In the fall of 1979, Don Bluth, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy made Hollywood headlines by leading a group of animators in a mass resignation from the animation department of the Walt Disney Studios. It was said that a dispute over training practices and artistic control motivated their departure in the midst of the studio's production of The Fox and the Hound, a move which resulted in a six month delay in the release of Disney's film.
Nineteen people left Disney over a period of months to join Don Bluth, forming the nucleus of a new animation studio. What was Don Bluth doing that attracted so many Disney artists to him?
It began in 1972. Working nights and weekends, Don Bluth and Disney associate Gary Goldman (John Pomeroy joined the group in 1973) labored in the garage of Bluth's Culver City home trying to rediscover the techniques of classical animation that had been practiced by the Disney artists during the 30s and 40s -- a period that has become known as animation's Golden Age. Sadly, many of these techniques and special effects have slipped into obscurity through long disuse.
The original group of three grew to 12, dropping by the garage whenever they could, frequently staying until all hours of the night, sometimes curling up on their desks to catch a little sleep. They pooled their resources -- time, talent and money -- to purchase the necessary tools, equipment and materials to create their own short film. In 1977, Mel Griffin joined the three creative principals to, in the words of Don Bluth, "handle those things that artists don't seem to understand."
Working as they did, it took Don Bluth and his team of Disney moonlighters five years to complete their first 30-minute short, Banjo, the Woodpile Cat. Becasue of their success with Banjo, a group of investors decided to gamble a few million dollars and back the fledgling animation studio on a feature. Bluth believes that five years of hard work on Banjo earned his group the right to try a feature. "We will earn the right to stay in business," believes Bluth. "If we don't do it right, then we can't claim the right to stay in business. If The Secret of NIMH succeeds then there will be another film. But even if we fail, that won't keep us from trying again or loving what we do. Animation is a beautiful art form that is in danger of dying out. Animated film today has to be a thoroughbred to compete for big box office dollars to really survive. Every time someone produces an animated film that fails, the whole animation industry dies a little bit more."
Finally, when working in Don Bluth's garage became more personally rewarding than the Disney studio, a decision was made. On Thursday, September 13, 1979, Bluth, Goldman and Pomeroy tendered their resignations to Disney Productions and a new animation studio was born.
Upon completion of Banjo the Woodpile Cat, Don Bluth Productions moved from the garage into new Studio City offices and formed an exclusive association with Aurora Productions, a company formed in 1978 by Rich Irvine and James L. Stewart, two other former Disney executives.
After animating a two-minute sequence for Universal's Xanadu, the studio began to devote all of its energies toward completing its first feature film, The Secret of NIMH. Based on the Newbery Award-winning children's classic by Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, the film will be released in July by United Artists.
Don Bluth Productions is housed in a small two-story commercial building just off Ventura Blvd. in Studio City. Approximately 55 artists, animators, cameramen, background artists, technicians, color stylists and office workers work here doing what they love most in life. Small and unimpressive from the outside, the studio looks like nothing at all extraordinary on the inside. Yet 19 people left Disney to work here and more stand on line with portfolios in hand waiting to be given the chance. Why?
The building itself certainly evokes none of the aura of magic that the Disney studio seems to possess. Within the comparatively tiny space of the studio itself, animators and artists crammed into tiny offices work back to back and elbow to elbow, even spilling out into the hallways and stairwells. Why would anyone leave the comfortable Disney studios to work here?
Only after meeting and talking first with some of Don Bluth's co-workers and then with Don Bluth himself do I begin to understand. At first the tour of the studio begins routinely enough, visiting camera departments, background, layout, special effects, etc. I am allowed to interrupt people at work, ask questions about what they are doing and why. Nothing seems out of the ordinary or different from any of a number of animation houses around town. I begin to realize that it's not so much precisely what the artists are doing that makes the difference, but how they are allowed or even encouraged to do it. I am impressed not so much with the actual answers to my questions about how things are done at the Bluth studio, but with how the questions are answered. After several hours it slowly dawns on me, that every person here loves intensely what he or she is doing, and would rather be here at Don Bluth's studio than any other place they can think of.
I am told, as I move from department to department, that it is not uncommon for some people to work here 75, 80 or even 100 hours a week. Often people have to be reminded to go home...once in a while. Directing animator Gary Goldman has a wife and kids, so he tries to spend Sundays with his family. But as I listen to the excitement in his voice as he talks about his work, I wonder who would win if he had to choose between his family and his craft.
"When I tell my wife I will be home on Sunday," begins Goldman, "she looks me in the eye and asks, 'Are you sure?' In 1975 we started on Banjo the Woodpile Cat, which we spent five years of evenings and weekends working on in Bluth's garage in addition to working full time at Disney. It really got tight then. I remember my youngest son's first words to me were, 'By-by, Daddy' and 'Don Blooo.'"
