[HN Gopher] Don Bluth's Garage Band
___________________________________________________________________
Don Bluth's Garage Band
Author : hoffmannesque
Score : 73 points
Date : 2024-04-20 21:00 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (animationobsessive.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (animationobsessive.substack.com)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> much had already been lost since the studio's best years._
|
| There was that awesome video, that someone shared here, a few
| days ago, that talked about recreating Disney's Oscar-winning
| sodium lamp process.
| mrighele wrote:
| Yes, I had that [1] in mind too when I saw this entry
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39962615
| leejoramo wrote:
| I was a child in the 1970s and loved Disney animation. Even at
| the time I could tell there was a decline the level of
| sophistation of the new films, although I still enjoyed them
|
| So many interesting angles to this story, that directly apply to
| software development:
|
| * document your Processes
|
| * investing in training.
|
| * creating space for people to follow thier passion
|
| .
| drewcoo wrote:
| > I could tell there was a decline the level of sophistation of
| the new films
|
| Cost has a lot to do with that. Compare 101 Dalmatians ('61)
| with Snow White ('37) and the newer one looks cheaper because
| it's cheaply made - copy machine tech instead of artists for
| part of the process.
| InTheArena wrote:
| As much hate as the Xerography process gets, this really
| wasn't true. The character designs for 101 Dalmatians were
| incredibly expensive, and they blamed the spots on the dogs.
| Part of the reason Bluth left was that cost control controls
| were put into place because of how expensive Dalmatians was.
|
| The real problem is that Disney movies boom or bust. The
| insane successes (Snow White, Dumbo) were offset by busts
| (Cinderella, Bambi). Ironically, even though we remember
| these are huge successes now, Bambi was released in the
| middle of WW2 when the international market was cut off, and
| Cinderella was a box office bomb.
|
| Disney still has this problem, which is why the death spiral
| of a Disney CEO is always when they start greenlighting
| sequel after sequel.
| allturtles wrote:
| > Cinderella was a box office bomb.
|
| Is that really so? Wikipedia says it was the 5th highest
| grossing film of 1950. [0] Quoting the same: "Walt Disney
| Studios' animated film Cinderella debuts. The film is the
| most successful the studio has made since Dumbo, and saves
| the studio from four million dollars in debt."
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_in_film.
| graton wrote:
| And a different site says that Cinderella was the #1 film
| of 1950.
|
| https://www.the-numbers.com/market/1950/top-grossing-
| movies
| InTheArena wrote:
| I meant sleeping beauty :(
|
| My bad.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Bluth's "garage band" was re-learning skills that had been off-
| shored. That's a piece of cont4ext that's sort of missing.
|
| Anyone interested in what happened when Disney's off-shored
| Italian animation team revolted should check out Allegro non
| troppo - a sendup of Fantasia.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegro_non_troppo
| mrighele wrote:
| Is there a longer story somewhere about this decline ?
|
| This piece is not really clear about the reasons _why_ younger
| talent wasn't being trained on those techniques. If you read
| the story it seems that everybody was looking forward at people
| learning and helping them doing so... so why was it not being
| done at Disney ?
|
| The link only mentions issues with the union, but it doesn't
| seem to me reasonable to think that it was the only reason.
| sdwr wrote:
| Organizations can calcify. Experienced people become
| incumbents, using their knowledge as a competitive advantage.
| New people don't respect the existing structure. It's half
| growing pains, half power struggle.
|
| A healthy organization takes these competing forces and
| integrates them. An unhealthy one (maybe one used to an
| overbearing, God-like leader?) clamps down, suppresses
| dissent, and lets the pressure build until something breaks.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Disney was a incredibly unionized shop. The 9 old men where
| still at Disney (though some had moved to different roles at
| Disney) at this point, the ink & paint was still at Disney.
|
| You can argue that Disney was stretched way too far during this
| period due to Disney's grandiose dreams in Florida.
|
| The difference was that Ollie and Frank hadn't bothered to
| write The Illusion of Life or tried to pass on their skills
| yet.
|
| If you want to write evils of anti-union Disney, go a few
| decades earlier to the late 30s and early 40s and the strike.
| ahefner wrote:
| "were". Not "where".
| Isamu wrote:
| This helps to answer some of the questions surrounding the
| decline of Disney animation after Walt died. In some ways you
| could blame the decline on him because he built an organization
| that depended too much on his judgment and guidance.
|
| The fact that so many core competencies were lost over the years
| is mostly on him. But then he started CalArts too.
| InTheArena wrote:
| It's a dirty, dark secret, but Walt and Disney were considering
| shutting down the animation studio near the end. It was simply
| unprofitable and expensive. Disney goes through massive cycles
| where they have boom and bust periods - that survives to this
| day.
