Written by steet :
Recently, I've read a lot of news on many sites (especially animators sites), in order to know "what's coming". And I have found many "behind the scenes" (mostly Disney related) , that I thought were enough important to share :
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Universal has closed down their "Universal Animation Studios" facility since mid-2009. I'm not sure how to understand this news, because it seems they're still making CGI films though not indoors ("Despicable Me" is coming soon), but we DO know that they stopped making anymore Land Before Time sequels and series. So yes, we can safely assume that the facility behind the Balto, An American Tail or Land Before Time Direct-To-Video sequels is no more...Their last film is Curious George 2, which is finished since ages but has yet to be released in most countries. (including USA)
http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/state-of-industry-and-tag.html
- The trend since the 2000's for big animation companies, is to hire animators for one project when they're needed, and get rid of them when it's finished. For example, most of the staff behind The Princess & The Frog has been dismissed since last summer. (a few months BEFORE its release) During the last century, the animators would stay at a company as long as there were projects. That doesn't sound very respectful to their employees...And you have to wonder what happens when they switch from one company to the other. (what's the point in teaching, giving out secrets of animation making, if that's to "give" the employees to other companies?)
- Disney's Snow Queen, which was going to be the next "big" 2D project, has been shelved. Likewise, their other CGI project ("King of Elves") has also been cancelled. Which makes us wonder : what's going on? Not only this means there won't be any other hand-drawn film before ages ( 
), but their mid-term future is a blur, something that rarely happened before. (Of course, I'm not counting the Pixar projects - they're a different entity. Not counting the "Pooh" feature film either, because...well...you see what I mean.)
- Currently, it seems that Disney is blaming the not-fantastic box office of The Princess & The Frog on its name - they now think that adding "Princess" in the title wasn't a good thing (so what are they waiting to change the DVD cover, then??) Personally, if I were them, I would rather blame their "Disney Princesses" brand for giving a very bad image of fairy tales stories to anyone who's not a little girl... As a result, Rapunzel (their current CGI project slated for release this year) is very likely to have a name change before it gets released this fall. Apparently, the chosen name is "Tangled" (strange name for a Rapunzel fairy tale...) As always, that's a very short-term vision : it may do some favors to the film on its release, but will someone want to watch a Disney film named "Tangled" in decades, which doesn't give any hint on what the subject of the film is? I seriously doubt it.
Yes, that's not very joyful news - sorry! 
Stay tooned for more to come...
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However, as our society goes and how culture goes, when something does well and is popular.... people demand and use more of it. So since Avatar was popular and sold very well (even if it wasnt original) they are going to exploit as much as they can out of it.
I would love to see a Balto 4..... even more, a digitally (better) remastered Balto. I would go see it atleast 8 times in theaters and i would actually suspect that i wouldnt be the only one doing that. if it actually happened and that many people saw it that many times, it might make a statement.
But for the time being, we are going to have to except the fact that society, or atleast those who are more prominent and have more sway in it, does not want the traditional.... they want the next best thing...
sometimes the reality is not the reality we want. But endurance and perseverance always pay off. So we just have to keep moving forward (meet the robinsons reference) and make sure WE stay true to what we know and love BALTO!! haha
rs
and his fans are such sheep.
-Edited by Sushi Roll, due to inappropriate language-
dog
assics
tugalTCG
Yes, the current economic situation is difficult, though that doesn't explain everything.
On the opposite, I would believe that in such situation, people would reject the "dark / violent / depressive" films / series and be more attracted to "joyful / comedic" ones, but it seems the world is not running on the same logic.
Though, The Princess & The Frog IS a major success here in France, on par with the Disney animated films from the 90's. Too bad the same didn't happen in the US...
my point there is, that animation in movies it going from the standard for family films, to more or less a "tv or broadcast" thing only.
it's nice to see 2d animation on the comeback, but animators in colleges and the field, are being more trained with CGI and Adobe Flash rather then drawing the scenes.
so it is also lack of talent, what you are seeing comming back to the big screen is, stop motion, we saw that with "fantastic mr. fox" last november, and, lo and behold, that movie BOMBED, yet, Cameron's "Avatar" made WELL OVER it's budget (1.6 BILLION), and the movie SUCKED ASS, it's just a high-tech 2 and a half out "dances with wolves"
and NBC has their own (censored) right now (the network is dying, all they got to their name right now is the two 24/7 cable networks (CNBC and MSNBC), well, make that Univals as well, USA, bravo, etc, you know what i mean
who's to say they didn't have a say in shutting the studio down?
truth is, Universal doesn't really put out any animation feature films(theatrical releases) and hasn't since like the late 90's-early 2000's.
in this tough economy some programs just gotta get the boot.
Batman
That's a shame, Disney shouldn't give up, Walt Disney lived for 2D animation.
Joe
Wolf
But this is very recent news, because Andreas Deja (one of the Disney animators) said in a french interview that he was very excited to be working on it. (so he didn't know it was cancelled at the time)
I know they have to worry about the box office and all that other stuff,but don't they realize that we still love their original work?!
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