The Three-Dimensional Links of Animation

This always struck me as ah, kind of different: A South Korean film with a Los Angeles locale. The flick is burning up Korean box office:

South Korea’s sci-fi monster movie “D-War” continues its box office run in Korea and has reached 8.3 million admissions (grossing about $60 million) as of September 4, according to the film’s distributor Showbox. Director Shim Hyung-rae’s film, budgeted at about $35-70 million making it the country’s most expensive film to date, is now the 5th most popular film of all time at the Korea box office.

It opens stateside the middle of the month...

Since we're on the subject of Asia, here's a global co-development deal now in the process of becoming:

Qingdao Ouya Century (International) Digital Film and Television Co., Ltd., a joint venture between China, France and the US, held a ceremony to kick off nco-production. The cooperation plans to output 2 to 3 animation products each year, and will begin with its first animated film project “Ou Ya Feng Yun” and 26-episode cartoon series “Happy Cat”.

Don't know what kind of traction Happy Cat and Ou Ya Feng Yun will get in the world marketplace, but good luck to them.

The Hollywood Reporter summarizes the major studios' box office track records for summer '07. Whattayaknow? Animation paid a big role in the success of the Top Dog:

Paramount shot to the top of the pack, taking a commanding lead by selling $727.3 million worth of tickets at the boxoffice. With DWA's "Shrek the Third" (the second-highest-grossing film of the summer with $320.7 million) and the DreamWorks/Paramount co-production "Transformers" (third overall with $310.6 million), Paramount was the only studio with two $300 million-plus winners, which handily put it in the lead.

BusinessWeek has a lengthy story on Jeffrey Katzenberg -- DreamWorks Animation honco -- and his ongoing enthusiasm for 3-D:

Using a specially equipped screening room at his Glendale (Calif.) studio—where he shows a U2 concert in 3D and test versions of Shrek the Third—Katzenberg tries to win over theater owners and others. He has also hired top 3D gurus to make his own flicks. That includes Meet the Robinsons 3D supervisor Phil McNally, whose voicemail identifies him as "Captain 3D."

Katzenberg's pitch: 3D can spice up the industry's box office take, which is growing this year by only single digits despite blockbusters like Spider-Man 3 and Transformers. Theaters hope to charge as much as $5 more per ticket for 3D films. And the technology keeps viewers away from DVDs (3D films can't be seen on disc, yet) and thwarts piracy since 3D movies are harder to record.

Daily Variety reports how Sony Pictures Animation is dealing with the ups and downs of the feature animation business:

...Sony's animation numbers look weak compared with the competition, but they haven't had an out-and-out B.O. flop like Warner Bros.' "The Ant Bully." Furthermore, toon pros inside and outside Sony caution not to judge animation grosses, especially Sony's grosses, by the same standards as a live-action release.

Landau explains: "With family product, and particularly with animation family product, DVD sell-through is a much bigger piece of the economic pie. And the continuing life of the movie and the characters in the movie is much greater."

...Sony also gets a break on costs because Imageworks is both a visual effects shop and an animation house. With the two revenue streams, Sony execs say, Imageworks is able to spread its overhead across more projects and therefore charge less for its animation work...

And could there be finger-pointing going on inside the Mouse House over the performance of Ratatouille?...

Although Disney/Pixar's Ratatouille crossed the $200-million mark at the domestic box office over the weekend, some Pixar executives are blaming Disney's marketing staff for failing to create a promotional campaign for the movie that would have pushed it into the top-five for the year

Here's a surprise: Curious George (the series) is a ratings hit:

Quietly, without much fanfare, "Curious George" vaulted to the top of the national ratings among preschoolers 2 to 5...

...The ratings victory also demonstrates the power of nostalgia when it comes to children's fare, said Eileen Espejo, who studies children and the media for Children Now, an advocacy group. Adults, she said, are drawn to the show's educational content and the PBS brand name. (The show also tops the ratings among women with children under 3, according to ratings from last winter.)...

It must be a comfort to all the heirs of the artists who created the Warners menagerie back in the 1930s and 1940s that the Warners characters still generate moolah for Time-Warner. The latest cash creator looks like it will be a kind of Loony-Toons MySpace:

Warner Bros. plans to launch a Web site early next year that will allow users to interact with its cast of animated characters, create personal profiles and watch original online episodes.

The advertising-supported site will be called T-Works and will launch next spring, the company, a division of Time Warner Inc., said Thursday.

Besides serving as a destination for fans of such characters as Tweety Bird, Bugs Bunny and the Flintstones, the site also will allow users to personalize the characters and take them off site to decorate Web pages and profiles on social networking sites such as MySpace...

Maybe you can be one of Bugs's "friends." Have a wonderiffic weekend.

