James Baxter Animation studio?!?

Post by **Guardstone** » December 13th, 2004, 4:44 pm

According to the article on this site, it's just a matter of time!
http://jrhull.typepad.com/seward_street ... er_an.html

Post by **Stego** » December 13th, 2004, 10:09 pm

I (as well as several others, i'm sure) have sorta had a feeling this would happen. There's just too much talent out there that was ousted from Disney to just be squandered and thrown away. We should probably expect to see much more of this...probably several of the Disney artists teaming up together to make their own companies.

Oh well, it's just a matter of time until Disney realizes this grand mistake and hires everyone back, isn't it

Post by **Ben** » December 14th, 2004, 2:43 pm

Don't forget that we've already had Legacy Animation, Funnypages, and Project Firefly - all animation studios that opened up in the wake of WDFA-F closure.

Good luck to Baxter - he's a telented guy - but it looks like the lesson of Bluth still has to filter through (in that grand scale animation is still only viable with a studio backing).

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » December 14th, 2004, 10:10 pm

Good luck -- he'll need it.

Legacy Animation got announced and then up and died all in less than half a year. Their funding partner pulled the stakes out from under them and they just couldn't make a go of it.

A lot of these other companies that are still around are surviving doing minor CGI work, storyboarding, and supplying art for videogame companies.

It's a brutal business for small animation companies now and not everybody will make it.

I've looked around and noticed more than a few companies have either scaled back their employee and freelance rosters dramatically or have folded up entirely in the wake of Disney Feature Animation's closings in Orlando and Burbank.

Heck, there was a local animation production company in my neck of the woods -- Character Builders -- that closed last year after being in business as a supplier to Disney and other companies for almost 20 years.

There's just no way a company totally focused on traditional or theatrical animation will make it without CGI work or supplying design aid and storyboards to other companies...

I don't know the situation in Europe, but I notice how there are hardly any traditionally animated commercials on TV anymore. Whatever shows up on television is a bunch of digital FX, mediocre or decent CGI animation. I really don't seen many hand-drawn animated commercials any more. This is very different than the ways things were in the 1970s, 1980s, and through about the mid-1990s.

Post by **Christian** » December 14th, 2004, 10:17 pm

I've learned not to get excited about news of these small studios opening shop. It doesn't mean much until their first production is released. Go to the Fan Film message board at theforce.net and you'll see plenty of threads along the lines of, "Big news everyone! I'm going to make a film!" Then nothing ever comes of them. This is not to put down anybody's efforts or to say they better just give up now, but there's just no reason to get excited until something of quality is actually created.

Post by **Guardstone** » December 18th, 2004, 6:22 am

Christian wrote:I've learned not to get excited about news of these small studios opening shop. It doesn't mean much until their first production is released.

Yeah, but... this is James Baxter...

I've been a fan of this man ever since Beauty and the Beast. For me, he's up there with Glen Keane.

Sigh...

You guys are probably right though, the odds are against any small 2D animation studio. I didn't even know about Legacy going down. It would have been smarter if all these smaller initiatives had grouped together to form a new studio.

Post by **Christian** » December 18th, 2004, 1:40 pm

Remember my last sentence:

This is not to put down anybody's efforts or to say they better just give up now, but there's just no reason to get excited until something of quality is actually created.

The first part gets as much emphasis as the last part.