Drawing on Creativity Gives Animation a Future

There they go again.

In recent months, publications ranging from Variety to the New York Times have run articles declaring the animated feature is dead or dying, with headlines like “Cel-Mates Suffer Toon Traumas” and “Animators Say, ‘That’s All, Folks!’ ”

The signposts were easy to read. Among them: Fox’s “Titan A.E.” did so poorly that the studio shut its animation facility in Phoenix. “Fantasia/2000” was perceived as a success while it screened in Imax theaters (a success that’s led other studios to develop animation for release in Imax), but it fared poorly in regular release. “Dinosaur” earned what would usually be a very respectable $136 million--more than “Erin Brockovich” or “Nutty Professor II”--yet it’s not considered a hit because it was reportedly so expensive to make. “The Road to El Dorado” failed to attract much of an audience.

It’s certainly an odd time for animation. Morale among artists is at an all-time low. Even top animators say, “I’m keeping my nose to the paper and trying to ignore the politics. I don’t know what I’m working on next.” Disney executives declined to be interviewed for this article, and many executives and artists at other studios would only speak if their remarks weren’t attributed.

The crepe-hanging articles reflect the dubious Hollywood tradition of condemning the medium, rather than the individual film, when an animated feature does poorly. Like a cinematic phoenix, the feature-length animated film has been repeatedly dismissed as dead and hailed as reborn. Tom Sito, president of the Hollywood Animators’ Union, notes, “The animated feature was declared dead in 1958, 1977 and 1983. When I got into the business in 1975, everyone was saying it was a dying art form. The high-quality animation that we take for granted today was dismissed then as a thing of the past that was created by Depression-era economics and low budgets.”

The three big money-losers of the summer were “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle,” “Battlefield Earth” and “Titan A.E.” But no one is writing that films with computer-generated effects are “in trouble” or that studios should stop making science-fiction films.

“In a year that’s consisted mostly of failures in live action, why don’t they say, ‘No more live action films’?” asks “Titan A.E.” producer David Kirschner. “One horror film or even three horror films may not do well, then another batch of horror films comes along and one of them does do well. With animation, they blame the medium.”

In general, animated features have actually been quite successful in recent years. Six major features released in 1998 (“Mulan,” “A Bug’s Life,” “Antz,” “Rugrats Movie,” “The Prince of Egypt” and “The Quest for Camelot”) grossed $599 million, domestically; five in 1999 (“Toy Story 2,” “Tarzan,” “Pokemon: The First Movie,” “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut” and “The Iron Giant”) took in $578 million; the nine released this year (“Dinosaur,” “Chicken Run,” “Fantasia/2000,” “The Road to El Dorado,” “The Tigger Movie,” “Pokemon--The Movie 2000,” “Titan A.E.,” “The Digimon Movie” and “Rugrats in Paris--The Movie”) have brought in almost $500 million, with “The Emperor’s New Groove” still to come. “Chicken Run” even set a record for a non-Disney animated feature this summer, taking in $106.8 million.

Yet there have been substantial layoffs at the studios, and DreamWorks has announced that many of its artists will be put on hiatus between the completion of “Spirit” and the beginning of work on “Sinbad.” (Some animators feel these moves are part of a plan by management to get rid of more experienced, higher-paid artists and replace them with younger animators at lower salaries.)

Notes Sito: “This year, there are seven features being released, 10 new network television series, several prime-time series, more Internet work and cable than ever before, yet we’ve lost about 1,000 jobs in the last 18 months. The union had about 98% employment in 1998, with 2,700 people working; those numbers have fallen to about 1,600 people working, or around 60% employment. We’ve lost a good third of our total jobs.”

Animation has become a high-stakes game in recent years. Although exact figures haven’t been released, budgets range from about $27 million for “Rugrats in Paris” to more than $150 million for “Dinosaur.” The reasons for the substantial rise in costs over the last decade are hotly debated within the industry.

