SIGGRAPH 2006
Thanks to inexpensive
technology, computer animation is booming. But which
companies have what it takes to become the next
Pixar?
By Scott Kirsner
| SIGGRAPH 2006 |
 Win,
lose or draw
Thanks to
inexpensive technology, computer animation is
booming. But which companies have what it takes
to become the next Pixar?
Going
for gold
Handicapping the
nominees and winners for feature animation and
effects work.
| | The
field of computer animation is having a "Sorcerer's
Apprentice" moment. Like bucket-toting brooms from the
1940 Walt Disney Co. classic "Fantasia," animation firms
are replicating at a frenzied rate nationwide, each
angling to challenge the dominance of the Big Three
producers of child-friendly digital features: Disney's
Pixar division, DreamWorks Animation and Fox's Blue Sky
Studios.
When they convene
Sunday-Thursday in Boston for the annual Siggraph
computer graphics trade show, the crop of fledgling
animation studios is likely to discuss the intensifying
competition in their business -- for everything from
financing to talent to distributors to the best foreign
collaborators. Based in such places as Portsmouth, N.H.,
Dallas and Portland, Ore., these upstarts share two
beliefs: that a good story is essential, and that they
can make features for a fraction of what the Big Three
spend, often by leveraging offshore resources.
"By my count, there are 16
computer-generated movies scheduled for release this
year, and there have been about 16 released over the
last 10 years," says Marc Dole, president of Hatchling
Studios, a 22-person animation firm in Portsmouth that
is raising money to begin work on its first feature.
"You worry that the market can get flooded; you worry
that someone else could have a similar story, as we saw
with 'The Wild' from Disney and 'Madagascar' from
DreamWorks. You're not a businessperson if you don't
worry."
The boxoffice
success of a long series of CG-animated films from the
Big Three, as well as Disney's $7.4 billion acquisition
of Pixar in January, has fueled such amped-up activity.
"The Pixar acquisition has attracted a lot of private
equity to the space," says Charles Rivkin, president and
CEO of San Francisco's Wild Brain Entertainment.
The profusion of CG-animated
features has an upside, according to Janet Healy,
president of animation production at IDT Entertainment,
a Newark, N.J.-based firm acquired by Liberty Media for
$186 million in May. "When you're making a movie for
$100 million, plus overhead, that movie has to be all
things to all people," says Healy, a former technology
executive at Disney and DreamWorks. "When you're making
movies for $25 million or $30 million, as we are, you
can tell stories about characters who are inspiring or
heroic or entertaining, not just joke-filled
roller-coaster rides."
IDT
Entertainment's first feature, "Everyone's Hero," is set
for a Sept. 15 release through 20th Century Fox's Fox
Faith division, which distributes family-oriented and
Christian films.
Scott
Stewart, chairman of Hollywood-based Orphanage Animation
Studios, believes that more animated releases will
result in not only various types of stories getting told
but also a broader range of animation styles. "If Pixar
is the Disney of CG animation, then we'd like to try to
be the Warner Bros.," he says. "There's a lot of room to
do more than has been done stylistically and creatively
in the last 10 years. We're still in the infancy of this
art form."
Orphanage
Animation Studios, an arm of the Orphanage visual
effects shop, is developing a CG feature of its own and
working with the Jim Henson Co. on "The Power of the
Dark Crystal," tentatively slated for a 2008 release.
Animated movies from the Big
Three tend to sport price tags north of $75 million. All
of the challengers intend to make movies for $50 million
or less -- in some cases, much less.
Stewart sees a developing animation
marketplace that resembles a three-layer cake, with
low-budget, medium-budget and big-budget releases;
previously, when the necessary hardware and software
were expensive and not widely available and the
expertise required to make a CG film scarce, nearly all
computer-animated features were big-budget endeavors.
"(The Weinstein Co.'s 2005
release) 'Hoodwinked' bifurcated the market: It had a
certain charm, even though the animation was low-end,"
Stewart says. "But it showed that parents want something
to do with their kids, and there was nothing else in the
market over the holidays." ("Hoodwinked" was made for an
estimated $15 million-$20 million by Kanbar Animation
Studios in the Philippines and has grossed more than $70
million worldwide to date.) Stewart adds that his firm,
as well as rivals DNA Prods. and O Entertainment,
expects to be in the middle tier, making movies in the
$40 million-$50 million range.
