The Comic Art Professional Society

For nearly 20 years the Comic Art Professional Society (CAPS) held their meetings upstairs at the Burbank Board of Realtors Hall on Magnolia Blvd. in Burbank. Last Thursday night they moved their monthly get-togethers to the meeting hall upstairs at The Animation Guild in Burbank ...

Why? Well, a lot of CAPS members are also members of the Animation Guild, it's a much better location with several good restaurants nearby, there's an elevator for handicapped access, there's ample parking, there are windows, good lighting, and a good sound system on its way. New tables should arrive soon. And it's getting to be a great meeting place for industry professionals.

Thursday night's meeting began with the usual introduction of guests, the welcoming of new members, followed by news and announcements from members. I sat at the door gathering membership renewal dues and greeting guests, including Guild President Kevin Koch, Vice President Earl Kress (who applied for membership based on years of writing comic book stories) and Guild Executive Board member Steve Zupkas, all of whom came to see that no one spilled drinks on the new carpet. About 50 members and guests were in attendance.

The program for the evening featured a new documentary on Mort Drucker, humor illustrator for MAD Magazine whose career includes advertising art, movie posters, comic books, comic strips, magazine covers and album covers. According to Stephen Silver, Producer/Director of the documentary, this is the first and only time Drucker has ever been filmed at work in his studio. Two lengthy clips in the video show Drucker creating a piece of finished art from beginning to end, from pencil to ink to color.

As Stephen writes on his blog:

Mort Drucker, world famous caricaturist and humorous illustrator best known for his work in MAD magazine has made an exclusive, never before seen tutorial film about his process and life experiences. Presented and interviewed by Stephen Silver. To watch the 2 hour and 15 minute film go to www.schoolism.com and click on "The Masters Series" banner located on the bottom. The film will debut starting January 2oth 2010.

The Mort Drucker video is one in the Master Series produced by Silver. Other videos focus on John Reiner (The Lockhorns) and Stan Goldberg (Archie comics.) There are more videos coming soon but we can't talk about them yet. Each video takes you inside the artist's studio, we learn about them and their work process, and we actually watch them draw and create images on camera.

How many great cartoonists were never filmed or recorded over the years? We'll never even know what they sounded like, much less what they had to say and how they did their work. Silver hopes to change all that by producing documentaries on many contemporary masters while he can.

It was a privilege to see this amazing video on Mort Drucker. Thanks to Stephen Silver for sharing it with CAPS.

And thanks to The Animation Guild for the cool new hangout.

- Bob Foster.

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Top Worldwide Toonage -- 2009

Variety has published its list of top movie grossers for 2009. Therefore, we run a compendium of last year's top animated titles for your reading pleasure:

#3 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs -- $888 million.

#6 Up -- $710 million.

#12 Monsters Vs. Aliens -- $381 million.

#18 Disney's A Christmas Carol -- $311 million.

#25 Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs -- $205 million.

#41 Coraline -- $124 million.

#44 The Princess and the Frog -- $116 million.

#62 Planet 51 -- $89 million.

And then there were the Animation Hybrids:

#2 Avatar -- $899 million.

#4 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen -- $835 million.

#20 G-Force -- $284 million.

#22 Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel -- $229 million.

Beyond the above (a few of which are still in release), you could also consider most (or all?) of the major, effects laden live-action pictures as being partially animated, but then you would encompass most of last year's bigger releases.

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Really "Probably Not"

Regarding Mr. Fox beating Up through awards season?

Many of last night’s Critics’ Choice award winners were expected: Best Animated Movie -- Up ...

Add On: And now really, really "probably not."

Naturally I could be out to lunch here. Upsets are always a possibility when you're talking about small but heavy gold statues. Nevertheless, I just don't see the stop-motion animal movie beating the CGI little old man movie.

Add On: Gee whiz, the Golden Globe for best animated feature goes to ... Up. There's a surprise.

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Mid January Derby

Now with super-sized Add On.

The Princess and the Frog departs the Top Ten as new entrants shoulder past it. The Nikkster provides early numbers.

1. Book Of Eli (Alcon/Warner Bros) NEW [3,111 Theaters] Friday $11.7M, Est 4-Day Weekend $35M

2. Avatar (Fox) Week 5 [3,285 Theaters] Friday $10.5M, Est 4-Day Weekend $50M, Est Cume $500M

3. Lovely Bones (Paramount) Week 6 [2,563 Theaters] Friday $5.7M, Est 4-Day Weekend $25M, Est Cume $23M

4. Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros) Week 4 [3,173 Theaters] Friday $2.9M, Est 4-Day Weekend $12M, Est Cume $182M

5. Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squealquel (Fox) Week 4 [3,246 Theaters] Friday $2.6M, Est 4-Day Weekend $15M, Est Cume $195.7M

6. It's Complicated (Universal) Week 4 [2,673 Theaters] Friday $2.4M, Est 4-Day Weekend $10M, Est Cume $91M

7. The Spy Next Door (Lionsgate) NEW [2,924 Theaters] Friday $2.3M, Est 4-Day Weekend $12M

8. Leap Year (Universal) Week 2 [2,512 Theaters] Friday $1.9M, Est 4-day Weekend $7M, Est Cume $18.7M

9. The Blind Side (Warner Bros) Week 9 [2,408 Theaters] Friday $1.6M, Est 4-Day Weekend $7M, Est Cume $228.5M

10. Up In The Air (Paramount) Week 7 [2,107 Theaters] Friday $1.5M, Est 4-Day Weekend $6.5M, Est Cume $64M

I'm guessing that TPandTF reaches the hundred million mark this MLK weekend. (The rumor mill has it that Dis Co. management has decided -- with 20/20 hindsight -- that having "Princess" in the title of their movie wasn't the best marketing ploy. Oh well ...)

Add On: At the wire, Avatar prevails at #1 for the fifth week in a row ($41.3 million, with a $491.8 million total.)

Behind Cameron's opus at the final turn #2 The Book of Eli reaps $31.6 million, while #4 Alvin and Cohorts now has $192.6 million in its gunny sack.

And at #13, The Princess and the Frog has shed 843 theatres while earning $2.7 million. The feature now has $96.2 million at the North American box office.

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Farewell, Jack: part 5

Above from artist Bill Higgins.

Floyd Norman calls Jack Fergus a "gentle giant". When Fergus left Disney's feature department to work with Blaine Gibson in Imagineering, he and Gibson worked on a huge mermaid sculpture for Disneyland. When the moving crew dropped the sculpture and shattered it, Gibson and Fergus laughed it off: "We never liked it anyway". (from Jim Hill Media)

More from the book his fellow assistants presented Fergus when he left Feature Animation. Below, Al White's self-portrait next to Bing Crosby.

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The Sonora Experience

Today I bopped over to Warner Bros. Animation to walk through a building I had missed earlier in the week.

Bad move.

Warners was moving productions from one space to another, and mostly I did face time with stacks of cardboard boxes and empty furniture. Then it was on to Glendale and Disney Toons ....

Disney's direct-to-video cartoon division (now run by J. Lasseter and E. Catmull) isn't moving production personnel like Warners, but it's going through changes of its own.

"We were going to do eight or ten Tinkerbell features, but studio chief Richard Ross [who replaced Dick Cook] has cut the number of features back.

"The second Tink feature didn't do as well as the studio thought it would. I mean, it did well, but not up to the company's expectations. Maybe it was because it came out the same time as a couple of big theatrical animated features, maybe it was because Dick Cook didn't have different units in the company working hard enogh to build synergy.

"Whatever it was, Ross reduced the number of shows. Now we do features with the four different seasons (we've done two) and then one more after that. A total of five. After that, it's on to the new series of features*. Hopefully most of us will be here to work on them ...

* Which haven't been officially announced yet.

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The Friday Linkomatic

Here's your linkage for a Friday evening.

The L.A. Times asks the question:

Does 'Mr. Fox' really have a shot at stealing the Oscar from 'Up'?

And supplies its own answer: "Probably not." ...