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A Good Film Is a Good Film

And audiences, sooner or later, pick up on the reality and buy into it.

But sometimes it takes a while.

Brad Bird has far more gravitas than I do, so it's always good to read him saying what I yell about all the time around here:

"A lot of people don't remember but, you know, of Walt Disney's first five movies, only two were box-office successes, but they're all huge box-office successes now because they're good movies.

"I think in the long run if you make something as well as you possibly can and it doesn't work the first time out, people will find it eventually and it will end up being profitable.

"How many movies that are profitable now are people going to be looking at in 20 years? I don't know. I don't think a lot of them are going to stand up that well."

We can stipulate that a "good film" is a subjective judgement, but time usually helps the better ones stay remembered, and causes the lesser ones to fade away.

A few examples: The Life of Emile Zola won the best picture Oscar for 1937. Anybody remember it? I thought not. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the most memorable film of the year, wasn't even nominated (And yeah, after it broke box office records in 1938, the year of its wide release, the Academy woke up and gave it a "special" Oscar).

Best film of 1938? You Can't Take It With You? Have you seen it? Is it something you go back to again and again?

I rest my case. The Adventures of Robin Hood takes the trophy for the most-remembered film out of the ten nominees for '38. By a country mile.

I could dredge up more examples, but you get the idea. Good films find their audience. And go on, and on, and on. So good is what you strive for, and you forget (if you're smart) about trying to second and third-guess audience tastes. Or as Mr. Bird says:

"If [a Pixar film] isn't the Second Coming of the Lord it's somehow a disappointment. I don't know what you do about that. If you start changing the way you make films to try to guarantee success you're on the road to failure."

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That 70s Development Art

Another page (or rather, double page) out of the 1977 Disney recruiting booklet [(c) WDP].

Those big color studies in the center are by Mel Shaw. They were early development work for The Black Cauldron, which came out almost a decade later. (Mel could always work wonders with colored paper and pastel chalk.)

That black-and-white drawing on the far right of the dog chasing the fox is a piece by Dave Michener for the feature then in production. (Dave had worked with Ken Anderson for a couple of years, and Ken's style is evident in Dave's work)...

The character studies at the top are more Black Cauldron and Fox and Hound development art, also by Mel Shaw. The hummingbird at lower left looks like a piece by Burny Mattinson, a fifty-year veteran with the studio. (if I ever knew what film it was created for, I've long since forgotten.)

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At the Sherman Oaks Galleria...

...the former home of Warner Bros. Animation is being turned into the new headquarters of the Motion Picture Association of America.

This top-secret information was told to me in deepest confidence several months ago, but now that there are, like, public notices plastered to the glass doors of what used to be the WB cartoon factory, and those notices say: "Warner Bros. (leasee) is sub-leasing floors 1 and 2 to the MPAA," the proverbial cat is out of the bag.

Two construction companies appear to be reconstituting the interior of the building.

It's sad, actually. In those vast, high-ceilinged spaces where storyboard artists, animation writers, designers and cg animators once roamed, there will soon be MPAA administrators, secretaries, and other movie bureaucrats. And no doubt the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers as well.

Change is the only constant in the world.

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"Do You Know How Lucky You Are..."

So a short while ago, I get a phone call from an artist at a non-signator animation company. He tells me that the boss man recently assembled the staff and let on how "there's a lot of artists who've just come onto the market, so..." Then the boss man made a long, pregnant pause.

Naturally, this made some of the crew ... sort of nervous.

And I tell him how thirty-plus years ago, an executive at Disney sidled up to me one day and said: "You know how lucky you are to have this job? You know how many people want your job?"

Decade after decade, the strategies of intimidation seldom change.

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Mouse 1977, Mouse 2007 (like yesterday)

'77: Ron Miller, Disney President in the mid-seventies, confers with Don Bluth (on right) and Tad Stones (on left.) He stands in front of The Small One boards, a featurette started by Pete Young, then aided and abetted by Vance Gerry, finally changed considerably by Don B.

Ron, always a pleasant guy, departed the company when Michael Eisner and Frank Wells assumed command in 1984... (from the Disney recruitment book, © 1977 WDP.)

And yesterday: Waltzing through the Disney Animation Studio (the hat building), the main topic of conversation was the Labor Day weekend heat wave and how well people survived it. I got a look at a bit of footage from the new Goofy short, which looks good. One of the animators who worked on it said:

The thing turned out real well. It has the flavor of the old 'how to' shorts from the forties. And the narrator sounds exactly like the narrator from back then. You think, 'Where did they dig him up?'

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1977 Mouse House

Still more from the '77 Disney recruitment booklet (c) 1977 Walt Disney Prods...

Above, top: Eric Larson, unknown. Above, bottom: Frank Thomas and Ron Husband.