Ralph Guggenheim, a producer on Pixar's 1995
release "Toy Story," the world's first CG-animated
feature, is proudly more frugal than that. "We're very
interested in the $8 million-$10 million animated
feature we know can be made," says Guggenheim, now CEO
of San Francisco-based Alligator Planet.
Alligator Planet has only five
employees to complement a worldwide network of partners
and contractors. For the company's upcoming
direct-to-video release "Casper's Scare School,"
Guggenheim says he "used an animation studio in India, a
composer in London and a director in Australia."
The question of whether U.S.
audiences will reject features made inexpensively
overseas is hotly debated among animation executives.
While the made-in-Manila "Hoodwinked" proved profitable,
the Weinstein Co.'s February release "Doogal," "Wild"
and 2005's "Valiant" -- made in France, Canada, and the
U.K., respectively -- were disappointments. "If you can
maintain the storytelling quality and you've got decent
image quality, then storytelling will always trump
visuals," Guggenheim says.
Some say location plays an important role in
keeping costs down. "Our movie would cost approximately
$45 million if we made it in the (San Francisco) Bay
Area," says Kelly Alan Williamson, CEO of CritterPix
Studios, a San Rafael, Calif.-based firm that is
shopping the screenplay "Hollywood Vermin." (An earlier
CritterPix project, co-produced by New Regency, has
languished.) "If we do it in the Far East, we can get
our costs down to about $25 million, and we're really
confident that there won't be a visible quality
difference."
But Orphanage
is taking the opposite tack and plans to hire
several-hundred animators in the Bay Area. "It's not
that there aren't incredibly talented Indian animators,
but you don't get Bugs Bunny without Chuck Jones,"
Stewart says. "It's not a commodity; it's a
performance."
Venice,
Calif.-based Blur Studio is developing the features
"Gopher Broke" and "Rockfish," both based on popular
short films that have played the festival circuit. "I
don't want to go offshore for a variety of reasons, none
of them patriotic," Blur president and creative director
Tim Miller says. "I would miss being able to interact
with an artist, walking over to his desk and saying,
'Let's see that shot you're working on,' and talking
about it."
IDT occupies
middle ground in the offshoring debate, sending its
animation north of the border -- to a 220-person Toronto
studio that it owns and a studio in Vancouver that it is
building with Vanguard Animation, IDT's production
partner on Fox's planned 2008 release "Space Chimps."
"Canada is easy to get to, and everyone speaks English,"
Healy says. "There's a long legacy of Canadian animation
talent, plus you've got the tax credits."
Despite some work being sent
beyond U.S. borders, many animation executives expect
the hiring pace in their field to be heated for the
foreseeable future. This year's installment of Siggraph
figures to double as a recruiting fair, as it does each
year. "It's always hard to find the really good people,"
Miller says.
Adds Stewart,
"Recruiting is hot now, it was hot last year, and it
will continue to be hot for a while."
At Portland, Ore.-based Laika Entertainment,
CEO Dale Wahl plans to expand his staff from 100 to 500
employees. Formerly Will Vinton Studios, Laika is owned
by Nike founder Phil Knight. The firm announced plans
last month to build a 30-acre campus in the suburbs of
Portland.
While the first
decade of computer-animated features, beginning with
"Toy Story," was ruled by three major players that
cranked out successful big-budget movies, some animation
executives expect their field to look more like the
realm of live-action movies during its second decade,
with diverse budgets, stories, characters and visual
styles.
Williamson compares
the surge in CG features to "the indie film phenomenon
of the late 1980s and early 1990s, where you had a huge
volume spike in independently made live-action movies.
Only the good ones stand out."
Guggenheim predicts that "there will be the
lovingly made independent animated features like
(2004's) 'Sideways' or a Coen brothers movie, and then
there will be the massive Pixar-style blockbuster movies
on the high end."
Only
Rivkin, a former president and CEO of the Jim Henson
Co., is willing to say what most executives at
young-and-hungry animation studios probably understand:
that even those lucky enough to land a distribution deal
and release a successful feature might not grow into
pillars of the industry. "You'll see some of the smaller
studios shutting down," Rivkin predicts, "and only a
handful rising to the level of a Pixar or
DreamWorks."
Published July
28, 2006
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