|
| The leadership of the animation studio was a real issue here -
| they had no idea about how to mentor the next generation - it
| wasn't until Ollie and Frank explicitly worked to engage with
| the next generation after Bluth left Disney with the Illusion
| of Life that disney got serious about continuing animation.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Yes, and the 1980s the animation studio was on the verge of
| being disbanded before 1989's "The Little Mermaid" was a
| success and started the "Disney Renaissance" of the 1990s.
| Andrex wrote:
| This is something I've always worried about Nintendo, but they
| seem to be handling the generational creative changeovers well
| (for now).
| yterdy wrote:
| _> As Bluth remembered, older technical tricks like the "shadows
| or the reflections or the double passes through the camera" were
| "evaporating before our very eyes."1 The problem was bigger than
| that, too. Bluth and many of the other young trainees didn't know
| how to make a movie, and they weren't sure how to learn.
| According to Bluth's colleague Gary Goldman, "We didn't even know
| what questions to ask."
|
| >"We were learning to animate," Goldman explained. "We were
| learning to in-between, clean up ... and we said, 'Wait, there's
| so much more we need to know.' "
|
| >That included writing, scene planning, editing and more. Even
| the Nine Old Men had "forgotten" much of what went into Disney's
| older films, said animator John Pomeroy._
|
| IME, this is an incredibly widespread problem in the Age of the
| Retiring Baby Boomer. Many of them jealously guarded their
| professional knowledge, for fear of replacement, or simply never
| documented it. When it comes time to pass it along to juniors,
| they either can't or won't; then, with little official notice,
| they're out the door, and you're left building from first
| principles or trying to make sense of process spaghetti. I'm not
| sure if this is better or worse than the Boomers who stay on into
| their 70s and 80s - still refusing to train their juniors, but
| also preventing the advancement that would allow younger workers
| to even attempt to learn the position. ...No, I suppose
| retirement is better. At least there's some runway, instead of
| the incumbent simply dying one day and leaving everyone
| scrambling.
|
| EDIT: _> and there was a sense among the garage artists that
| Disney's management didn't care to implement most of the lessons
| from Banjo.
|
| "All of our learning is only going to do us any good," Pomeroy
| remembered thinking, "if the higher-ups will accept what we're
| trying to make happen."_
|
| And there's the other side of the deal. When you make people go
| off and learn things on their own, they often learn... that they
| can go off and do things on their own. Disney sort of won in the
| end, but Bluth was a thorn in their side for quite a while.
| fipar wrote:
| In my field (databases), the boomers I've worked with (a
| handful, to be honest) were all keen on sharing their
| knowledge. They also seemed happy that someone younger was
| actually listening and not just telling them that their
| knowledge from the 70s is outdated.
| Aloha wrote:
| A lot of them are not hoarding knowledge intentionally -
| they'll tell you the big pieces but leave out the connective
| glue - because its muscle memory.
| mrandish wrote:
| > When it comes time to pass it along to juniors, they either
| can't or won't...
|
| Some are that way I suppose but as I was learning, many far
| more experienced, late-career gurus went out of their way to
| teach me. It does require asking good questions and showing
| some genuine interest and engagement in learning though. It's
| also important to be able to show at least some aptitude which
| helps convince someone to invest the time in you.
|
| Over several decades and lots of hands-on experience, I
| eventually advanced to proven veteran status myself and I was
| pretty much constantly trying to teach the newer recruits the
| deeper work of not just how to do it but why and how to think
| about the overall process. I think I managed to do some good
| since several of the newbies I informally mentored have now
| become senior vets themselves. However, several times I was
| actually told by the division head to spend less time
| explaining to my staff and just do the work myself as quickly
| as possible.
|
| Even though I'm now happily retired, I regularly volunteer as a
| guest lecturer at several university programs. Like many
| fields, full-time professors don't really have the breadth of
| practical experience or real-world skills themselves. The good
| ones realize this and rely on people like me who've
| successfully done it over decades to fill in the gaps.
| basil-rash wrote:
| > In Canada, Icon Creative Studio is trying to unionize. This
| comes at a time of huge union wins in North American animation,
| including the new one at DreamWorks.
|
| This is the same DreamWorks animation guild that just had its
| entire TV staff laid off in flavor of overseas vendor studios?
| Odd. Plus the piece itself seemed rather anti-union. The whole
| reason this guy split off was because of bullshit union
| restrictions.
| stefanpie wrote:
| Cool nugget from the article: "the software that Studio Ghibli
| used to make Spirited Away has been free for years"
|
| https://opentoonz.github.io/
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-04-22 23:02 UTC)