By the time I arrived at WDP, Eric Larson had stopped working in production and was tutoring up-and-coming talent. For a brief time, he was slated to direct The Small One, but that gig ended up going to Don Bluth.

Frank Thomas, on the other hand, was still animating, like he had for forty-plus years. He was then working on a lengthy sequence involving Tod and Copper (the leads in The Fox and the Hound). Frank retired from animation in '78. Here he takes time to go over animator Ron Husband's work...

Above, left to right: Don Bluth, John Pomeroy, Jim George, Heidi Guedel (Garofalo), Dave Spafford, Glen Keane, Emily Jiuliano. Below, left to right: Ron Clements, Tad Stones, Mel Shaw, Gary Goldman.

The top picture shows Don Bluth holding forth to a rapt audience of young animators and assistants. Don was always a compelling speaker in front of a group. When I was a trainee, he had a number of Disney's newer staff working on Banjo the Woodpile Cat at his house on weekends.

Artist Mel Shaw, returning to the studio after a lengthy absence, was one of the first artists Walt put on Bambi. Here he expounds on some of his early development artwork for later features.

I remember Mel telling me how hard the design and background crew worked to build the right color palette for Bambi so that it helped propel the story from sequence to sequence. Mel was at this time (1977) working on a host of projects. A group of Mel's pastel studies for The Rescuers became the visuals for that flick's title sequence.

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What's in your pension statement

The Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan has started sending out statements to Plan Participants (later than usual, but what the hey. They're being sent.)

Some folks have already received their new statements, which cover pension contributions through December 2006. The statement shows:

1. Your estimated monthly defined benefit, based upon the hours and qualified years worked in your career at union-shop employers. The Defined Benefit needs five qualified pension years to vest. As long as you continue working and earning hours and qualified years, this estimate will increase.
2. Your Individual Account Plan accrual. This is a lump-sum amount that is vested after one qualified pension year.

If you have any questions about the statements, call (818) 769-0007 or (310) 769-0007 [outside southern California toll free (888) 369-2007], extension 627.

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Happy Labor Day

...The quaint old holiday that celebrates people who work (and mostly have to work) for a living.

From the AFL-CIO website:

Union membership helps raise workers' pay and narrow the income gap that disadvantages minorities and women. Union workers earn 30 percent more than nonunion workers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. Their median weekly earnings for full-time wage and salary work were $833 in 2006, compared with $642 for their nonunion counterparts.

The union wage benefit is even greater for minorities and women. Union women earn 31 percent more than nonunion women, African American union members earn 36 percent more than their nonunion counterparts, for Latino workers, the union advantage equals 46 percent and for Asian American workers, the union advantage is 8 percent.

You can call the above Union Propaganda. I call it Truth.

When I came into the entertainment industry in October 1976, I earned a trainee's salary of $135 per week.

A month before, I'd been a Navy veteran attending school on the G.I. bill. When I landed the Disney gig, I dropped out of Cal State Northridge and worked at the Mouse House full-time. I had Motion Picture Health Plan benefits that paid for everything. Idiot that I was, I had no idea that this was highly unusual, even then. I was twenty-seven years old.

The wage seems laughable now, but it was a fortune during the final days of the Gerald Ford Administration. Out of that princely sum I paid my half of the rent on a large mid-Valley apartment, paid the car insurance and the gas, paid for food and amenities and had cash left over.

One hundred and thirty-five dollars, the "trainee" minimum rate under the Animation Guild contract. There were, in 1976,non-union animation studios that were paying journey storyboard artists less.

TAG President Emeritus Tom Sito tells us why all the above is important:

Truth is, there has been a war on organized labor in America since 1980. Back then 27 % of America was union labor, over 55% of us had medical insurance and for every dollar you made your employer made $29. Today union membership is down to 8%, for every dollar you make your boss makes $365 dollars and over 47 million people have no health insurance at all.

Tom also never tires of sharing the advice Disney animator Frank Thomas gave him decades ago: "Whatever else you do, support your union..."

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More Disney Circa 1977

Still more photographs from thirty years ago, out of the Disney recruiting booklet. It's hard to believe three decades have passed. Time flies when you're breathing in and out...

Above, left to right: Tad Stones; Don Bluth and Lorna Cook; Ed Gombert and John Pomeroy.

Most of the folks up above are still in the animation business.

Tad, who's now at Starz Media, I've mentioned previously. And Don Bluth -- then an animation director -- had a long run as the operator of several companies bearing his name. (In '77, he was Woolie Reitherman's heir apparent to head up the animation department, but he left a couple of years later to make his own projects.)

Lorna Cook, a budding animator in '77, is now a feature director at DreamWorks.

