Disney decides to draw artists into computer age
- BRUCE ORWALL, The Wall Street Journal
Thursday, October 23, 2003
(10-23) 07:10 PDT (AP) -- BURBANK, Calif. -- Last spring, animator Glen Keane reluctantly agreed to set aside the pencils with which he had crafted such Walt Disney Co. icons as Ariel and Aladdin. At the urging of Disney chief Michael Eisner, Mr. Keane would use computers for the first time to create characters in a planned movie called "Rapunzel Unbraided."
The decision signaled a momentous transition at Disney. Audiences have been snubbing traditional animated films but flocking to computer-generated offerings such as Pixar Animation Studios' "Finding Nemo" and DreamWorks SKG's "Shrek." Disney hopes moving to the three-dimensional computer style can reverse the slide of its once-mighty animation studio.
The big question is whether Disney can master the new technology. It made the successful 2000 film "Dinosaur" in computer graphics, and it has co-financed and distributed Pixar's string of blockbusters. But hand-drawn animation has until now remained the heart of Disney's approach. The animation building it opened in Burbank in 1994 is even designed specifically to accommodate the flow of work on such films.
Disney has two more traditional animated films: the $90 million "Brother Bear," to be released nationwide Nov. 1, and next year's "Home on the Range," which will likely cost more than $100 million. The company says it may one day return to the hand-drawn style, but for now all of the other major films in Disney's pipeline will be computer-generated, beginning with 2005's "Chicken Little." The choice is largely aesthetic, as the cost of making a film is about the same in both forms.
The plunge into computer-generated -- or "CG" -- films is partly a hedge against the possibility that Disney's lucrative relationship with Pixar may end when their contract expires in 2005. Yet even as the companies are locked in contentious negotiations to extend their ties, there is a strong desire at Disney to prove, as one insider puts it, that Pixar is "not better than we are or smarter than we are."
The shift toward computer-generated films, though, mostly reflects Disney's recognition of how much its sputtering animation franchise has contributed to a long-running earnings malaise that has put Mr. Eisner in the hot seat. Disney's 2002 net income of $1.24 billion was 33 percent below its 1997 peak of $1.97 billion. The deterioration also reflects Disney's problems with its ABC network and theme parks.
"We are very interested in turning animation back into the enormous profit center that it used to be," says Mr. Eisner, 61, Disney's chairman and chief executive. It will be a few years before Disney knows whether its push on computer animation meets that goal: "Rapunzel Unbraided" isn't scheduled for release until 2007, the year after Mr. Eisner's current contract expires.
Most of Disney's hand-drawn films have fared poorly in recent years, hurt not just by the success of computer-generated rivals but also by formulaic stories and forgettable characters. Disney's own animation renaissance, which began with 1989's "Little Mermaid" and helped make Mr. Eisner a corporate star, bottomed out last year with the disastrous "Treasure Planet." The $140 million production prompted a $98 million write-down after it sold just $38 million of tickets domestically.
As painful as that was, it kicked open the door to change. "Everybody could sort of let go of this idea that we have to hold on to the way things have been done in the past," says Disney's 41-year-old animation chief, David Stainton.
The main challenge is retraining a crew of artists wedded to a different medium. Unlike traditional animation, which involves thousands of hand-drawn pictures, computer-generated characters are built as computer models, placed in three-dimensional virtual sets and lit much like actors in a live-action movie.
Mr. Stainton took over Disney's animation unit earlier this year. He inherited a staff that had already been through a morale-killing period in which salaries were slashed and the staff -- which includes a variety of technical jobs in addition to the artists who create images for film -- was cut by 60 percent, to 880 currently from 2,200 in 1999. With two traditional films and two computer-generated films in the works when Mr. Stainton came in, there was also uncertainty about which direction the studio would take. "People fundamentally worry that, 20 years from now, nobody will know how to draw," Mr. Stainton says. "They're afraid they won't be able to express their skill to the same level."