The Kansas City Star reports on FX's new animated show Archer, produced by a cartoon studio located out of California, but not in China or Korea.

[Show creators Adam Reed and Matt Thomson] shopped around before someone recommended [Trinity Animation] in Missouri that … well, isn’t what you’d call show-bizzy.

Trinity got the job and quickly won over the “Archer” crew.

“I could not be more in love with those guys,” Reed said. “Five times faster and super nice.” They even named a minor character, Capt. Lammers, after Trinity’s founder [Jim Lammers] ....

Some of our beloved congloms are doing some hardball negotiating just now.

Walt Disney Co. is in talks with Liberty Media Corp.’s Starz that may limit the movie channel’s ability to provide films online to Netflix Inc., two people with knowledge of the talks said.

Starz seeks access to Disney films for as many as five years on its cable channel, as well as continued digital rights ...

“Netflix may be challenged to retain some of its most appealing content when Starz renews its Disney distribution deal, which expires in 2012,” Barton Crockett, an analyst with Lazard Capital Markets in New York, wrote in a note today.

The analyst lowered his rating on Netflix to “sell” from “hold,” saying he questioned whether the Los Gatos, California-based company can meet expectations for “continued torrid growth.”

Netflix fell $2.97, or 5.5 percent, to $50.99 today ...

Pixar's first live-action feature starts shooting next week:

Andrew Stanton is directing [John Carter of Mars] for Disney's animation powerhouse; shooting begins next week. The movie will also have CGI elements.

The adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs book series centers on a Civil War veteran (Taylor Kitsch) who finds himself mysteriously transported to Mars ...

I recall a Disney exec pushing JCoM twenty-five years ago. Good that they're finally getting around to some of Mr. Burrough's more neglected titles.

DreamWorks Animation rolls out its upcoming slate of films.

If yesterday's presentation by DreamWorks Animation at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles was any indication, 2010 is going to feature some of the company's best films yet. ...

To nobody's surprise, animation has aided Rupert & Co. in reaping sizable profits.

... [C]ombined with the better-than-expected success of ``Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel''. ``Avatar'' is expected to help News Corp's film division make $US1.26 billion in operating profit in the fiscal year ending in June _ about $US160 million more than initially thought ....

That would mean the film division would have about a third of News Corp's operating profits for the full year. Generally it produces about one-fourth ...

Indiemoviesonline.com offers a multitude of Aardman shorts.

... [W]hen will you be able to wrap your eyeballs around this lucky 13 in cartoon entertainment? Why, from right now...

Think that c.g. animated features enjoy unbroken success? Think again, particularly if you're a large country across the seas ...

Roadside Romeo debacle rocks animation film industry

Animation in India was touted as a high-growth industry, with Nasscom once projecting revenues of $1.16 billion by 2012. Year 2009 was supposed to see a flurry of activity with the release of over 15 animation films which were started in 2005-06 after the success of Hanuman. The industry is shaken, with not a single film making it to theatre screens in 2009. In a recent report, Nasscom has cut back on its projection of the animation industry to $1 billion by 2012 ...

The animation industry was already in deep trouble, having pinned high hopes on Yashraj’s Roadside Romeo that released in October 2008. However, it got a setback as the film flopped ... Shaken by the Romeo debacle, multiplexes and film distributors are reluctant to screen animation films.

You see, it isn't always sunlight, flowers and movie ticket sales in Cartoonland. Sometimes it's weeping and wailing and the gnashing of teeth.

But forget about India's travails. You've got a whole weekend ahead of you. Make the most of it.

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State of the Industry and TAG

It's been a roller coaster year for animation.

Up at some feature studios. Down at some television animation studios. (And it changes month to month.) Walt Disney Animation Studio, after laying off much of its The Princess and the Frog crew last summer, hired animators, compositors, lighters and others as it ramped up for Rapunzel at the end of 2009. Universal shut its doors. Warner Bros. laid off part of its freshly hired staff when show development had a major hiccup. (Warners plans to rehire artists at the end of this month.)

Today I talked to an animator who's been struggling. He was laid off months ago because he wasn't able to keep up with quotas, and he's now working outside the industry.

That's the story of many animation veterans: the studios are increasingly demanding, and artists need energy and stamina to keep up. And companies are walking back higher salaries. Last week a DreamWorks staffer told me:

"Friends of mine came over from Imageworks after getting cut loose. They like DWA, but they were making three thousand a week at Imageworks, they're making hundreds less here. Sony just wasn't going to keep them at their old rates. Sony doesn't have the work ..."

Sony Imageworks, like other animation studios in Southern California, hires when it needs talent and lays off when it doesn't. With the exception of DreamWorks Animation, the business model now in force across the industry is "project to project." That operating philosophy is reflected in the revised charts below ...

Employment of TAG members at TAG shops, January 2007-January 2010

Employment picked up in the first seven or eight months of 2009 (as we reported back in October), with a majority of the new hires at DreamWorks and ImageMovers Digital; since then it's dipped a bit due in large part to the shutdown of Universal Animation Studios and the temporary layoffs at Warner Bros when Laff Riot was shut down for retooling.

Employment at TAG shops by studio, January 2010

The figures in square brackets are the number of people employed at each shop. The Disney number is inclusive of both Walt Disney Animation Studio, Disney Toons, and Disney Television Animation (aka Disney TVA). It includes people employed both under the TAG contract and the IATSE/TTL agreement -- which TAG represents.

(You will note that a few large studios dominate, with several small studios having narrow slices of the chart. It's been this way since TAG was invented in January, 1952.)

Click on the chart thumbnails for a full-sized version.

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Farewell, Jack: part 4

Above, Ed Aardal's contribution to the copy of the Fantasia book that was presented to to Jack Fergus. Courtesy of the Megacollector.

Illustration below by Dave Detiege.

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The Permanence of Three Dee -- Part X

Forget the artistic considerations. This is what our fine congloms will be looking at:

Moviegoers spent $1 billion to see 3-D films at U.S. and Canadian theaters last year, as features including News Corp.’s “Avatar” drove total box-office revenue to a record.

Ticket sales for 3-D showings accounted for 9.4 percent of the total in 2009, according to Hollywood.com Box-Office. “Avatar,” still in theaters, made $212 million in U.S. sales last year from 3-D screenings, about 75 percent of its $283.6 million total, the Los Angeles-based researcher said ...

And there's one studio that is going to have a trio of 3-D spectaculars in theatres near you in 2010.

Today, shares of DreamWorks Animation (NASDAQ:DWA) have crossed bullishly above their 10-day moving average of $40.27 on volume of 170 thousand shares.

Could there be some connection between stock price and the upcoming stereo features? Naaaww.

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Down in Culver City

I spent most of the morning at fabled Sony Pictures Animation/Imageworks, where company staffers updated me on Sony doings.

There's a bunch of different films in various stages of development at SPA. There's the Smurfs project (live-action and animation), and the third installment of Open Season that's moving briskly along (production being done by Reel Effects in Dallas, same as the second picture). And Hotel Transylvania is in some development transitions.

"We're reworking the story, stripping it down. We had too many characters and too many plot lines. Management told board artists to board exactly what was in the latest cript and then weren't too happy with the result. We spent some long days going through sequences and restructuring, and we're still going through sequences ..."

Another staffer said to me, "This isn't brain surgery, story construction isn't that complicated, but we've had a lot of managers come and go and it gets hard to figure out which each of them wants ..."

And over in the hybrid live action-animation department, there is this news about Spidey:

Marc Webb, the (500) Days Of Summer director, has climbed to the top of the Sony Pictures' list to rebirth the Spider-Man franchise. While the studio has a wish list of star directors like James Cameron, David Fincher, and Wes Anderson, the emergence of Webb as director comes as a huge surprise. But Mike Fleming's sources tell him Webb met about the Spidey reboot with the pic's producers and executives looking to get the picture into production later this year for a Summer 2012 release. ...

This morning, a Sony staffer who knows the departing Sam Raimi said to me:

"Sam really had an impossible task. They wanted a BIG production, and they wanted it for summer 2011. And Sam said, 'I can't do the picture you want for the budget you want. And I can't get all the effects shots done if they all go through Imageworks. I'll need more money and I'll have to go to other effects houses.' ..."