Ed Gombert, then in the early years of his Disney tenure (first as an animator, then as a story artist), has had a long and successful career as a board artist and story supervisor. He now works at Sony Pictures Animation.

John Pomeroy was then an up-and-coming animator in the department. He has since been a lead animator on many animated features, most recently The Simpsons Movie.

Above, left to right: Emily Jiuliano; Dave Spafford; Dave Thompson; Dan Hansen; Don Griffith.

Emily Jiuliano was a cleanup artist in the late seventies; she today works at DisneyToon Studios. Dave Spafford was a freshly-minted animator and free spirit in 1977; he's worked in the animation biz for three-plus decades and now runs his own company.

Dave Thompson (the guy with the glasses), worked in the scene-planning department. But Dan Hansen and Don Griffth were layout artists. Dan was a relative newcomer in 1977, and Don (on the right) was the grizzled veteran, having been at the studio since the 1940s.

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Pity Not Poor Remy

A very wise and very serious animation commentator has recently said:

If -- on the other hand -- the stubby little legs that "Ratatouille" has developed to date don't actually carry this film past the $200 million point ... Well, this Pixar production started off life by missing its opening weekend box office estimates by 20%. If it ends its domestic run by doing 20% less business than "Cars" did back in 2006 ... There's no way that Wall Street will overlook something that significant. Those are the sorts of numbers will get the investment community asking questions like "Is Pixar spreading itself too thin these days?"

...... You have to admit that "Ratatouille" isn't exactly cooking on all burners right now...

Ah, but then there are those of us who live in the reality-based community...

Disney-Pixar's "Ratatouille" has already cooked up a healthy haul overseas, even though it has yet to open in half of its major markets. Toon moved up the international box office chart to No. 2 over the Aug. 24-26 frame, grossing $11.8 million from 2,820 locations. Toon declined 29% from the previous weekend; cume is $172.3 million.

The above is from the industry rag Daily Variety, which doesn't cling to fantasy storylines but just lays out actual facts.

And the facts are, with half of its overseas markets yet untapped, Ratatouille has now grossed $373 million in theatrical box office rentals.

Since guessing about grosses seems to be a specialty of some commentators around and about the intertubes, here's mine:

I'm guessing that Remy and Co. collect a half billion in gross revenues before they're through, also perform pretty well in the secondary markets (DVDs, t.v. sales, minor revenue streams like that.)

I'm also guessing that Wall Street won't be taking the Walt Disney Co. to the woodshed over its Pixar deal...

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Another Take on a Forgotten Studio

Back row, left to right: Sid Glenar, Al Rose, Ben Harrison, Manny Gould, Charles Mintz, Joe DeNat, unknown, Jack Carr; rest of back row unknown. Front row, left to right: Jimmy Bronis, Harry Love, unknown, Mike Lah, Frank Webb.

Another group shot -- this time larger -- of the Charles Mintz studios in 1930. (Here's the one we ran a little while back...)

Slightly incorrect. Walt created Oswald, but Mintz held the copyright. And copyright holders win. (Just ask the heirs of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster...)

But the point here isn't that a nasty businessman named Mintz shafted the noble artist/creator Disney. The point is: fate can be capricious, cruel and random...

Mintz flamed out in the late thirties and died young at the tail end of 1939. He is pretty much forgotten today. It's generally acknowledged that many of the cartoon shorts his company turned out were mediocre.

So Charlie got what he deserved, right? Failure, poverty, and anonymity.

Well, yes and no. We can all think of artistic mediocrities who scale the heights of glory and end up rich. We all know people who are brilliantly talented, yet beat their heads against corporate walls and cruel fate, and end up teaching high school art classes in Iowa.

I'm telling you, it wasn't pre-ordained that Walt Disney was going to end up a cultural icon, his name fronting the third or fourth largest entertainment conglomerate in the world. Walt Disney Productions came close to extinction any number of times.

Like in 1940 or 1941, when the foreign markets were drying up and the pictures weren't knocking them dead at the box office and the Burbank lot was swimming in red ink. (Thank God for war-time contracts!)

Like in the early fifties, when profit margins were thin and Disneyland was a cash drain as it was constructed rather than a cash cow welcoming crowds through its front gates.

Or in the mid eighties, when corporate raiders were itching to break an under-performing, medium-sized company into pieces and sell them off.

If fate had pirhouetted a little differently, Walt Disney Productions and its founder might today be almost as ghostly and forgotten as the man who stole Oswald.

Correction: Mark M. points out that it was Universal and not Mintz who controlled Oswald. What I get for fast and furious posts late at night.

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Labor Day B.O.

It should be intense in all this sweltering Labor Day heat. I mean, people going to all the air-conditioned theaters and all...

The Friday tabulations are in, and we have new winners...