The studio uses two multiplane cameras in addition to standard animation camera stands to assist in producing the "classical animation style" for which the studio is trying to become known. Goldman, I am told confidentially by one of the other artists, can literally be found working in almost any given department at the studio.
Goldman begins with the camera: "Basically, our animation is done on 'twos' -- one drawing for each two frames of film -- unless the camera is moving. If the camera moves at all, you have to go to one drawing per frame or else the action strobes on the screen.
"So, suppose the camera is moving. You have two or three characters working all on separate levels of cels, then four levels of special effects cels -- drop shadows, reflections, etc. -- that's six or seven levels of drawings to be placed and moved for each frame of film. Plus maybe three more levels of drawings that are shot on a second pass, such as snow or smoke. These effects have to be burned in with a separate exposure over a black background.
"Since all of our effects are done "in-camera" on the original film, several passes are required. For example we may shoot a scene at 60 percent of the correct exposure with the smoke cels over the character and background. Then the camera is backed up and the characters are shot at 40 percent of the correct exposure without the smoke effect cels. The result is that the characters and background are in there at 100 percent, but the smoke is at 60 percent so it looks more believable.
"Or we might shoot the scene at 100 percent exposure, back the camera up, put a diffusion lens on the camera and shoot the smoke cels at 40 percent over a black background. Then the smoke takes on a very soft, wispy, diffused effect.
"We use the multiplane camera to give our scenes a very solid look -- there is a background, a middleground and sometimes an out-of-focus foreground. On the average, a NIMH scene requires three to five passes through the camera, but there are some sequences which require much more than that."
There is much more to it than just making drawings move. It's not so much a matter of literally creating movement, but creating the spirit of life within the characters and beyond the characters into the backgrounds and environment as well. Though the animators handle character work, there is another whole department whose job it is to make the environment come alive -- effects animation. This department, supervised by Dorse Lanpher, animates shadows, smoke, fog, rain, snow, water, bubbles, even dust -- all those things that it takes to create a real world, that is interesting, visually stimulating and delightful to the imagination.
As we move upstairs to the space that Goldman uses for animation, he explains something of what is expected from an animator.
"Number one is that an animator has to be an actor. But the list of things that an animator has to be concerned with other than acting is just incredible. That's what an animator spends his first two years here doing...figuring out that damn list! The list is filled with litle things that are principles that you have to use every day. Things like overlapping actions, line of action, volume consistency, squash and stretch, negative shapes...Do you know what a negative shape is? Here, I'll show you." He begins to march around the room lifting his legs and swinging his arms. "Negative space is created by a moving character." He freezes with a leg up and an arm stretched out before his body. "Here, the space between my outstretched arm and lifted leg is negative space.
"Or look at paralleling action. When one part of a character moves, all of the character moves, but it doesn't all stop and start at the same time. We all fall into that trap. The actions of various parts of the body overlap. We all have to be aware of choreography and dance. Stage acting is the closest thing to the acting in animation that we do -- stage ating rather than film acting.
"Now, look. You don't just do an action. If I'm going to do a take, I might do a squash on the face so that there is an anticipation before I do the final pose. And before I do the final pose I go up into it and then settle down into the pose. A body has to have weight and force to begin to be believable.
"Then you have to watch out for parallel lines. Look at my arm -- do you see any parallel lines? No, of course not. There are angles and curves, the lines come together, they're wide and thin....
"You need to be able to draw with interest and design. Work the little against the big, thin against fat...movement has to have texture. In essence the animator is entertaining your eyes, your sense of sight."
Gary Goldman explains that he, Don Bluth and a couple of the others are the "old men" of the studio -- nearly everyone is under 35. But as he continues to explain facets of his work to me he is smiling with the eagerness and open-eyed wonder of a teenager. It begins to dawn on me that the source of the magic that draws artists to Don Bluth Productions is the artists themselves.
Animator John Pomeroy, who shares space with Goldman, comes into the room. There is a pair of crutches next to his drawing board. Pomeroy is trying to develop a walk cycle for Mr. Ages, who is old and crotchety and gets about on crutches.
"There used to be a saying over at Disney," begins Pomeroy, "if you want to find out what a characer thinks and what he is all about, do a walk cycle on him. You can tell a lot about people just by observing how people walk. So, if you have a character who's on crutches and particularly feisty, he'll have a particular gait."
"Like Nicodemus or the owl," chimes in Goldman. "Nicodemus has a very slow gait, wobbling, almost a limp, and he has a humped back. He has a very distinctive way of moving that lets you know what he is all about. Now when you first see the owl, an ancient, omnipotent and awesome figure (voiced by John Carradine), you think he is a very powerful creature, but when you see him walk...."
"It's almost pathetic," inturrupts Pomeroy. "At the end of the scene you become aware that this powerful figure is really very vulnerable. We animators are really surrogate actors with pencils. We try to fill a scene with emotional content. When the owl scene is over you feel like you've been in the presence of God, a very awesome personality, but yet there is something pathetic about him. The owl knows exactly what Mrs. Frisby is going through with the peril of her son dying, because you get the impression, from his walk and movement, that he knows he is going to die soon, too. Yet, it's not spoken, it's implied."