One artist said he thought Sony management gave Raimi and impossible task so that he would end up quitting. Idle speculation, of course. Movie execs never, never do that kind of thing, do they?

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The Contest for Oscars

The New York Times asks, "Will The Fantastic Mr. Fox surge past Up in the race for Best Animated Feature?" And a Disney exec responds:

"It's not even a contest" ...

Yet a lot of critics and newspapers have made the Wes Anderson picture a late-arriving darling in the Oscar contest. The New York Film Critics just chose Fox as the Best Animated Film of the Year.

Cynic that I am, I tend to agree with the anonymous executive above. In a normal world in usual times, it wouldn't be a contest. Tinsel Town, nine times out of ten, adores winners. Remember Titanic at Oscar time, 1998? It made shiploads of money and took home a bushel basked of Academy Awards. And Up made (rounded) $300 million domestic, while The Fantastic Mr. Fox collected around$20 million. In other words, one is a monster hit and the other is a (say it with me now) F-A-I-L-U-R-E.

Hollywood doesn't give gold statues to failures. That's the common wisdom the Mouse's mucky-muck is counting on. But stranger upsets have happened. In a short time we'll see if an upset happens again.

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Farewell, Jack: part 3

More from the presentation that his fellow assistants made to Jack Fergus (above), when he left the Disney feature department for Imagineering. Courtesy of the Megacollector.

This is one of our favorites; unfortunately we don't know the artist (any suggestions?)

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Ineligible

The Princess and the Frog just can't catch a break:

After nominations ballots and reminder lists for the Original Score category were mailed to members of the Academy's Music Branch (on December 28), questions were raised regarding the eligibility of the score of "The Princess and the Frog." ...

The tabulators at PricewaterhouseCoopers have been instructed to disregard any votes cast for the Original Score of "The Princess and the Frog." The movie remains eligible in all other categories for which it qualified.

On the other hand, TP&TF is now nudging up against a $93 million domestic gross and will move over the $100 million marker in the near future.

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The DreamWorks and the Dragon

Part of yesterday afternoon was spent at DreamWorks Animation, and I have very little to report except what a veteran story artist told me without prompting.

"I went to a screening of How to Train Your Dragon. The studio sent out an e-mail about it, and I was sort of back and forth about going, wasn't really that interested.

"But I finally went. And I'll tell you, it's the best film this place has ever made, hands down. The version I saw wasn't completed, it still had a bunch of things that needed more work, but the picture sustained. It takes you up to a high level and keeps you there. It's really involving."

I asked him if he thought Dragon was better than Panda. He said yeah. (I suppose you'll have to go watch it for yourself in March, and decide for yourself. The artist also said the Three Dee was first-rate as well.)

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Course Change for Spidey

This is saddening:

... [Sony] on Monday said it was sending the entire franchise in for a major overhaul [of Spiderman] without star Tobey Maguire or director Sam Raimi involved.

Why should TAG be concerned about what happens with a live-action director on a live-action flick?

Because from the get-go, Mr. Raimi was pushing to use 839 board artists, and because Spiderman contained lots of animation, we ultimately shared staffing with the Illustrators Union, Local 790 (which has a hiring roster) in the development of the super-hero franchise.

So I for one am not happy that Raimi has been tossed overboard, regardless of the fact that Sony mucky-mucks are pleased with the turn of events.

"We’re very excited about the creative possibilities that come from returning to Peter's roots."

(I've yet to see a corporate press release where the execs aren't "excited" or "thrilled" with the latest developments. You would think they'd find themselves some new words, but they never do. They cling to cliches like they're life preservers.)

So now, as the L.A. Times relates, Sony has only one event picture for summer 2011. Thank God it's Three Dee Smurfs.

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Remembering Roy (the pictures)

As Steve posted yesterday, a memorial was held for the late Roy E. Disney at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood.

Among those who reminisced about their professional and personal relationship with Roy were (from left to right) John Musker, Ron Clements, George Scribner, Dave Bossert, Glen Keane, Mike Gabriel, Andy Deja, Eric Goldberg and emcee Don Hahn.

Beforehand, a brunch was held across the street at the Wolfgang Puck dining room at the Hollywood Highland Center.

Animator Larry White, art director and producer Ed Ghertner and Simpsons director Mark Kirkland.

Steve Hulett with Lion King art director Andy Gaskill.

(Everybody was wearing Hawaiian shirts in honor of Roy -- who wouldn't have wanted it any other way. -- SH)

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Walking Away

Not from your job.

From a house or condo that is underwater (i.e., worth way less than the loan):

John Courson, president and C.E.O. of the Mortgage Bankers Association, recently told The Wall Street Journal that homeowners who default on their mortgages should think about the “message” they will send to “their family and their kids and their friends.” Courson was implying that homeowners — record numbers of whom continue to default — have a responsibility to make good.

... Some [Americans] are making a calculated decision to hang onto their money and let their homes go. ... Businesses — in particular Wall Street banks — make such calculations routinely. Morgan Stanley recently decided to stop making payments on five San Francisco office buildings. A Morgan Stanley fund purchased the buildings at the height of the boom, and their value has plunged. Nobody has said Morgan Stanley is immoral — perhaps because no one assumed it was moral to begin with ...

I bring this up here because I've gotten questions from members about what they should do with loans they can't afford and houses that are worth less than they paid for them.

In every case, I tell them to analyze the financial pros and cons of getting out from under, and if walking away from the house and loan is the best road to take financially, then don't think twice about it. Because despite the moral lectures from the bloodsuckers in the mortgage and banking industry, there is no "morality" involved.

You default on the loan. The bank -- which sold your loan to somebody else five minutes after you signed the papers -- gets the house. Simple.

I bring this up here because I don't want artists -- who are often a bit too idealistic and trusting -- to screw themselves over trying to live up to some bogus altruism preached by the Bankers' Association -- which spits on the concept every chance it gets.

Do what's best for you. Period. And remember the words of every flinty-eyed executive I've ever met: "It's business."

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The Overseas Derby

Is apparently all Avatar all the time.

"Avatar's" overseas cume of $906.2 million significantly outpaces comparable domestic action, more than double its $429 million domestic take in the U.S. and Canada ...

But I guess when you make huge amounts of money in four weeks and become the second highest grossing film in the history of movies, every other feature kind of fades to invisibility.

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Farewell, Jack: part 2

More from the book that Disney assistant Jack Fergus received from his fellow artists. Courtesy of the Megacollector.

Below, Ken O'Brien; bottom, George Kreisl.

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Roy's Memorial

There was a sizable memorial for Roy Disney today at the El Capitan theater in Hollywood. Animators, producers, Robert Iger, one of Roy's sons and Roy's sailing crews came onstage and spun stories about Roy at the studio, Roy as a nature cinematographer, and Roy on the bounding Main.

Sunday's memorial was anything but a sad occasion. There were live performances and clips from some of his award-winning movies. Everyone was asked not to wear black, but bright colors or Hawaiian shirts. It was a true celebration for the man who was behind some of the most successful Disney movies to date.

About 1,000 people turned out for the memorial ...

One of the tales that resonated was a story about Mr Disney racing his boat through the Caribbean in a high-stakes yacht race, fishing as he went. As one of Roy's crew members reflected:

"I was crewing a different boat then, not Roy's. We were focused and serious because we knew we were racing a world-class craft, and we wanted to win. And here comes Roy at the helm of his boat, in shorts. And he gives a wave as he passes us.

"And there's a fishing line trailing off his starboard side. Fishing line. Nobody fishes during a high pressure race on the high seas. You're trying to make your boat go as fast as possible, with as little drag as possible. But Roy was fishing. And he came in first."

There were a lot of other reminiscences, but that one struck me as quintessential: Unassuming Roy. Unconventional Roy. And Roy, despite the idiosyncrasies (or maybe because of them), ending up in first place.

There are worse ways to live life.

