperor one of the few traditional Disney features that had a second weekend gross higher than the first. For my money, it was the last hand-drawn feature that really clicked, even though Michael Eisner is reputed not to have liked it.

Mark D. is the latest of a long line of animation artist/driectors who have made the leap to live-action. We wish him the best of luck with the project.

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New pictures of the new building: 1 of 3

Courtesy of Jeffrey M. Kalban and Associates, a portfolio of pictures of the Guild's new building. Click on the thumbnails for a full view.

All photos © Jeffrey M. Kalban and Associates. More to come on Thursday.

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They Dream of Works ...

... that will leave a lasting impression on the movie-going public..

I bopped around the DreamWorks facility this afternoon, and various artists told me various things. To wit:

"We got the accelerated greenlight for The Croods. They've moved up the release date, so we have to get the picture up on boards by next month, so editorial can get working on it. The first act is up. Jeffrey looks at the whole thing after the holidays ..."

And I got told:

"I saw all of Shrek Forever After for the first time. I think it's as good as the first one, which I liked, and a bunch better than II, which I didn't. It's got a nice storyline and Rumplestiltskin is great. He really steals the show. I don't usually look at the pictures twice, but I'd see Forever After a second time, just to see Rumplestiltskin.

And then ...

How to Train Your Dragon is really a darker, more adult picture. I'd put it in Kung Fu Panda's territory, in terms of not being what's thought of as a standard, DreamWorks feature ..."

Wandering around, I'm always kind of amazed at the number of projects happening on the DWA campus. Beside the dozen or so feature projects feature projects going on, there are a bunch of television specials in work.

It's a veritable bee hive there on Flower Street.

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The Dentist Gets Another Twenty ...

... episodes, not dollars or teeth.

I'm falling down on the job, since this is semi-old news (but important).

Nickelodeon has picked up a 20-episode second season of "Glenn Martin, DDS," the stop-motion series from Michael Eisner's Tornante Animation.

With a voice cast led by Kevin Nealon, Catherine O'Hara and Judy Greer, "Glenn" ranked as Nick at Nite's No. 1 offering in the third quarter of 2009, averaging 2.1 million viewers per week.

I'm told that Mr. Eisner is heavily involved with this Tornante-produced comedy, and I'm glad it's working out. (TAG has a contract with the production company.)

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WB Animation Reboots

I missed this, bad me.

Peter Girardi joins the studio as senior VP of series and alternative animation ... Girardi will oversee creative and spearhead production for all series while also trying to find nontraditional animated outlets for the WB's programming. He arrives on the lot after being exec creative director of interactive content provider Funny Garbage ...

It's bright day after a long night at Warners Animation. A year ago WBA was a ghost town. I could walk through the building and encounter empty cubicle after empty cubicle. Nothing much was going on.

Today every cubicle is filled, and series and direct-to-video features are in production. Staffers tell me that production will be churning along for a good twelve to fourteen months.

Warners, after a long hibernation, is serious again about animation.

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The Foreign Derby

And let's not forget the overseas horse races:

Buoyed by a substantial first-place U.K. debut, Pixar/Disney's "Up" reclaimed the No. 1 spot on the foreign circuit over the weekend, generating $21 million overall from 3,500 locations in 25 markets and pushing its overseas gross total to $257.1 million.

... The U.K. gross for "Up" ($9.7 million from 550 spots) accounted for nearly half the film's total tally, and beat the comparable market opening grosses of Pixar predecessors "Wall-E" (by 39%) and "Ratatouille" (by 41%) ...

Fourth was "G-Force," Disney's animation outing from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, which grossed $7.8 million from 2,575 locations in 21 territories for an international cume to date of $111.4 million. A France opening is set for this week.

Other international cumes: Fox's "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," $685 million

Animation continues to more than hold its own in lands across the sea.

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Pension Plans, Pension Saving

Now a short side trip into the land of retirement pensions.