Halloween the Redo collects $10,950,000 for MGM and the Weinstein Co.

Superbad declines to #2 with $3.5 millin and an $80.5 million total.

Balls of Fury, after its mid-week launch, has $6.3 million in the hopper and the third position....

Fourth place The Bourne Ultimatum stands at $192 million and will soon rocket past the magic $200 million level.

In the animated category, The Simpsons Movie has dropped out of the Top Ten and now stands at $175.6 million, domestic.

Update: Ratatouille over $200 million!

Brad Bird's "failed" French restaurant picture (as some animation commentators -- well, one anyway -- would have it) has now pierced the $200 mill ceiling as it rakes in $1,151,000 on Saturday and Sunday and ascends to $200,726,000. Remy stays at #18 on the box office charts.

And further upstream, the Weinsteins have themselves a tidy little hit with Halloween trick-or-treating $26.5 million on Saturda and Sunday (with the Monday holiday yet to come).

#2 Superbad closes in on the century mark collecting $12.2 million.

New entry Balls of Fury pockets $11.6 million.

And Matt Damon's Bourne Ultimatum knocks up against the $200 mill mark with $10.2 million. (Bourne is tearing up foreign box office -- see above.)

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Universal Experience

Friday was Universal Cartoon Studios day.

The Land Before Time, after a nineteen-year run at the studio, has now shuddered. One theatrical, thirteen or fourteen direct-to-video features, and one season of half-hour shows. Finished.

Nobody there no more.

Curious George, however, is still chugging along. The CG crew is working on a direct-to-video feature (pre-production of which is scheduled to be completed at the end of September). After the feature is done, there will be a new season of half-hour episodes on PBS. They're in the script stage now, but come Octrober they'll be in the boarding and design stage.

The rest of the day was spent in the office, dripping on my computer keys, wishing the air-conditioning worked better.

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Links of Animation

India has rolled out its most expensive animated film ever. Its title?

Since ants are called ‘cheenti’ in Hindi, we decided to title the film Cheenti Cheenti Bang Bang. The film is based on a Bengali novel Lal Kalo though a lot of changes have been effected. We have also dramatised some portions for filming purposes. It is a story of two kingdoms of ants (red and black) who are at loggerheads with each other. However, it is not a battle story. There is a romantic twist too, as the Prince and Princess of the warring kingdoms fall in love. The film in fact works on the premise that war never pays. It endeavours to drive home the point that unity and peace are the driving factor’s for a nation’s health.

The Southpark guys Trey Parker and Matt Stone have just nailed down a lucrative new contract that could have ramifications for other animation creators (Seth? You listening?):

Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker and their bosses at Comedy Central, a unit of Viacom’s MTV Networks, are attempting to leapfrog to the vanguard of Hollywood’s transition into Web. In a joint venture that involves millions in up-front cash and a 50-50 split of ad revenues, the network and the two creative partners have agreed to create a hub to spread “South Park”-related material across the Net, mobile platforms, and video games.

The deal, signed Friday, begins with a three-year extension of the show and its creators’ contracts through a 15th season, in the year 2011, and gives Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker sizable raises, both in their salaries and in their guaranteed advances against back-end profits from DVDs, merchandising, syndication and international sales.

It also creates an entity called SouthParkStudios.com, to be housed in the show’s animation studio in Culver City, Calif., that is intended to be an incubator not only for new applications for characters the likes of Cartman, Kyle, Stan and Kenny, but for new comedy concepts that could one day mature into TV series of their own.

I've long had a fondness for the Disney features of yore, where the studio employed lots of radio actors for its voice work (think Hans Conreid as Captain Hook). Today, of course, we're in the expanding age of celebrity voices:

Celebrity casting -- which impacts not only the feature film business, but also TV shows, videogames, direct-to-video productions and even some webisodic series --frustrates everyday voice actors, who believe it not only has dampened their opportunities, but also often has a detrimental effect on the productions themselves. "[Celebrity casting is about] publicity, rather than a fantastic voice," says M J Lallo, a voiceover actor, director, producer and teacher, with a studio and voiceover school in Los Angeles. "You see [the production] and you say, 'that's not an interesting voice, it's just so-and-so's voice.'"

Michael Hack, a voice and casting director whose credits include Blood+, Astro Boy, and the direct-to-video production Bratz: Camp Starshine, acknowledges that celebrity casting probably brings in viewers and dollars to feature films, but he believes the marketing value is less in television, where most viewers are kids who don't care who is doing the voice. Still, celebrities often voice television characters these days; some are naturals, while others are mostly involved for their marquee value.

"I've worked with celebrity actors who are not trained as voice actors and they're terrific," Hack says. "With others, there's a struggle, even if they're great actors, because it's such a specific skill. I might give them a note about showing more anger in a line, and they do something with their face and read it the same way."