(I will shortly put up a few pictures of the day ...)

Add On: As I commented down below, Robert Iger, who had some graceful things to say about Mr. Disney, announced that henceforth the Disney "Animation Building" would be known as "The Roy E. Disney Animation Building."

John Lasseter also had some nice remembrances about Roy, pointing out that Pixar started working on Disney Feature's CAPS system (digital ink and paint) at Roy's behest, a month after Pixar became its own company. He stated: "If not for Roy, neither Disney Feature Animation or Pixar would probably be here today."

Add On Too: The L.A. Times ran an article today about the documentary in which Roy participated shortly before his death:

... "Waking Sleeping Beauty" doesn't paint over the conflicts that not only were inevitable in Disney's resurgence but also were an outcome of the turnaround itself, as the studio's most senior executives (Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Eisner, Roy E. Disney) squabbled over who deserved credit for the renaissance.

"We were hyper aware of not making a puff piece," Hahn said in an interview.

"Waking Sleeping Beauty" tracks two parallel plots. The first and most central to the documentary is how low Disney's animation division had fallen in the years leading to the 1980s -- "given up for dead," the movie states -- and what it took to restore the division to its former brilliance. The second story line follows the studio managers determined to bring the unit back and how their infighting ultimately split Disney apart. ...

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Diffusion of Animation

The New York Times reports on Blue Sky Studios.

Adjusted for inflation, “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” ranks as the third biggest computer-animated movie of all time ... “The quality of the work is up there with anything that is done from any company in the business,” said Tom Rothman, a chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. Added Vanessa Morrison, president of Fox Animation Studios, which includes Blue Sky: “Being away from Hollywood really helps to incubate talent. Our films really take people to a place they’ve never been before.”

Which happens to be a long-time Katzenberg line, but in Toonland, various ideas ... and executives' quotes ... sometimes get recycled.

But one of the better parts of the article for me is that even the New York Times sees the obvious:

“Avatar,” which relies on newly developed motion-capture equipment and has sold over $1 billion at the global box office, is to a large extent an animated film.

You think?

The reality of animation today is that it's migrated everywhere, into everything. I talked to Chris Bailey today at Roy Disney's memorial, who has done everything from hand-drawn animation to comic books to directing live-action. He recently finished working on that other Fox hit Alvin II, and related how "it's nice to find a niche, especiallly when it's a popular niche."

Indeed. It's the prayer and hope of every artist who works in animation: Finding a corner of the business in which they can prosper and earn a living.

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The Derby of Early January

Now with the usual Add On.

The Nikkster has the numbers early on a Saturday, and we're happy to see that Jimmy Cameron's animation hybrid Avatar maintains its hold on the movie-going public, even though it has those disgusting and un-American Librul themes running through it ...

1. Avatar (20th Century Fox) Week 4 [3,422 Theaters] Friday $12.6M, Est Weekend $45M, Cume $425M

2. Daybreakers (Lionsgate) NEW [2,523 Theaters] Friday $5.8M, Est Weekend $15M

3. Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros) Week 3 [3,626 Theaters] Friday $5M, Est Weekend $17M, Cume $165M

4. Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squealquel (Fox) Week 3 [3,641 Theaters] Friday $3.2M, Est Weekend $15M, Cume $176.3M

5. It's Complicated (Universal) Week 3 [2,955 Theaters] Friday $3.1M, Est Weekend $10M, Cume $76.7M

6. Leap Year (Universal) NEW [2,511 Theaters] Friday $3.1M, Est Weekend $9M

7. Youth in Revolt (The Weinstein Co) NEW [1,873 Theaters] Friday $2.7M, Est Weekend $7M

8. Blind Side (Warner Bros) Week 8 [2,928 Theaters] Friday $2.1M, Est Weekend $7M, Cume $218M

9. Up In The Air (Paramount) Week 6 [2,218 Theaters] Friday $2M, Est Weekend $7M, Cume $54.4M

10. Princess And The Frog (Disney) Week 7 [2,620 Theaters] Friday $850K, Est Weekend $3.5M, Cume $91.6M

Other Top Ten animated titles aren't doing badly either: Alvin scampers toward $200 millioncomestic, and The Princess and the Frog looks poised to hit $100 million soon.

(As always, we like to point out that larger box office means more employment.)

Add On: The top three pictures from last week repeat this week, and Fox's two animated hybrids (and Avatar is an animated hybrid despite denials) are making several truckloads of money.

Avatar at numero uno has now made $485 million this weekend and $429 million since its release.

Sherlock Holmes has uncovered $165.2 million, and Alivn and the Chipmunks, the Squeakquel has roared past $178 million on its way to $200 million.

And tenth place The Princess and the Frog (dropping from #7) has racked up $92.6 million in ticket sales after seven weeks of release.

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El Linkage

Your end-of-week animation linkfest ...

This is one of the more bizarre bits of news I've seen this week:

Charlie Chaplin is to be revived as a cartoon character – with a series of 104 silent animated shorts.

The £7million project – which has the blessing of the Chaplin estate – will feature 3D-style computer animation aimed at children as young as six. ...

Silent animated films? That sounds like a commercial grand slam. (They going to do it in black and white?) Since silent films were kind of cartoons to begin with, I don't see the point of doing an animated version of a character mostly long-forgotten. I must not be cutting edge enough.

The Hollywood Reporter dips into the story-making process for animated features:

... "We started writing six years go -- and we finished writing during the mix," says Phil Lord, who co-wrote and co-directed "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" with Chris Miller. "We always joke that you make an animated film backward: You start with editing the film, with the animatic (mock-ups); and then proceed to shoot it. That's the beauty of the animation process: It takes so long, you have so many chances to improve it." ...

Fox is banging the publicity drum for its Golden Oldie:

Fox on Sunday night ... attempts to rekindle that "Simpsons" love (not to mention faded ratings glory) with a 90-minute celebration of the show's 20th anniversary. Yes, the animated sitcom that taught a nation -- nay, the world -- to say "Cowabunga, dude," is now the longest-running prime-time series in the history of television. Just one more year, and "The Simpsons" can finally, legally drink its own bottle of Duff Beer...

I'm not sure what the "faded ratings" thing is. Last Sunday Simpsons was fractionally higher than Family Guy.

Peter Rainier looks at an animated feature from Belgium.

With all the high-profile animated movies out there now, it would be a loss if "A Town Called Panic" was stampeded in the shuffle. This marvelous little Belgian gem is making the rounds, and it's as funny, and often as inventive, as, for starters, "Up" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox." A spinoff of a popular Belgian TV series, it was the only stop-motion animated film ever chosen as an official selection at the Cannes film festival ...

The Los Angeles Times predicts the viability of the next Pixar feature.

Disney and Pixar's "Toy Story 3" versus Paramount's "Footloose."

Horn: Underestimate Pixar at your own peril. "Toy Story 2" ($245.9 million domestically) outgrossed the first "Toy Story" ($191.8 million) and there's no reason why the third Buzz and Woody film won't do better than both.

Fritz: Gee, that's almost as tough a call as "Avatar" versus "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" the weekend before Christmas. Given the track record of Pixar and this franchise in particular, I'd bet "Toy Story 3" won't only beat its weekend competition but will be the biggest movie of the summer ...

And we end with sad news. Gumby's papa has passed away:

Art Clokey, the creator of the whimsical clay figure Gumby, died in his sleep Friday at his home in Los Osos, Calif., after battling repeated bladder infections, his son Joseph said. He was 88.

Clokey and his wife, Ruth, invented Gumby in the early 1950s at their Covina home shortly after Art had finished film school at USC. After a successful debut on "The Howdy Doody Show," Gumby soon became the star of its own hit television show, "The Adventures of Gumby," the first to use clay animation on television ...

Have a salubrious weekend. Remember to pace yourself.

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Farewell, Jack: part 1

When JACK FERGUS, who is third from the right in John Sparey's portrait of the 1954 Disney bullpen, left the feature animation department for Imagineering, some of his fellow artists presented him with a first edition copy of the Disney Fantasia book, complete with some of their own artwork and farewell thoughts for the six-foot six-inch artist whose nickname was "Tiny".

