Disney Closes Orlando Animation Studio

[rodbarnett]

By Gary Gentile The Associated Press
Published: Jan 12, 2004

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Walt Disney Co. is shuttering its Orlando, Fla.-based animation studio, cutting about 258 jobs, as the company shifts from hand-drawn animated films to computer-generated features and videos

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAI3N9WCPD.html

comment : Shame, Shame, Shame

[BeHereNow]

1. Outsourced, no doubt.

I have friends who have worked for Disney, in all sorts
of departments, including animation.
They treat their domestic workers like dogs and
their overseas workers like dead dogs.
I HATE DISNEY!
BHN

[Lorien]

7. I worked for the Orlando studio

from '89-'94; hell, I helped found the bloody place! It's terribly sad to see all those folks I trained and worked with reduced to shopping around for computer gaming jobs and the like (if they're lucky). No, traditional animated feature films are not being outsourced; they are no longer being made, period. Now straight to video sequels ARE being outsourced by Disney-one of our HR people has even moved to India to help train artists there.:mad:

The problems were twofold; when Katzenburg left the studio, he took many of our best story people with him. Peter Schneider and Tom Schumacher, his heirs, wouldn't know a great story if it bit them in the ass. So what did we get? Crap like "the Hunchback of Notre Dame" (should NOT have been animated) and "Treasure Planet". Add that to out-of-control salaries; one of my buddies-another animator-was making 15 grand A WEEK! (I never made anything even CLOSE to that)! Well, it was all a recipe for disaster. Pixar is an independant studio where creative people aren't micro managed by talentless bean counters, that's the big difference between the two. The medium doesn't matter, but the story always will.

[veganwitch]

2. as much as i enjoy the computer animated stuff,

toy story 1 & 2 and monsters inc. are great, i really enjoy the drawings and animation of the drawn cartoons. It is a bloody art form!!! (anime anyone?)


Considering the afterschool/saturday morning cartoons that are out now, the art form and medium of high quality cartoons is going to die.

[demdave]

3. I liked the old animations for their warmth and artistic value...but

time stands still for no man. I can't recall the last time I took a buggy load of family down to the nickleodean and say a real swell animated talkie.

[el_gato]

4. but the hand drawn stuff has style

that can't be reproduced by them thar cornpooters

[Occulus]

9. Oh, yes it can.

I'm beginning to study computer animation right now and it's damn amazing what can be done. Maya, for example, has a cel shader that allows one to make the animation look handpained and flat, as in a cartoon. It can also render the images that way, too, for that flipbook-style traditional animation look.

Computer animation has really become an art form all its own. Rather than drawing a tree blowing in the wind, for example, one controls the wind forces that act on the tree model, and include deformer fields and other neat little efects to make the tree's limbs behave as if they really were bloing in the wind. UIt's truly amazing- if you use XP or Mac, go check out Maya Personal Learning Edition at www.aliaswavefront.com .

[Lorien]

10. We were developing a nifty program

at Disney years ago, where hand drawn rough key drawings could be scanned into a computer, and a timing chart would be entered. It took some time, but the result was a perfectly cleaned up "traditional" piece of animation with all the snap and energy of regular hand drawn animation. But again, it's not the medium that's the problem with Disney; it's story and micro managment of the talent. Heaven knows "South Park" hasen't suffered from less-than-cutting-edge animation!

[DrWeird]

5. Not too long from now...

we'll be telling our kids that back our day they had to hand draw thousands of little pictures for each cartoon.

[tinrobot]

6. The problem with Disney...

Is that they're chasing trends. Since Pixar and PDI/Dreamworks have produced a number of very successful CGI films, Disney thinks that the answer must be CGI. The answer is good stories... Disney has forgotten how to tell a story and make a good film. The technique is not as big of a factor as they think.

One of Disney's most successful films of the past few years (Lilo & Stitch) was produced at the Florida studio they just closed. It only got made because it slipped under the radar. That film could have never been made in Burbank.

This is the end of an era. Disney has had a hand drawn feature in production ever since Snow White was released in 1937.

[Lorien]

8. Spot on, tinrobot

Nothing is produced by the mouse anymore without a "trend analysis" being done ahead of time. Works that way for every division of the company.

Chris Sanders and company were indeed left alone, due to two films in production taking up Tom and Peter's focus in Glendale, and the fact that "Lilo" was considered a "small, Dumbo-esque" film. As you and I both know; let the creative people DO their jobs, and great things can happen! Micro managment is killing this company.

[tinrobot]

11. Hopefully...

Someone will carry the torch. A team of ex-Disney artists from Orlando just formed their own studio. Looks promising on paper, but I'll wait until they have a feature in the can.

http://www.legacyanimation.net/

Crossing my fingers...