The artists bitterly resent published reports that their salaries have driven up the cost of animation. Currently, scale for an animator is about $1,100 for a 40-hour week; the market rate for an experienced animator at a major studio is around $2,500 per week. Animators don’t get points or residuals as live-action actors do, nor do they receive royalties when the characters they create are merchandised.

“The best-paid animators in the world still don’t make the withholding of a minor movie star,” says Sito. “The problem is the strategic indecision and confusion in management in the early development stages, which leads to money being wasted. Late last year, four major features in development at various studios burned about $40 million apiece before a single production artist had been put to work.”

Projects in Development Are in Short Supply

Although a number of animated features are in various stages of production, artists point to the lack of material in development at the studios and ask what comes after the films they’re finishing.

In September, Disney shut down the computer-generated feature “Wild Life” after three years of work. More than 100 artists were laid off, and the future of the Secret Lab, Disney’s attempt to establish a start-of-the-art CG facility appears uncertain. More recently, Disney replaced the directors on “Sweating Bullets,” one of whom had been working on the film for almost five years. New directors were brought in to complete “Dinosaur” and “The Emperor’s New Groove.”

Replacing directors and films bedeviled by weak and/or inadequately developed stories hasn’t been restricted to Disney. The original directors left DreamWorks’ “The Road to El Dorado” before it was completed, and “Shrek” has had several directors. “Titan A.E.” was conceived as a live-action movie, and it was made in traditional animation only after attempts to do it computer-generated proved unacceptable.

Developing a story for an animated film has always been a slow process, as the story artists have to explore possible variations on ideas in advance: Animators don’t shoot multiple takes of a scene, as live-action directors do. Veteran Disney story artist Bill Peet once commented, “If we’d filmed everything we storyboarded for ‘Pinocchio,’ the film would have run about 48 hours.”

Artists acknowledge that developmental dead-ends, supervisorial turnovers and changes dictated by executives are all part of the filmmaking process. But the extent of the recent problems has left animators feeling their industry is adrift, with no real guiding vision.

During the late 1980s-early ‘90s, Disney produced an unprecedented string of hits that redefined both animated features and musicals: “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin” and “The Lion King.” These fresh, innovative films told stories in new ways. They also proved the potential rewards for a good animated feature were greater than anyone imagined, as “The Lion King” became the No. 1 box-office hit of 1994 and later a blockbuster stage hit.

But the Disney renaissance began to falter with “Pocahontas,” as the films grew less original. The popularity of the genie in “Aladdin” resulted in every feature having an irreverent sidekick making anachronistic wisecracks, whether it fit the story or not. The latest Disney films have been handsome and well-animated--”Mulan” and “Tarzan” offered brilliant design and character work--but they’ve tended to be films with great animation, rather than great animated films.

Other studios tried to copy Disney, hoping to duplicate its success. “Thumbelina,” “Anastasia,” “The Quest for Camelot” and “The King and I” all had an overly familiar feel that made watching them about as exciting as drinking diluted lemonade. The more original and critically praised “The Iron Giant” (1999) and “Cats Don’t Dance” (1997) fell victim to inept marketing campaigns. Audiences began looking beyond Hollywood, to Pixar in Northern California, Aardman Animations in England and Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli in Japan, for innovative work.

“After the success of ‘Aladdin’ and ‘Lion King,’ the rest of us are expected to make films that bring in $300 million,” says Kirschner. “In live action, we have small, independent films that have very strong audiences. We have different genres of live action with different kinds of budgets. But when it comes to animation, there’s the perception that if it doesn’t make at least $75 million to $100 million, you’ve made a failure.”

In 1990, as the Disney-led boom was gathering steam, Kirschner, who was president-CEO of Hanna-Barbera, told The Times, “It scares me that people may jump on the bandwagon and hurt this renaissance by trying to cash in on the market for animation. I’m concerned that studios may say ‘yes’ to films that need more work before they’re ready to be shown to the public.”