As Disney veteran Dave Michener recalls (via Didier Ghez):

"[Disney artist] Jack [Fergus] belonged to a club called the “Tip-Top Club,” which was anybody over 6 foot 6 inches. I can tell you a funny story about Jack because we were assistants together at that point in my career. We were walking down the main hall in the animation building one day coming back from lunch. He had such an incredible arm span he was dragging his finger tips on both sides of the wall as we came back in the building. Walt Disney had just gotten out of the elevator and was coming our way. He looked and saw Jack and he said, “ Jesus Christ!” Jack was a very, very big man ... "

Courtesy of our friend the MegaCollector, we present a collection of artwork from this great artifact of cartoon history.

Above, the work of Earl Combs.

More to come ...

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Game Changer?

The Atlantic notices the obvious.

... [S]ays established Hollywood director Jon Favreau: "It is a game-changer from a production standpoint certainly in the way he's using motion capture and operating a camera within a volume... the line between animation and live action is blurring in many ways." Favreau told an interviewer he will mimic Cameron's use of motion capture and CGI in his upcoming action film Iron Man 2 ...

Sitting in the middle of Animationland, I've been noting for, oh, a couple of decades that the "line" between animation and live-action has been fading away. Thanks to the digital revolution, animated components in live-action now take up way more screen time. Animated effects and characters and stunt doubles. Virtual sets. It's all standard stuff now. In fact, if you've got yourself a big live-action extravaganza, you've got to have loads of this stuff in your movie or you're not really legitimate.

What this means is that the overall animation industry has grown steadily, even as different segments of Toonland have bounced up and down. Back in 1960, there were a couple of thousand cartoon people working in L.A. Hanna-Barbera and Disney a couple of small pretenders, various commercial houses, and that was about it. Now there's eight or nine times as many people employed in the multiple branches of what we're pleased to call animation, everything from live-action effects to television graphics to video and on-line games to traditional toonage and its teevee cousins.

So the fact that a national magazine now takes note that the latest big-budget picture is changing the landscape of movie-making is fun, but obvious. It's been going on for years. Avatar might increase the velocity of change in the business, but it won't change the direction. That was determined long ago.

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The Permanence of 3-D, Part IX

Jeffrey Katzenberg makes news.

We know which way the tide is flowing, right?

Samsung Electronics is diving headlong into 3-D viewable TVs, launching a number of new 3-D home products today. Samsung also announced an alliance with animated film maker DreamWorks Animation..

I mentioned to a staffer at one of our large congloms that in five to eight years, Three Dee will be the dominant medium. He was skeptical, but I think that it's going to be like color in the 1950s: The also-ran to black-and-white in 1949, and the main attraction by 1960.

We'll see if I'm psychic ... or all wet.

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The Sign of the Blue Genie

The story goes that actor Charles Laughton, around the time he was making Sign of the Cross for Cecil B. DeMille, asked the director-producer how he got his inspiration for his big, religious spectacles. DeMille smiled at Laughton and said: "I just pick up my bible and go off and talk with God."

To which Mr. Laughton is alleged to have replied: "My, how chummy." True story or not, Mr. Laughton never made another film for C.B. DeMille.

Happily, Cecil's Hollywood colleague Walt Disney never had a similar problem ...

Walt Disney always called himself a Christian, but his biographers agree that he was skeptical about organized religion and rarely set foot inside a church. He insisted that any narrow portrayal of Protestant Christianity (or any religion, for that matter) in his animated features was box-office poison, especially in lucrative, overseas markets. More broadly, Walt's fear was that explicit religiosity might needlessly exclude young viewers, while a watered-down version might at the same time offend the devout. Yet the studio's founding genius also understood that, from the ancient Greeks to the Brothers Grimm, successful storytellers have needed supernatural intervention agents to resolve plots. So, Walt decided, Disney's cartoon protagonists would appeal not to Judeo-Christian religion but to magic, which was more palatable around the ticket-buying world. (It's no coincidence that Disney's marquee theme park is called The Magic Kingdom.) ...

This secular toonism became the "Disney Gospel," and most Christian leaders and parents accepted its trade-offs. ...

Me, I think Walt was smart checking religion at the door. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, you want to make product that's okay with Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Deists and Pagans. What's the point of ticking off a large chunk of the world's population and losing market share?

Of course, since Walt departed the scene, many religious leaders haven't been quite as okay with Diz Co.'s corporate decisions as previously.

... In 1996, the Southern Baptist Convention launched a nationwide (and ultimately unsuccessful) Disney boycott. Among its complaints was that the conglomerate, under Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg's leadership, had betrayed Walt Disney's family-friendly legacy, in the company's employment practices (providing health benefits to same-sex domestic partners and endorsing "Gay Days" at its theme parks), books (Hyperion's "Heather Has Two Mommies" and "Growing Up Gay"), ABC-TV shows ("Ellen" and "Nothing Sacred"), live-action films ("Priest" and, through Miramax, "Kids"); and that the full-length, animated features ("Lion King," "The Little Mermaid") contained subliminal sexual messages.

I think maybe the Southern Baptists have issues with non-Christians in the same way they used to have issued with non-whites. But Mr. Eisner and Mr. Katzenberg are gone, and time is an ever-flowing river.

"The Princess and the Frog" ... embodies the full canon of the Disney Gospel: dreaming, wishing, hard work, love and self-sacrifice, aided by strategic magical intervention. Believers in the Judeo-Christian tradition will also recognize the saving grace of selfless love and good works.

To which we can all say: "Praise be."

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The Network of Cartoons

Guilt-ridden over doping off over the Christmas holidays, Your Truly went to two fun factories today.

In the morning it was Film Roman/ Starz Media, snugged up against the fabled Bob Hope Airport. The current season of Simpsons half-hours is wending its way to an end, and artists and directors have resigned themselves to a season of shorter schedules and longer hiatuses.

"Nobody feels valued here like they did a few years ago. Most people now feel like their disposable. Se sure don't feel we have the leverage we used to..."

"We hear rumors that they're not going to do another Simpsons feature until after the series is over. And we've got no idea how long the series will keep going ..."

I offered the suggestion that the series would be going a while, since if they close down production it will cause the money-making machine called Simpsons merchandising to shrink to unacceptable proportions. (And personally, I think a lot of these folks have more clout than they know.) ...

After lunch I motored to Cartoon Network, where an old hand told me:

"There aren't as many projects happening around here as before. The ones going on now are:

1) Chowder, which is pretty well done except for a little bit left in post. Most of the crew left long ago.

2) Flapjack; it's half through its current order of six shows, and we don't know if there's going to be more beyond the six.

3) Generator Rex. This pup is working through its first order of twenty episodes, and three shows are back from overseas and in editing. We've got six new scripts greenlit beyond the first twenty.

4) The Regular Show is a newer comedy series that started in November with a first order of six episodes. They're going to have to make a decision soon about doing more shows if they want to keep the crew together.

5) Ben Ten. This series is still going, but I don't know how much more work they've got.

Down at Nick, I understand they've got an order for twenty-six more half-hours of Fan Boy and Chum Chum. My friends on it are happy about this, since the way Nick works, that should be another couple of years of employment ..."

So that's what my CN spies and stoolies tell me. I've seen Cartoon Network busier, but I'm informed that there is another series in development. (My spies declined to tell me what it was.)

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Animation: Eternally Second Class

The Nikkster lays it out succinctly.

... Disney/Pixar's Up is ineligible for the Writers Guild awards because the animation studios are not signatory members of the union. (Kinda bites them in the ass at awards time, eh?) Up is technically eligible for the Directors Guild and Screen Actors Guild awards. "But it'll be a cold day in hell before the directors or actors nominate an animated film," one source tells me ...

So the various writers and board artists who do story for the animated features now making your friendly neighborhood monster conglomerate a sizable fortune? They can kiss off getting one of those shiny gold trophies that the different guilds, academies and film institutions hand out on a yearly basis.