Oops. Apparently the Black Entertainment was just making a funny, and not trying to be racially offensive:

Black Entertainment Television’s new animation division seems to have stepped right into a pitfall of self-parody: a short cartoon video it introduced on July 20, “Read a Book,” seems to flaunt every negative stereotype in the African-American community.

In a gloss on the hip-hop videos frequently shown on BET, an animated rapper named D’Mite comes on with what looks like a public service message about the benefits of reading, but devolves into a foul-mouthed song accompanied by images of black men shooting guns loaded with books and gyrating black women with the word “book” written on the back of their low-slung pants. The uncensored cut is making the rounds on YouTube, while a cleaner version was shown on BET.

The cartoon, which represents an effort by the network to broaden its programming, was the subject of an article on Friday in The Los Angeles Times, which noted that the network has been “long criticized for showing gangsta rap videos and those with scantily clad female dancers.”

(The L.A. Times article here...)

Frank Gladstone, late of DreamWorks, Starz Media, Disney, Warner Feature Animation and several other points on the animation compass, has taken a position with Imagi:

Imagi International Holdings Limited (“Imagi” / the “Group”) (Stock Code: 585) today announced the appointment of Frank Gladstone to provide advanced training for Imagi’s 400+ artists and animators. Under this mandate, Gladstone will teach university-level courses in film history, cinematography, storytelling and visual language. The classes will be offered on a quarterly basis, according to Imagi Deputy Chairman, Co-CEO and Chief Creative Officer, Francis Kao.

“Gladstone’s appointment is part of Imagi’s commitment to its animation staff to provide job-enriching training that goes beyond their day-to-day roles in modeling, lighting, compositing, etc.,” said Kao. “Frank’s lecture series provides wonderful insights into the thoughts of the directors, designers and writers who create great animated entertainment.”

Early television (of which I was an enthusiastic viewer) had a cavalcade of animated product: Felix the Cat, Farmer Alfalfa, Popeye, and Bugs Bunny, on mornings and weekends. The list was extensive and the cartoons endless.

But decades have passed, and new characters have supplanted old, which is kind of a problem. Because kids no longer have much of an inkling who these old cats, woodpeckers and sailors are:

How do you market cartoon characters to children when they don't know who those characters are? That's the problem big studios are facing when it comes to Bugs Bunny or Woody Woodpecker. They've tried and failed to introduce these funny-talking drawings to a new generation of children. And now that it's finally becoming clear that kids would rather watch SpongeBob Squarepants than Popeye the Sailor, the studios have to do the unthinkable: market classic cartoons to adults.

This year alone has brought a flood of DVD releases and other products that basically present cartoon characters as classic movie icons for adults, like Humphrey Bogart or some other dead star. Recently released were a mammoth Popeye collection (from Warner Brothers, which aquired the rights to these cartoons a few years ago) and a 75-cartoon collection from Universal focusing on Woody Woodpecker as well as lesser-known cartoon stars like Chilly Willy, who's mostly remembered for being mentioned one time on The Simpsons. These collections include things only grown-ups would be interested in, such as verbose audio commentaries; they also restore scenes that are usually banned from kids' TV for offensive content.

Guilty of plagiarism? Don't think so. But Paul Lumley of Oxford reminds us that Homer Simpson was not the first comedian to voice the words "D'oh."

'D'oh' was first uttered by the actor James Finlayson on many occasions in the Laurel and Hardy series.

Lastly, TAG Prez emeritus Tom Sito interviews animation veteran -- and one of the leaders of the '41 Disney strike -- Bill Littlejohn:

TS:During the Walt Disney strike in 1941, you were union president and you flew your plane, doing victory rolls over the picketing cartoonists.

BL: You can't do a victory roll over a populated area without getting in trouble with the Civil Aeronautics Board. I wiggled my wings and the picketers below on Buena Vista would wiggle their signs back at me. I was flying a Luscombe Phantom two-seater.

Have a splendid weekend.

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Disney Recruitment Booklet -- 1977

A quick trip down memory lane, courtesy of TAG member Hank Tucker.

The above is part of a page from Disney's "Come Work For Us!" pamphlet from the mid-seventies. The top photograph shows effects animator Ted Kierscey with animator Jim George. (Ted on the left, Jim on the right.)

Ted started at Disney in 1970, and is still there to this day. Jim I've lost track of. He directed Rover Dangerfield a bunch of years ago; I don't know what he's been doing lately.

The photograph on the lower right is of Pete Young, a story artist who started at Disney in '71 and passed away prematurely in 1985. The young woman on the left is Carmen I've-Got-Her-Last-Name-On-The-Tip-Of-My-Tongue. She worked with Don Bluth for many years.