Ten years later, Kirschner says: “That’s exactly what happened. Every time an animated film does well, studios jump in, thinking they can be part of the ‘animation business.’ You have to have a good script, good storyboards and a talented crew. And the marketing of these films is very, very important. DreamWorks did a brilliant job of making ‘Chicken Run’ an event. With ‘Cats Don’t Dance,’ Warners put it out with the understanding, ‘If you build it, maybe they’ll come.’ ”

Capturing Excitement of Japanese Sci-Fi Falls Short

So what does the future hold? The musical structure that worked so well for Disney appears to have run its course. What will replace it remains uncertain. Fox tried to capture the excitement of Japanese sci-fi epics in “Titan A.E.,” but Don Bluth lacked the directorial skills and vision that make films such as Mamoru Oshii’s “Ghost in the Shell” or Hiroyuki Okiura’s “Jin-Roh” (“Wolf Brigade”) exciting and powerful, despite their limited animation and lower budgets.

Currently, the most anticipated feature within the animation community is Disney’s “Lilo and Stitch,” officially undated, but probably for release in 2002. The original story by co-director Chris Sanders involves a little Hawaiian girl who befriends an alien. Even artists who have been severely critical of recent Disney features say the film looks to have the kind of warmth, intimacy and character-driven story that distinguishes the early features made under Walt Disney’s personal supervision.

Two wild cards in the animation deck are Warner Bros.’ “Osmosis Jones” and DreamWorks’ “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron.” “Osmosis,” slated for 2001, is an irreverent action comedy set inside the human body, with Chris Rock as the voice of the title character.Warners is clearly targeting “Osmosis” at the “Something About Mary” audience.

Conventional wisdom holds that teenagers won’t go to animated films because they regard them as children’s fare. But viewers in their late teens and early 20s bought tickets for “Beavis and Butt-Head Do America” and “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.” Neither film was a blockbuster, but both were released after the popularity of the TV series--which teens watched--had peaked. If “Osmosis” wins that audience, Warner Bros. could reverse its record of animated box-office failures.

Previewed footage from DreamWorks’ “Spirit” (late 2001 or early 2002) has a lush grandeur, and scenes of a young Native American character were wonderfully vivid. The question will be, is the story strong enough to support it?

Expectations are high for “Tortoise vs. Hare” (2002), the next clay feature from Aardman Animations under the deal with DreamWorks that brought audiences “Chicken Run.” Three-time Oscar winner Nick Park delighted fans earlier this year when he announced he’d come up with an idea for a “Wallace and Gromit” feature. It’s still in the early stages of development, but a feature involving those delightfully befuddled characters would have a pre-sold audience.

“Rugrats” fans constitute another pre-sold audience, as “Rugrats in Paris” demonstrated in its impressive opening weekend. As the film only cost about $27 million, “Rugrats in Paris” could become one of the most profitable films of the year. Its opening in the No. 2 spot (behind “Grinch”), coupled with the success of the first “Rugrats” film, “The Tigger Movie” and the “Pokemon” films, proves there is a large children’s audience for familiar characters in theaters, as well as on TV and video.

Albie Hecht, president of film and TV entertainment for Nickelodeon, says his company is “bullish on animation,” and recently announced an ambitious slate of features based on “The Wild Thornberries,” “Hey Arnold” and “Bone.” Nickelodeon will also develop a new character from Steve Oedekerk (“Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls”), Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, as a feature film, a television series and an online franchise.

Given the success of the “Toy Story” movies, it’s not surprising that computer generation has been touted as the savior of feature animation. Observers inside and outside the industry are eager to see if Pixar’s “Monsters, Inc.” (holidays, 2002) will continue the studio’s string of hits.

Next spring, DreamWorks will bring out “Shrek,” based on a book by New Yorker cartoonist William Steig. Previewed footage of the film was handsome and well-executed, but whether audiences will warm to an ugly title character and another wisecracking sidekick, voiced by Eddie Murphy, remains to be seen.

The American animated feature has been repeatedly reinvented since Walt Disney dazzled audiences with “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” in 1937, and it appears to be in the down phase of another cycle. With some patience and luck, feature animation could emerge stronger and more vibrant than ever, as it did in the late ‘80s. So the pundits may have been a little premature in their efforts to pat down the dirt on the grave of animation: The patient is still alive and reasonably well.