Academy Award for Best Screenplay? Forget about it. No self-respecting live-action/ WGA writer will vote for you. No matter how good your writing is.

Best Picture? Over the live-action branches' dead bodies.

Best actor? Cripes, it's only voice acting, man. Nobody is going to get a little gold man for that.

Animated features. They might make truckloads of money, but they are always and forever going to be the bridesmaids who don't catch the bouquet, no matter how comely and compelling they might be. Learn to live with that sad reality.

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Time Clocks*

Journey with me back to the 1970s, when men were men, women were women, Gerald Ford was in the White House, and time clocks were the norm for unionized employees at Walt Disney Productions.

There was a time shack at each entrance, and you took your rectangular punch card out of a metal rack and pushed it into the top of a gray box with a clock on it. Each time unit was six minutes and there was ten of them in each hour. So if you arrived seven minutes after start time, you'd register as being one unit late. After awhile, I hated the time card and the gray box it went into. I was usually a unit or two late ...

I was in my mid-twenties, brimming with ambition to do great things, and I --as stated above -- despised time clocks. I was always racing out of my house, squealing into the Disney parking lot, sprinting to the cursed time shack, finally shoving the card into the metal slot. As soon as I could find a way to get "off the clock," I did so.

But I'm older now. And in a different place. I've had decades of watching animation employees, with time clocks long gone, falsify time cards and go on toiling without additional compensation after eight hours of studio work.

So in 2010, I no longer hate time clocks. I think they are fine mechanical devices because they help keep everybody honest. They are not a magic bullet, because employees can always "punch out" and go on working, or take the work home. But at this point in my checkered career, I think they would be helpful.

And the reason I'm bringing this up here yet again is because I've been asked to request for an online show of TAG member hands. If you would, scroll down to "comments" and indicate if you think time clocks would be a good idea ("Yes"), or a bad idea ("No.")

Thanks for your time and attention.

* Subject raised due to e-mail requests of members.

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Disney's Hat

Today was my Diz Co. Tuesday, where the folks on the first floor are bracing for a heavy Rapunzel schedule.

"We haven't started overtime yet, but from the production flow so far I think the wave hits in May. I'm expecting it. I'm not looking forward to it."

I told him to get plenty of sleep, because he might not be getting very much later ...

Elsewhere in the studio, a rumor is floating around that Mr. Catmull and Mr. Lasseter could be making a big announcement about the Walt Disney Animation Studio in the next week or three, but nobody's sure what it is. Maybe that the animation division is moving to a building in Glendale. Maybe that there's some new feature project. (Who the heck knows?)

But something's up; I know this because an important Disney exec has made a momentous move:

Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger sold 800,000 shares after exercising options, netting about $8.98 million before expenses.

Iger paid $21.05 a share and sold them for an average price of $32.27, according to a regulatory filing today. The transactions represent the first options exercised by Iger since fiscal 2006 ...

I ask you: would Mr. Iger be selling that big a clump of Mouse stock if some major deal wasn't cooking? (I suppose it's possible he just wants extra walking-around money, but really. What are the odds of that?)

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Avatar's Ying and Yang

Even as James Cameron's latest does this ...

By this time next week, James Cameron should have the two highest-grossing films in history.

The amazing feat for Cameron, his Lightstorm Entertainment production shingle and "Avatar" -- which has topped $1 billion worldwide -- follows the filmmaker's success in 1997-98 with "Titanic," the top-grossing picture ever.

...the world's greatest movie capitalist is ticking off conservatives.

... To say that the film has evoked a storm of ire on the right would be an understatement. ... Big Hollywood's John Nolte, one of my favorite outspoken right-wing film essayists, blasted the film, calling it "a sanctimonious thud of a movie so infested with one-dimensional characters and PC cliches that not a single plot turn, large or small, surprises.... Think of 'Avatar' as 'Death Wish' for leftists, a simplistic, revisionist revenge fantasy where if you freakin' hate the bad guys (America) you're able to forgive the by-the-numbers predictability of it all."

John Podhoretz, the Weekly Standard's film critic, called the film "blitheringly stupid; indeed, it's among the dumbest movies I've ever seen ...."

I know I'm shirking my national duty, but I haven't seen Cameron's latest. However, the resident teenage film buff around here has viewed it, and his comment reflects what I've heard elsewhere:

"It pretty much has the same plot as Fern Gully ..."

You remember Fern Gully don't you? Bill and Sue Kroyer's 1991 animated feature? It's a picture I do know something about, since TAG represented the writers and artists working on it. Bad guys ravage the rain forest, elves and fairies fight back. Fox released FG, just as it's released this new Gully knock-off. And funny thing. I don't remember, nineteen years back, any collective scream of outrage when that earlier picture came out.

Maybe I was napping.

But I find the anger and disdain about Avatar a trifle silly. It's a sci fi parable set on a far away planet far in the future, for cripe's sake, with the same plot points we've seen in a bunch of Hollywood epics, from Fern Gully to Dances with Wolves to this item:

They Died With Their Boots On, in case you haven't seen it, is a fairy tale history of George Armstrong Custer where the villains are the greedy white entrepreneurs and the Native Americans the good guys, with Custer -- at the climax --the Indians' ally.

Put aside the inconvenient truth that Boots stands history and Custer's actual biography on its head. You can peruse Rotten Tomatoes and find various reviews of this sixty-nine-year-old film without finding one that has a complaint about how Warner Bros. is attacking good old American capitalism.

What I'm saying is, the basic plot of Avatar has been done by Tinsel Town for years without a lot of griping from the Right. And I'm thinking the only reason there are all these complaints now about a derivative science fiction movie is that political discourse in this great land of ours has become even more deranged than usual.

Come on already. Nobody made a peep that Custer sided with the Indians in Boots. So what's the deal with Avatar?

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Why Winnie?

A question that pops up among people I meet:

"So if Disney wants to resuscitate hand-drawn features, why are they doing another Winnie the Pooh project?..."

That's an easy one.

As I've mentioned before, Disney Merchandising really, really wants a new Pooh feature to goose Winnie merchandise and DVD sales. Diz Co. (according to my corporate spies and stoolies) sells a lot of the old WtP theatrical product but very little of the teevee versions. So the House of Mouse wants a new feature to grease the sales pipeline.

(And Mr. Lasseter, I'm informed, thought new big-screen adventures for the A. A. Milne characters was a good idea.)

But the Wise Old Movie Producer gave me the best explanation of why Disney is making a new epic about the 100-Acre Wood.

"You don't get it, Steve. It's all about selling stuff. People think Cars wasn't so hot? The worst Pixar movie? Well, screw that. It sold jillions of toy cars. The studios want to make money, they don't give a sh*t how they do it.

"So what if Walt Disney Animation Studio is turning into Filmation? The features are there to move merchandise. The Princess and the Frog is moving lots of Princess dolls. Even if it doesn't sell a lot of movie tickets, there's always the toys.

"Disney Merchandising should pay for the new Winnie the Pooh feature. They're the ones who'll be making most of the money from this picture ..."

The Wise Old Movie Producer. A classical cynic.

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DreamWorks Animation LLC

The second half of my day was spent at DWA, where different artists brought up the bomb threat brouhaha from Thursday. Employees were either telling me they spent a long time out on the sidewalk in the rain, or that they had been off on vacation and missed it (and a few sorry that they weren't present for the excitement.) ...

But besides staff standing out on the sidewalk on a drizzly afternoon, there are also a bunch of newer pictures being made.

"We've got the first act of Puss in Boots up on boards. It's got different characters than Shrek, more supporting players and second leads from different fairy tales ..."

And apparently The Croods is coming along smartly.

"The Jeffrey presentation is earlier than it was originally going to be, but we're close to ready. We've got the three acts done, and I have to say this story feels a lot more solid than a lot of pictures I've worked on [around the industry]. Not that there isn't tightening and tweaks tweaks that we need to make, but there's a there there ..."

The quote above is from somebody who I respect a lot and knows good from bad from indifferent. Chris Anderson's Sanders's other effort at the studio, How to Train Your Dragon, is also getting good internal buzz. Could this be a positive sign? Could this be a portent of top quality animated features to come? We'll know the answer in due course.

