A Few Tidbits

I'm tired of making excuses for the lack of blog updates, so let's just get to it. Today I'm going to just talk about a few things going on around the animation community. Just general animation news. ...continued...

First up. Iger is about to officially step in and take over for Eisner. There is undoubtedly a lot of celebration going on in the Disney Animation buildings. I'd like to be positive about the situation, but I have some hesitation to get all crazy about it. Iger seems like a chip off the old block. Let's hope he has a brain of his own. Maybe take things in a new direction and considers cleaning house a little bit. Of course the major concern for those in the animation world is the relationship between Pixar/Disney. There has got to be an announcement coming soon. It is way overdue. My view hasn't changed. I want these guys to go their separate ways. Makes life more interesting.

I heard rumors a while ago about Wild Brain losing the Opus project. It was all but confirmed by an article on AWN.COM. Part of the rumor is that a few other LA based studios are trying to win the homeless project and do the production on their first CG film. I guess this is a loss for Wild Brain, but I'm sure they will be working on a new feature in no time.

Although Disney Toons studio shuttered their Austrailian studio, they are hard at work finding animation studios in the US to do outsourcing work on their future CG direct-to-video movies. It is sad that the 2D Aussie studio closed, but I see this as good news as more work may be given to US studios instead of shipped out. They will probably continue to outsource to other countries, but if some of the work can stay here, then that is great.

The Animation News website posted some previs images of "The Wild". Unfortunately for them or unfortunately for Disney, they didn't put the disclaimer that the pictures were previs and Disney told the website to take them down. Disney should of never put the images on the "New Groove Edition" DVD to begin with. Let this be a lesson to any animation company out there. Do not release images of projects that are not fully rendered. Someone is bound to post it on a website somewhere without letting people know that they are not final production renderings. It only casts a bad light on your production. Speaking of "The Wild", this project is not a CORE project. CORE is the for hire facility creating the visuals. They are simply executing the work. This could potentially be the future business model for a lot of CG feature films. Small team made up of directors/producers/animation supervisors get the work and have it executed at some other CG facility. Although the costs of paying an existing animation facility could be more expensive, there is no expense in between projects to keep staff around. Basically, the average outsourcing mentality, but hopefully outsourcing to companies in the US.