Lower-priced tools and young talent are strengthening this market - Animation

Post, Dec, 2002 by Ann Fisher

You want excitement? This industry has it around every corner. New business models are making it possible for garage groups to make Oscar-worthy feature films. Fresh waves of talent are energizing the workforce. All styles are being produced. The strengths and opportunities are many.

Post spoke with a handful of the animation studios, including one that has placed its bet on the service side of the business. Read what these insiders consider the current state of affairs, the industry weaknesses and their prescriptions for a cure.

CARLOS SALDANHA

Co-Director Ice Age

Blue Sky Studios

www.blueskystudios.com

White Plains, NY

STRENGTHS: The industry feels fresh, it feels new. There's a lot of young talent out there -- with a vitality that's really incredible, a lot of good energy. That's what gets me pumping every morning. I wake up and I think about the crew and the people I have to work with, it gets me excited.

On top of that, the strength of the industry is the projects, the stories. All the concepts we've been hearing are very exciting. The people with that mentality say, "Let's make something that's new and fresh" or, "What can we do with this technology that you've never seen before?" The vision of the future is really great. (Blue Sky Studios is currently working on a new animated feature due to hit theatres in three years. It will reportedly look very different than 2002's Ice Age.)

One of our strengths is the freedom to create a different visual look for our projects. Our trademark, too, is the character animation or how can we use that great technology to make things look good, to make them move right and fun to watch.

WEAKNESSES: Fox owns Blue Sky, so we're part of Fox Animation. Right now computer animation is very hot. We're in good shape on that level. Still we're always concerned about the way things are going. My fear is I don't want the quality of future projects to go down because of lack of money or lack of time. What could be a negative -- but it hasn't been yet -- would be low-cost, low-quality projects that would make this cool new way of doing movies not as fresh, new and interesting.

OPPORTUNITIES: The more movies we make, the more stories we have to tell, the more people we hire to help us convey that. However; we can only absorb a certain number of people and talent, so it depends on how many projects we're working on. We'll be limited by those numbers. It's a great opportunity for people coming out of art school and animation to find this is a very fresh and growing business.

THREATS: The economy could be a threat. If people don't go to the movies to see them, that would be a big threat. People that are backing these future projects, if they're not willing to make the investments, then definitely the industry will suffer: We will go back to being in the hands of a few who have enough money to keep those movies going. Right now, there are only four groups making movies with a good budget -- Fox/Blue Sky, DreamWorks/PDI, Disney/Pixar, Paramount/Nickelodeon.

Blue Sky is on animation and visual effects studio serving the commercial and film industries.

JULIA PISTOR

Senior VP

Nickelodeon Films

www.nickelodeonfilms.com

Los Angeles

STRENGTHS: The technological advances have made it so animation is no longer one thing. Five years ago everyone was saying animation was dead. Then when there was a string of CGI movies, everybody said CGI is alive and cel is dead. Jimmy Neutron was produced in Texas by this small company, DNA, almost like a garage band of animation. They used over-the-counter animation software (LightWave) and made this amazing film that got nominated for an Academy Award by its peers. What that says to me is: anything goes. Nothing is dead.

Younger or interesting talent is going to come to the forefront and they're going to be able to bring their vision to the screen and not have to go through the big corporations. It's no longer just animation factories. Nickelodeon's philosophy to animation, both in television and features, is that we have no house style. We are creator driven and our feature animation model is we find a central vision and we will create the animation model around them. For DNA, a small company, it was very much their vision. We said, "Let's make a movie with you guys. We'll buy the equipment."

Falling technology prices help, too. You're flexible so every movie you make you're not obligated to use the animation pipeline you did on the first film. You can shift. That is the relationship we've had with Klasky-Csupo (co-producers on the upcoming Wild Thornberrys holiday release). They've managed to build this fantastic studio with us, around their vision, not around a business model. It's all about putting the money on the screen and facilitating the vision of the filmmaker. We're not the filmmakers, we're facilitators and marketers.

WEAKNESSES: Animated films are traditionally considered "family films." There's a glut of family films," and to make animation films stand out you need to have very complicated, long advanced lead times for your marketing campaign. Movies like Iron Giant (were not as successful) because of various things. They didn't have a Burger King (merchandising deal), they didn't have what are considered traditional things to support the movie. Audiences still don't see animation as a real movie unless they see the stuff at Burger King. I think that could change soon because there are so many different films out there. I think the audience is going to be more sophisticated.