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The Foreign Derby

A commenter asks: "So is The Princess and the Frog successful or not?"

And the Hollywood Reporter partially answers:

Winding up at No. 5 was Disney Animation's '"The Princess and the Frog," which drew $9.5 million from 2,929 screens in 17 territories for an overseas cume of $45 million. A third Italy weekend provided $2.9 million from 550 sites for a market cume of $12.9 million ...

So let's do the math. TP&TH has a domestic total of $86 million and half that overseas, for a grand total of $131 million against a $105 million production cost.

Sadly, not a monster hit.

The animated product now in the hit department (or approaching it) would be as follows:

"Avatar" started the new decade dominating the foreign circuit by grossing an estimated $133.5 million on the weekend -- down just 13% from the prior stanza -- from more than 13,500 screens in 110 markets ...

Worldwide in just 21 days, director James Cameron's mega-budget epic has rolled up total boxoffice of $1.022 billion (comprising $670.2 million offshore and $352.1 million domestic) ...

Finishing third was Fox's family-oriented title "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel," which grossed $32 million from 6,105 locations in 54 markets. Overseas cume stands at a hair under $100 million ($99.1 million) ... Still generating boxoffice in Japan at 618 situations was Pixar/Disney's "Up," which has grossed a total of $422 million offshore. ...Sony's "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," $83.6 million (after a $2.8 million weekend at 910 screens in 21 markets) ...

Clearly there are a lot of animated titles currently performing in foreign markets, but some are performing more energetically than others.

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Two Animation Veterans Speak

Eric and Ralph talk about where they are now:

... [Eric] Goldberg clearly remembers his emotions when he was invited back into the Disney fold.

"It was relief and joy and . . . a little bit of fear. That's because, to a certain extent, when we embarked on this movie, it was one of those things where we were asking, 'Is this going to be the first one or the last one?' It felt like, 'We'd better make this one good, because it's going to be our last chance.' "...

Eric is one the big talents in animation, also a very nice guy. Before coming to Disney in the Katzenberg era, he animated for Richard Williams and ran his own studio in Great Britain. He was the animation director for Looney Tunes: Back in Action, and though the feature film didn't fly, the animation was top notch.

And then there is the estimable Mr. Bakshi:

Q: Do you ever look at your old stuff?

A: No, not at all. I hate it. I don't know why. If I look at it, it might not be as good as people say it is. I had so little to make it. Making it was so fraught with battles with studios and critics and censors. They were very painful films. I look at the money Pixar has. They do beautiful films. The first three minutes of any film they make they spend more money than I did in any one of my films. So it was very difficult for us to produce that work. And all the guys that drew who were my friends are dead. It's a hard pill ...

I got to know Ralph a bit during the making of his hybrid feature Cool World, financed and released by Paramount in those off days when Brad Pitt was young and dewy fresh ... and not commanding a gazillion dollars a picture.

But those were exciting and wild times. The animation industry was springing back from its late 1980s depression, and Paramount was trying to keep the animation crew non-union, even as it approved all of Bakshi's over-scale cartoonist hires. (Ralph was offering his animators and assistants more than they could get anywhere else, so kudos to him. But Paramount had no idea they were paying top dollar. They were pig ignorant about salaries back then.)

Mr. Bakshi, one of a kind. Both then and now.

Ralph on the left; animator Steve Gordon on the right.

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Macro Employment, Animation Employment

This today from the Washington Post is pretty stunning:

... The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation's growth.

It was, according to a wide range of data, a lost decade for American workers ... There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well ...

The above is pretty amazing to me, for a lot of reasons. When I was a teenager in the 1960s. the Great Depression was something they taught in schools, but seemed like ancient history. That kind of thing just couldn't happen anymore. We were all now much smarter than that now, with bank insurance and financial regulations and a social safety net that prvented people from having to sell apples on street corners or ride the rails looking for work. Even though it was only thirty years back in our history, it was -- to me -- long ago and far away, similar to a fairy tale from Hans Christian Anderson.

Uh, no.

The lesson I've gleaned from this (and older histories) is that human beings never permanently learn anything. The painful tutorials supplied by wars and depressions fade away, and a new generation that knows it's smarter, hipper, and all around more savvy than the old fuds around it says: "This time it's different! We're in a new paradigm now! Nothing can go wrong! We've had a major economic/cultural/wartime shift and the old numbers don't compute anymore!"

To which the smart response is to say, "Crap." I heard the same things during the dot-com bubble, I heard them during the real estate boom. I heard them about Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. Conventional Wisdom yells out: "Don't worry! Everything's under control!" Except it isn't.*

Which brings us to the Micro part of the story: Toonville. On graph paper, animation employment has looked something like the internet boom of a decade ago, something like this:

Looks reassuring, yes? But inside the graph are the flesh-and-blood realities: Lots of CG animators and technicians thriving; many hand-drawn veterans struggling. Much project-to-project work and minimal long-term security. There might be robust employment numbers at any given moment, but two flops and three quarters of bad profit-and-loss numbers and the studio sheds 70% of its staff.

(I never forget that Walt Disney Feature Animation laid off hundreds of employees in 1958 ... 2001 ... 2002 ... and 2007. Or that Filmation was the biggest animation employer in 1985 and out of business in 1989.)

Beyond everything else, animation production and employment is market driven, and animation has had a hell of a run (with interruptions) since the 1990s. My take-away from everything up to now is just this:

1) Know your craft, improve your craft.

2) Be nice to people you work with (even the ones who drive you up the wall), because they can hurt you or help you when you least expect it.

3) Live below your means whenever possible. (I know a wildly successful director who drove the same old car for years, even when he could have afforded a five-car garage filled with Lexi. I consider him a smart, smart man.)

4) Understand that it's as Roger Miller sings. Nothing is forever.

* I know I'm whistling in the wind, but to the extent possible, let us refrain from "Bush ... Obama ... Liberals ... Conservatives ... are idiots and got us into this mess." My thesis is: Here we are. How do we deal with it? Thanks much.

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Anime to Live Action

Space Battleship Yamato, a teevee anime smasheroo in Japan three-plus decades ago, now comes to the big screen in a flesh and blood incarnation.

The first teaser trailer for the live action version of Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers in the US) is available on YouTube. This seminal anime series is considered by many fans to be the "Japanese Star Trek".

Takuya Kimura (above) from the singing group SMAP stars as the young Captain Susumu Kodai (Derek Wildstar in the U.S. version).

Based on a Japanese Science fiction manga created by Leiji Matsumoto (Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999), the Anime series began airing in 1974. The set for the beginning of the saga is the year 2199, Earth is now uninhabitable due to non-stop barrage of radioactive bombs by an alien race called the Gamilons ...

As Scooby Doo and Rocky and Bullwinkle change formats, so do beloved Japanese animated series get the live-action treatment.

De Niro plays Fearless Leader, and now this. Where will it end?

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The Permanence of 3-D, Part VII

I keep bumping into naysayers who tell me, "Three Dee is a temporary thing, it can't last ..."

And then I keep running across articles like this:

In 2008, Paramount topped the list with foreign boxoffice of $2.037 billion followed by Warner Bros. ($1.81 billion), Universal ($1.71 billion), Fox ($1.6 billion), Sony ($1.38 billion) and Disney ($1.37 billion).

2009's boxoffice bounty was shared by at least one independent, Summit Entertainment, which logged foreign revenue of $877.2 million, a 41% increase from 2008 ...

For Disney and other studios, the growth of 3D exhibition abroad was "very, very important," said Marcoly. "If you look at our top five movies this year, four of those five had a 3D element to them." Disney top four films in 2009 were 3D releases: "Up," "G-Force" (overseas cume of $165.6 million), "Disney's A Christmas Carol" ($173.8 million) and "Bolt" (153.3 million).

"I think 3D has reinvigorated the marketplace as far as interest for a moviegoer," said Marcoly, who added that 3D locations have the added advantage of charging higher admission prices. ...