"You don't have much time in an animated feature," explains Goldman. "There's only about an hour and 15 minutes and you can't be too talky; you've got to say as much as you can as economically as possible and most of it cannot and should not be done with dialogue."
Good acting and strong characterization can do away with a lot of unnecessary dialogue. "Before the animation begins," explains Goldman, "our characters are very well defined, so that no matter which animator picks up a character in a given scene, the results are consistent. The secret is not to show your skill except in how well you 'hide' behind a characer. When you see the shrew in NIMH, you hear the voice (Hermione Baddeley) and you see the character, you don't see a caricature of me or John Pomeroy or any particular animator. The shrew has her own character and the animator's job is to make her very believable as the shrew.
"Or Mr. Ages with the voice of Arthur Malet. I defy you, even if you came to know each of us personally, to be able to spot which of us did which scenes. We can spot each other by our drawings styles, but once the drawings go through the clean-up people the tiny differences are eliminated."
At Don Bluth Productions it is not usually possible nor is it particularly desirable for one animator to stay with one character throughout the picture. Don Bluth himself explains his approach to "casting" scenes.
"I cast scenes or assign them to the animators who I think have a special affinity for a given scene. A comic scene might go to someone who I know has a really funny sense of humor, dramatic scenes to the people who are excited by the really dramatic moments. Casting is crucial. When you cast right and the animator has a success, they walk a little taller -- success breeds more confidence and makes them even better animators. If they ever fail, I know they die a little and I have to go patch that up. We get to know each other pretty well around here, so I can usually tell if a person is really going to be able to pull something off. I try to make sure that everybody here has plenty of space -- that they don't feel suffocated creatively, so I don't dictate too much.
"An artist is an egotist. An egotist is a self-oriented person. Animation requires teamwork. So we look for artists who can forget their egos momentarily and work in a give and take situation with his other artists. That's really one of the hardest things to accomplish. If it gets too competitive, they begin to work against one another; sometimes that works, but a lot of times it creates feelings which stop the creative process."
Having just spent several hours going from department to department within the studio, I wonder if there is anything that could stem the output of eager energy I see being generated everywhere I turn. Where does all this excitement come from?
"Animation itself is a very exciting thing," smiles Bluth boyishly. "When you look at a picture that's one thing, but the additional charge that happens inside of you when you see your work start to live is a thrill that you can't get anywhere else. There are those little pictures that you drew-- first they begin to move, then you see a character with a living spirit, a character that seems to move because of something inside of it...It's a special feeling.
"This is the feeling that attracts young people to animation. There are probably hundreds of young people who would like to get involved in animation, but there are not nearly enough places for them to work. So what happens to many of them is that they live their whole lives with this dream and then, at some point, they have to stab that dream...kill it and go to work doing something else. They never get a chance to do the dream, they can't earn a living at it. Classical animation is a beautiful art form that is in danger of dying out.
"Animation, full classical animation, is a very hard thing to learn how to do. you have to be a good draughtsman, of course; but more than that, the drawing ability has to be like breathing, effortless, it has to just happen. You have to be an actor, a show man, with a good sense of rhythm, color, timing, a sense of dance and drama. That's why we spent so many years in my garage. Learning those things you have to have a feel for...like a violinist learning the feel for where to put his fingers on the strings of a violin."
Classical animation takes a lot of time. The only technical developments that have helped to speed the process up is the use of the Xerox machine to transfer the drawings directly to cels and the use of the Lyon-Lamb video animation system. The Xerox process has come a long way from the sketchy black lines that characterized the process at first. Passing by the Xerox department at Bluth's studio, I watched technicians working with as many as twelve different colors of toner -- shades of grays and blues and browns -- to do away with the old black outline. The Lyon-Lamb video systems are used for "instant" pencil tests. Use of the system can save two or three days of an animator's precious time. Now, go-aheads or revisions can be made in minutes instead of the hours or days waiting for black and white pencil tests to come back from the lab. But beyond these improvements the basic art form remains unchanged.
Some animation houses in Hollywood churn out 12,000 feet of film a year in the form of television cartoons, but it will take Bluth Productions three years to produce 6,000 feet of classical animation. When complete, The Secret of NIMHwill contain approximately 1,000 background paintings and between 120,000 to 160,000 drawings done at the rate of two to four per artist per hour.
Don Bluth speaks of animation not as the process of making something move, but making something live. Working with pencil and paper, his artists are preoccupied with generating the spirit of life itself within their characters. In July audiences will decide for themselves how successful Bluth Productions has been when The Secret of NIMH is released. But if even a fraction of the enormous enthusiasm for animation that lives within the Bluth brigade is captured, the results will have been worthwhile.