Disney gives hand-drawn animators the final flick

[Blackie Pueblo]

It's bedtime for Bambi. Curtains for Cinderella.

A filmmaking era will end in Sydney when Disney closes its last hand-drawn animation studio anywhere in the world and cuts 250 jobs.

The famous Hollywood studio has told staff that DisneyToon Studios Australia, which is located in Castlereagh Street, will close after the production of Bambi II, Brother Bear 2 and Cinderella III in the middle of next year.

These will be the last productions in a 17-year history that has included video, DVD and occasionally cinema sequels to such animation classics as The Lion King, Lady and the Tramp, Peter Pan and The Jungle Book.

A statement from the company said the closure was largely due to "the changing creative climate and economic environment in which DisneyToon Studios requires more flexibility to choose the most appropriate and efficient animation process".

Animators saw it as a reflection of the traditional hand-drawn style being overtaken by computer-generated animation.

With the exception of Lilo & Stitch, which was made at Disney's Florida studio, every animated hit in recent years has been computer-generated.


Blackie Pueblo

[spaulo]

Not so fast, bucko... from Jim Hill:

<i>Now before animation fans start going crazy here, what people need to understand is that this was a business decision. It's nothing personal. It's not that we don't like working with those guys in Australia anymore. We still think that they're all tops. I mean, wait 'til you see the job they did with "Bambi and the Great Prince."

No, this was strictly a monetary decision. The cost of producing pictures in Sydney has slowly crept up over the past five years. Meanwhile, new animation studios have been popping up all over Asia. And these new studios have been churning out very high quality footage for less than half of what it costs us to produce similiar footage at our Australian animation facility.

So it just made sense -- strictly from an economics point of view -- for us to shut down our Sydney operation and then start farming all of our "video premiere" work out to studios that we already do business with over there. Places like Cuckoos Nest Studio at Wang Film Productions in Taipei, Studio Fuga in Tokyo and Toon City Animation in Manila.

Check the credits of movies like "Mulan II" and "Tarzan II," Jim. You'll see that we've already used these studios on a number of our pictures. So we're not really talking about making a huge change here. Only instead of just getting some of our work, now these studios are going to get all of our work.</i>

Linky: http://www.jimhillmedia.com/mb/articles ... hp?ID=1569

[Manncab]

the last time I was in the animation area of mgm the castmember told me that home on the range is the last hand drawn cartoon disney will make all new ones will be drawn on the computer so this news from sydnie does not surprise me at all