Mmm. Those higher admission prices. It makes a distributor's digits tingle.

And then, as The Reporter points out, there are those towering grosses from Avatar Three Dee, which have News Corporation vibrating with glee from top to bottom.

Stereo movie viewing. It's only going to get bigger.

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DWA Bomb Scare

I'm so old I can remember when every car was being checked driving in and out of studios, including DreamWorks, right after September 11, 2001. Now the local press has reported this:

Dreamworks Animation employees were allowed back to work Wednesday more than two hours after a suspicious package turned out to be a gift from overseas, police said.

Bomb investigators opened the package and discovered a gift intended for someone at the studio, Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said.

“It was not a bomb,” he said. “It was not a practical joke.”

Soon after discovering the package was not a threat, about 40 Dreamworks employees who had to stand outside in the rain were allowed to enter the building on Flower Street and Grandview Avenue.

They had been evacuated from the campus after Dreamworks security officials received a cardboard box at their loading dock, Lorenz said ....

After the underwear bomber, many seem to be on edge.

I was not out and about to studios this week. Because of the holiday lull, I stayed in the office, doing office-type things.

From past experience, DreamWorks Animation would be a ghost cartoon studio between Christmas and New Year's. The article pretty much confirms this. There were only forty people on the sidewalk. Most other times of the year there would be hundreds and hundreds.

But it's nice to know the package was just a package and nobody was hurt. The company has a lot of construction going on, so I'm sure somebody got nervous.

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The First 2010 Derby

Now with tasty, low-fat Add On.

The Nikkster reports New Year's Eve box office numbers to a breathless world.

1. AVATAR (Fox) [3,456 runs] Week 2 Wed $18.5M (+1), Thurs $14.9M (-19%), Cume $283.8

2. ALVIN SQUEAKQUEL (Fox) [3,700] Week 2 Wed $11.8M (-6%), Thurs $8.7M (-26%), Cume $120.7M

3. SHERLOCK HOLMES (Warner Bros) [3,626] Week 1 Wed $9.7M (-5%), Thurs $8.7M (-10%), Cume $102.3M

4. IT'S COMPLICATED (Warner Bros) [2,887] Week 1 Wed $4.4M (+3%), Thurs $5.3M (+22%), Cume $40.3M

5. THE BLIND SIDE (Warner Bros) [2,766] Week 7 Wed $3M (+2%), Thurs $3.4M (+13%), Cume $196.4M

6. UP IN THE AIR (Paramount) [1,895] Week 5 Wed $2.3M (+3%), Thurs $2.8M (+23%), Cume $33.6M

7. PRINCESS & THE FROG (Disney) [3,475] Week 6 Wed $3.3M (-1%), Thurs $2.6M (-21%), Cume $76M

8. MORGANS? (Sony) [2,718] Week 3 Wed $1.2M (-1%), Thurs $1.3M (+8%), Cume $20.4M

9. INVICTUS (Warner Bros) [2,160] Week 3 Wed $895K (+3%), Thurs $988K (+10%), Cume $44.6M

10. NINE (The Weinstein Co) [1,412] Week 3 Wed $1M (-1%), Thurs $864K (-15%), Cume $9.8M

Going into the first turn, animation hybrid Avatar continues its rampage at the top of the field, while its Fox hybrid cousin Alvin climbs past the master sleuth. The chipmunks have now earned themselves $120.7 million..

Downfield, hand-drawn The Princess and the Frog collects $2.6 million (a 21% drop, less than Alvin's 26%) and now has $76 million in the money bag.

Add On: Box Office Mojo brings us the Friday results.

Alvin and his friends have slipped back behind the English detective, and now stand at $133.4 million. And TP&TF is an eyelash under $80 million, cantering along in seventh place.

Add On Too: Animation hybrids Avatar and Alvin maintain their positions at the front of the field, coming in first and third as they rack up totals of $352.1 million and $157.3 million. (Rupert and Co. are enjoying a golden holiday season.)

In 7th place The Princess and the Frog had the strongest bump (11.2%) of any feature in the Top Ten. Princess has now raked in $86 million, ten of those millions this weekend.

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Candle Lighter, by Ralph Hulett

As we wrap up our Christmas cards for the season, we wish you a happy, satisfying and prosperous New Year.

A little mouse from the Land of Make-Believe bends backward under a load of mistletoe and a candle lighter.

Okaay, Christmas card fans! This is the last one! There ain't no more! (For ten months, anyway.)

Thanks for clicking over here and looking at them. Much appreciated.

© 1955 by the Estate Of Ralph Hulett. Click on the thumbnail to see a full-sized image.

See Ralph Hulett Christmas card designs at TAG's art gallery, open weekdays 8:30 am-5 pm.

Here are more Ralph Hulett Christmas cards.

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The Mighty Quinn

Tucking money away for a rainy day or retirement is always useful, so allow me to recommend to you J. B. Quinn's new book, which I spent most of yesterday reading.

Jane Bryant Quinn answers more questions more completely than any other personal-finance author on the market today. Here are a few of the subjects she examines: ...

Making the Most of Your Money Now

• Setting priorities during and after a financial setback, and bouncing back

• Getting the most out of a bank while avoiding fees

• Credit card and debit card secrets that will save you money

• Cutting the cost of student debt, and finding schools that will offer big "merit" scholarships to your child

• The simplest ways of pulling yourself out of debt

• Why it's so important to jump on the automatic-savings bandwagon

• Buying a house, selling one, or trying to rent your home when buyers aren't around

• Why credit scores are more important than ever, plus tips on keeping yours in the range most attractive to lenders

• Investing made easy -- mutual funds that are tailor-made for your future retirement

• How an "investment policy" helps you make wise decisions in any market

• The essential tax-deferred retirement plans, from 401(k)s to Individual Retirement Accounts -- and how to manage them

• How to invest in real estate at a bargain price (and how to spot something that looks like a bargain but isn't)

• Eleven ways of keeping a steady income while you're retired, even after a stock market crash

• Financial planning -- what it means, how you do it, and where to find good planners

Etcetera.

I flipped through almost all of "Making the Most of Your Money Now", and found it to be thorough, detailed, and wise. Over the past fifteen years, I've been involved with TAG's 401(k) Plan and read a lot of financial/ investing books out of self-defense, so a good portion of the material here is familiar.

J.B.Q. approaches the whole crowded field of investing and financial planning with hard-headed skepticism. She knows what works and what doesn't. (She's similar to William J. Bernstein; they both believe that low-cost index funds are the best bet for most people, and that age appropriate asset-allocation, aided by steady, disciplined investing will provide people with better retirements.)

All in all, it's a solid book that provides one-stop-shopping for financial advice. And over on her blog, Quinn makes this fine suggestion:

New Year’s resolution: Fire your bank

The big banks needed billions of dollars from the taxpayers to stay alive. Now they’re thumbing their noses at the very people who saved their tails. They’re hiking fees and interest rates on credit cards, and refusing to modify mortgages so that willing people can keep their homes. They’re socking it to small businesses, by restricting credit and hiking rates.

Why would you want to do business with an institution that puts people last? Tell them they’re fired. You’re through. You’re outta there. Switch your account to one of the small banks in your city or suburb. You’ll find plenty of good ones, rated A for safety and soundness and with deposits insured by the FDIC. Find them by entering “community bank” with the name of your town in a search engine. Or use the bank locator compiled by the Independent Community Bankers of America. Or the the IRA Bank Ratings locator. These sources list different banks so check them all.

The IRA Bank Ratings site runs a dandy little video, showing kindly community banker George Baily(Jimmy Stewart) fighting the heartless Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore)–a stand-in for all the greedy bankers of today. “It’s a Wonderful Life” may be an old film but it’s looking more current all the time.

The Mrs. and I ditched our Wells Fargo branch years ago for a local credit union. Personally speaking, I wouldn't go back to one of those big bloodsuckers unless I was under some sort of major duress, like for instance the Bank of America had a Glock pointed at my head.

Now go watch the Rose Parade and some Bowl games.

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