Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- It’s Walt Disney‘s Birthday; too bad he isn’t around to celebrate it. But it’s also the first anniversary of this blog, so I can celebrate that. Cheers!

Disney in the Times and Time Magazine.
. This past weekend there were a number of interesting developments, reported in the NYTimes, regarding the Disney animation department. On Friday (as reported Saturday in the Business Section), the studio will let go of 160 employees – 25% of the animation staff.
. Then on Sunday, we learned that they’re about to produce a number of short films for distribution to open before some of their features. Apparently, they’ll make the new shorts with fewer people.
. Reports that John Lasseter decided to overide Musker & Clements choice of Alan Menken to write the songs and score The Frog Princess seems to be creating a bit of a stir. You can read about it on Jim Hill Media.

For some reason all this confusion (maybe it’s just I who is confused) reminds me of the period after Walt Disney died in 1966. It seemed that the studio had some difficulty operating without him. Decision making was difficult since everyone wanted to continue the legacy.
The primary question seems to have been, “How would Walt have done it?”

Roy Disney was able to push the studio along for a short bit, but things started going wrong under Ron Miller‘s (Walt’s son-in-law) leadership. Ron knew nothing about animation or films – he was known for being a football player. His decisions took the studio down the wrong road. Profits rolled in but were not quite what they should have been. There was also a lot of dissension.

(Click on the images to enlarge to a readable size.)

An unsuccessful hostile take-over attempt gave the studio a jolt and brought in some big-time operators – Eisner, Wells and Katzenberg who really brought the studio up to date and got the profits to start multiplying.

They also jump-started the near-dead animation department back into life. The Little Mermaid, Beauty and The Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King were certainly their doing.

Now, the studio is in a new era – the Iger years. I thought it might be interesting to look back a bit to the somber days of animation at the Disney studio – The Black Cauldron, anyone?

The above article appeared in Time Magazine in 1976 about the company’s business affairs, and I thought it a good read given the history that came after this.

Disney at The New Yorker
- How appropriate this week for The New Yorker magazine to have an extensive review of Neal Gabler‘s biography of Disney by their film critic, Anthony Lane. This article is available on-line and is worth the read. Go here to read it.
The on-line site also features a 1971 article by Calvin Trillin about Disney World.
Go here for this article, entitled “Are Ya Havin’ Fun?”.

The Golden Pencil
- As mentioned last week, we won the award for Best 2DAnimation at Tony White’s 2D or Not 2D Festival held in Washington State. It was a treat for me to hear from Tony that we’d won a “Golden Pencil Award.

Today the “Golden Pencil” arrived. It’s hilarious. A large stub of a pencil. I enlisted animiator Matt Clinton to pose for some snaps with the award.

1 2
1. Matt animating with the “Golden Pencil.”
2. A CU of it in his hand.

A close-up of the “Award” among some other awards.
It’s not as close to the camera as it looks here.

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