Here's another page from that Disney book. Lots of photographs, lots of folks.

Photograph on the upper left shows Gary Goldman -- a longtime Bluth collaborator -- looking at film (and I don't know who the girl in the shot is.)

The picture in the upper right is from the Disney Morgue (as it was then called), where there were shelves and shelves of animated scenes from Disney shorts and features going back to the beginning of time. It was down in the basement of the old Animation Building, and an eerie place to visit. I can only guess who that is on the ladder, so I won't.

The photo right beneath it shows the 2-F wing of the original animation building. Tad Stones -- a Disney veteran now working as a producer at Starz Media -- on the left, and a bearded punk named Hulett on the right. Naturally I draw a partial blank on the young woman standing between us, except that she later married Dale Alexander, the head of Disney Art Props.

And that fellow waving behind the yellow sheet and stop watch? That's Glen Keane, now the director of Rapunzel.

Enough already. I'll roll out more of Disney circa 1977 next week, when my batteries are recharged.

(pages copyright 1977 - Walt Disney Productions)

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The Continuing O.T. Dialogue

The Issue that is always with us:

A few days back I got an e-mail from a producer-director at one of the major animation studios. It's worth sharing, and so I share it. It went as follows:

I'd like to say a few words about this from a director's/producer's point of view. If anyone is being taken advantage of, then definitely, they should say or do something about it.

Now...union hours as we all know, are 9-6, with two fifteen minute breaks and a one hour lunch. If you were to come over to the BLANK offices right now, you'd find that fewer than one third of the staff is in the building, let alone at their desks beginning work (I am writing this at 9:15).

We don't make a big deal about it, because ultimately, the work is getting done. I admit that usually I don't come in at nine either, I take long lunches, and goof off during the day. That's why I don't mind staying until 7:30 or 8:30 usually.

This is also the case with other employees I've encountered here late at night. I've actually asked some of them to go home, but they reply that they came in late and want to make up the time.

Again, if an employee is honestly being taken advantage of, they should make an issue of it. But if any of the people who are complaining are guilty of any of the above habits (long lunches, excessive talking or phone conversations, long breaks, or coming in late), my response is for them to shut up, sit down at their desks and do the job they are being paid to do. They might find out that they don't need to put in overtime to get their jobs done.

I responded with this:

Yes, I get complaints. I've had meetings with board artists at BLANK where I've said the following:

"Put down the ACTUAL amount of time you work each day on your time cards. The cards are legal documents. If you take a long lunch and work six hours that day, put down six hours.

"If you work eleven hours, put down eleven hours. Just be honest and accurate."

But you know the drill. People complain about the uncompensated o.t. they're doing, but of course nobody wants to rock the boat and stick his/her neck out by getting vocal about it.

From my p.o.v., scheduling for shows is all over the map. Sometimes it's realistic, sometimes not. I think there are ways of adjusting things without a lot of pain, but it always depends on everyone's flexibility. I tell artists to let management know if they're having problems as a group. (This has happened a couple of times, believe it or not.)

Wandering through studios as much as I do, I see lots of different things happening and get lots of different complaints, stories, etc. Two weeks ago I was at a big studio (not BLANK in the exchange above) and got complaints about two different shows.

On Show #1, a demanding director who wanted changes, changes and more changes, caused everyone to work extra hours, and it was made clear that "there was no budget for o.t." So everyone was sucking it up and working uncompensated o.t. (I got one complaint from someone leaving the show. Nobody else made a peep of protest.)

On Show # 2 (same studio) I was getting complaints about endless o.t., overtime on many nights, overtime on weekends, etc. Problem here was, arms were getting sore and sleep was being lost. But no problem with uncompensated o.t. On this show, the studio was paying all the o.t. hours.

Like I say up above: In Toontown, the ways artists are treated tend to be all over the map.

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Over at Schlesinger's in 1937

Another walk through animation history...

Second row from the front, fourth from the right: Tex Avery; Back row, eighth from the right, in white shirt: Chuck Jones; Fourth to the right of Jones: Rudy Larriva. Uncle Leon -- the gent with the nifty comb-over -- is kneeling front-row center. He's in the suit.

As Wikipedia describes Schlesinger's merry band in the early years:

From 1936 until 1944, animation directors and animators such as Freleng, Avery, Clampett, Jones, Arthur Davis, Robert McKimson, and Frank Tashlin worked at the studio. During this period, these creators introduced several of the most popular cartoon characters to date, including Daffy Duck (1937, Porky's Duck Hunt by Avery), Elmer Fudd (1940, Elmer's Candid Camera by Jones), Bugs Bunny (1940, A Wild Hare by Avery), and Tweety Bird (1942, A Tale of Two Kitties by Clampett). By 1942, the Schlesinger studio had surpassed Walt Disney Studios as the most successful producer of animated shorts in the United States

The Schlesinger unit was based on the Warners Sunset lot (which today is Channel 5.); Warners purchased the cartoon unit in 1944 and the rest, as they say, is lots of cartoon entertainment. (At this time in '37, Chuck Jones was a new director in his mid-twenties.)