Time Magazine has a new article out about how 401(k) Plans aren't all they're cracked up to be:

The ugly truth ... is that the 401(k) is a lousy idea, a financial flop, a rotten repository for our retirement reserves. In the past two years, that has become all too clear. From the end of 2007 to the end of March 2009, the average 401(k) balance fell 31%, according to Fidelity. The accounts have rebounded, along with the rest of the market, but that's little help for those who retired — or were forced to — during the recession. In a system in which one year's gains build on the next, the disaster of 2008 will dent retirement savings long after the recession ends ....

I'm not as down on 401(k) Pensions Savings Plans as TIME-Warner is, although I concede that if you think a 401(k) and Social Security are going to be all you'll need for a comfortable, secure retirement, you're kidding yourself.

Animation artists who manage to work twenty or thirty years in the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan and tuck away money in a 401(k) are going to be in relatively good shape when they hit sixty-five and their high earning years have drifted astern.

They'll end up with three Pension accounts plus Social Security. That won't land them at parity with their industry salary, but they'll (hopefully) be at the 60% mark. Of course, my advice is monotonously the same, year in and year out: Put as much loot away as you can, as early as you can. Diversify. And try like hell not to touch your core retirement stuff, because you don't know what the morrow brings.

Plan for the Best and expect the Worst.

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Linkage of Autumn

Some Fridays you don't get to links like you should.

The L.A. Times tells how some of Wes Anderson's animation crew came to hate him:

... Anderson had no idea that his ignorance of stop-motion (the animation technique in which a stationary object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames) and exacting ideas concerning the film's look would so exasperate his crew.

"Honestly? Yeah. He has made our lives miserable," the film's director of animation, Mark Gustafson, said during a break in shooting. He gave a weary chuckle. "I probably shouldn't say that." ...

Chris Miller and Phil Lord, the writer-directors of Cloudy with Meatballs, spent a hectic night on the day their movie opened:.

... in an industry tradition for first-time filmmakers, they had invited a dozen friends and family members to check out audience reactions at theaters all over town ...

“This is the best night of our lives,” Mr. Lord declared after reading an e-mail message from their animation professor comparing them to Chekhov.

By 11 p.m., they were celebrating with a swelling entourage by the pool at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

Pete Huyck, a fellow writer and director, presented the newest successful auteurs with fake gold statues with plaques that read, “Hollywood Best Person Award.”

Imagi is encouraged by its initial Astro Boy rollout:

"Astro Boy" was released this week in Hong Kong and Saturday in Japan. Over the next fortnight it will roll out across much of the Asia-Pacific region. The China debut is set for Oct. 23, the same day as it begins a wide release through Summit Entertainment in North America.

Initial reactions from the Tokyo premiere Monday suggest that the careful modernization of the Atom character has kept the film true to the original concept and acceptable to the millions of Japanese who watched the TV series. Meanwhile, for Americans and international audiences beyond Asia, the film appears to be American, or at least fashioned in the same way as a Pixar original. That’s because Imagi’s unique modus operandi is to hire former Disney and DreamWorks Animation creatives in the U.S. who originate the script and storyboard before turning it over to the company’s 500 multi-cultural animators in Hong Kong...

ASIFA Archives gies us an illustrated history of Alvin and the Chipmunks, still going strong after fifty glorious years.

Okay, she's on the cover, but will she shave in strategic areas?

Simpsons matriarch Marge Simpson is gracing the cover of Playboy magazine, becoming the first cartoon character in the publication's history.

The November issue sees Marge posing on a chair with the distinctive Playboy Bunny logo.

The oft-told tale of how the dwarfs of Snow White became The Seven Dwarfs. (No doubt being told again because the BluRay edition of the mega-hit is out to make new millions for Diz Co.)

"Dave Hand who was Directing Supervisor kept saying to the artist, ‘I can’t tell them apart, we’ve got to work on a way to tell the Dwarfs apart.’”

I was worried sick it wouldn't happen; now I can breathe easy:

The Toy Industry Association, Inc. (TIA) announced the selection of its 2010 inductees into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame:

- John Lasseter, chief creative officer, Walt Disney Company and Pixar Animation Studios, and principal creative advisor of Walt Disney Imagineering ...

- Sam Walton, founder, Walmart Stores (posthumous award)

Sam and John, together at last. Have a fine fettled weekend.

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