Don Bluth's Garage Band

https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/don-bluths-garage-band

by hoffmannesque • 2 years ago

76 26 2 years ago

animationobsessive.substack.com

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.

mrighele2• 2 years ago

Yes, I had that [1] in mind too when I saw this entry

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39962615

leejoramo• 2 years ago

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

drewcoo2• 2 years ago

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.

InTheArena4• 2 years ago

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.

drewcoo2• 2 years ago

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

mrighele2• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

hondo77• 2 years ago

The film Waking Sleeping Beauty touches on this a bit.

InTheArena4• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

"were". Not "where".

Isamu• 2 years ago

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.

InTheArena4• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

This is something I've always worried about Nintendo, but they seem to be handling the generational creative changeovers well (for now).

yterdy2• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

yterdy2• 2 years ago

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.

IME, reminding them of themselves is far more important than any curiosity, aptitude, or drive you may bring to the table (other than in that it reflects their self-image). That similarity often creates a pseudo-familial affinity which serves as the unconscious backbone of the relationship. This is the reason why cross-ethnic and cross-gender (and cross-class, cross-sexuality, etc.) mentorship seems to happen less often than when the mentor and prospective mentee are of the same gender and ethnic identity.

You got lucky and/or are a straight white dude in a field largely occupied by straight white dudes. What happens for the rest of us is usually one of two outcomes:

a) The mentor makes an effort to support the mentee, but holds them to unreasonably high standards per unconscious bias, generally causing the relationship to disintigrate over time.

b) The mentor is threatened by the prospective mentee's aptitude appearing in an individual that they can't bring themselves to relate to; they will withhold support, if not actively impede their growth.

basil-rash• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Cool nugget from the article: "the software that Studio Ghibli used to make Spirited Away has been free for years"

https://opentoonz.github.io/

cbluth• 2 years ago

Uncle, is that you?

Don Bluth's Garage Band

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