The staff turned out just a few paltry shorts in 1937:

Little Red Walking Hood, September in the Rain, Porky's Hero Agency, The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos, A Sunbonnet Blue, Egghead Rides Again, Porky's Double Trouble, The Case of the Stuttering Pig, The Lyin' Mouse, Rover's Rival, I Wanna Be a Sailor, Dog Daze, Porky's Garden, Speaking of the Weather, Get Rich Quick Porky, Porky's Railroad , Ain't We Got Fun, Plenty of Money and You, Porky's Badtime Story, Uncle Tom's Bungalow, Porky's Super Service, Sweet Sioux, Porky's Building, Streamlined Greta Green, Clean Pastures, I Only Have Eyes for You, Porky and Gabby, Porky's Duck Hunt, She Was an Acrobat's Daughter, Porky's Romance, The Fella with the Fiddle, Picador Porky, Porky's Road Race, Pigs Is Pigs, Porky the Wrestler, He Was Her Man

All the work was done on Sunset in Hollywood. Nothing overseas. Nothing sub-contracted. How did these people do it?

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The Bob Youngquist Sendoff -- Part the Third

Remember my last Bob Youngquist posts, Parts I and II? No? Shame on you. They were only back in May, just a few months ago. (We don't like posts too close together, you know...)

Today, we have the third and final Youngquist bye bye post:

To refresh: Mr. Youngquist (above left) was a Disney animator and assistant for over three decades. He retired on December 15, 1970, and almost anybody who was anybody in the animation department attended his farewell lunch up in the Disney "Penthouse Club."

This photograph (the last in this stretched-out series) shows (left to right): Dave Michener, Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas, Ward Kimball, Dave Suding, Stan Green, Cliff Nordberg, person unknown, Jack Buckley, person unknown.)

Dave Michener was at this time Milt Kahl's assistant. (Milt told me that Dave was "the best assistant I ever had..."). Dave had been at the studio since the middle fifties, later moving in to the story department and then becoming a director.

Milt Kahl was considered (along with Marc Davis) the best draftsman of the "nine Old Men." He was a directing animator on almost all of the Disney features up until the time of his departure from the studio in the summer of 1976. He maintained that he didn't retire, but "quit."

Frank Thomas was known from the 1930s on as a master actor with an animation pencil. He animated on most of the Disney features from Snow White to Fox and the Hound.

Ward Kimball was a legendary animation dynamo who at this time (1970) had his own unit doing featurettes. He'd recently picked up an Academy Award for It's Tough to Be a Bird. He would leave the studio a few years later after a fight with upper management.

Dave Suding was a long-time Disney animator and assistant who retired to Laguna Beach in the late 1990s.

Stan Green worked as an assistant to Milt Kahl and as an animator. He passed away in Oregon at age 76.

Cliff Nordberg was a talented animator, dependable as the sunrise, who worked at the studio from the 1940s until his death.

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Jack Buckley was an effects animator with a parallel career as a fine artis painter skilled in oil painting.

A word about the Penthouse Club: When I knew it, there was wood-panelling on the walls and old furniture and it had the atmosphere of a out-at-the-sleeves restaurant located in Bishop, California (that's a town at the foot of the Sierras in the high desert, if you don't know.)

It sat atop the animation building. In the 1970s, it didn't look as if it had been changed since 1940. I have no idea what the space is used for now.

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The Bill Hanna Rule

A Wise Old Animation Director and I were chatting today. He reminded me of the fabled rule of animation from the co-founder of Hanna-Barbera:

There's never enough time to do it right, but there is always enough time to fix it.

Now. A small addendum to this rule -- which is actually implied in the rule -- would be: "There's never enough time (or money) to do it right, but there's always enough time (and money) to fix it."

At a large, nameless television animation studio a decade ago, an artist pal of mine marveled that the yelling and screaming by executives about show budgets and schedules magically stopped when the shows came back from the overseas studio and had big mistakes in them.

He marveled because huge amounts of money were at that point thrown at the shows to make them right, yet the execs who had been so exercised months before about the cash that was being spent were now calm, cool, collected. Relaxed, even.

My artist pal asked why all the new spending didn't bother them. The answer:

"It comes out of another budget. So it's no problem."

See what drooling simpletons we all are? It comes out of another budget. Therefore no problem. Therefore why worry?

Or as Bill Hanna would say:

There's never enough time/money to do it right, but always enough time/money to fix it.

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