The second day of the trip, we got up early, and headed to the Disney Animation Studios. Unfortunately, we were stuck in traffic, so we missed touring the ink and paint department, and some of the sound stages, but what we still did get to see was great. I thought Hanna Barbera was cool, but this was spectacular. We were made to check our cameras at the front desk, and we signed a confidentiality agreement, so I can't talk about some things, but I'll tell you what I can.

The second I stepped into the building, I knew I was in a place where dreams were made. We first went to the video conference room where we met Tenny Chonin, our guide. We watched a video, featuring Robin Williams, that described the Disney animation process. After that, we watched a video showing clips, storyboards, production art etc... of five upcoming Disney animated features. Now, most of the reason we signed the confidentiality agreement was so that we wouldn't say anything about these movies, but some of them we saw later at the World Animation Celebration, and Hercules was already in theaters, so I guess I can tell you a bit about those. Ok, I'm about to let loose with a lot of information on the upcoming films, I'd jsut like to point out that all the information I have here is readilly availabe on other places on the net, magazines, etc... so techinally, I am not breaking the confidentiality agreement since I'm not spilling the beans on any of the stuff that I saw there, and was not able to find anywhere else. There was more that I saw, but I won't say anything about it until I see it somewhere else ;-) The Films we saw there were:

there wasn't much for these up, nothing on the video, just a tiny bit of initial artwork, Altantis looks VERY cool. lots of interesting characters up, a cute little robot, an alien mutant thingy... tho he was cute in a reptilian sort of way. and it will NOT be a musical *gasp!* yep that's right, not one character will sing a song. Kingdom.... tough to say, how good it will be, there were no character designs up that I saw, just some pictures of Aztec pyramids, but as far as I know, it will have songs. oh well.

****adendum as of 2003: Well, as i was getting this page back up i was reading and... well i am sure you've guessed, Kingdom of the Sun became The Emperor's New Groove. I must say I was very plesantly surprised by the movie, and also surprised by what ended up on screen! While at the studios, the artwork and the general tone for the film looked to me to be very very DARK. There was even a scene depicting human sacrafice, and not a llama in sight. It had obviously undergone a very thorough re-working since I was there, stylistically. I must say, Emperors New groove went on to be one of my very favourite Disney movies, it is an exceptionally crafted film. But it was definately not what i was expecting. From the tour, I was expecting Atlantis to kick all kinds of ass, and wasn't so enthused about Kingdom/Emperor... but then when i actually saw them, Atlantis was a huge let down for me. while beautiful, the plot was contrived and so full of holes that it ruined it for me. on the otherhand, Emperor's new Groove was jsut thoroughly entertaining all round... ah well. :)

Next, we went to the life-drawing room, where we had lunch, and animator Brian Ferguson gave a presentation. Brian is actually from Edmonton, just north of Calgary. My teacher, er... ex teacher, Mr. Bester, knows his sister, and brought pictures of Brian's baby niece, who he got to see for the first time that day. Back to the presentation. Brian has animated such memorable characters as Iago, the parrot in Aladdin, Timone from the Lion King, Panic in Hercules, and will be working on the Matchmaker in Mulan. You know that scene in the Lion King where Timon distracts the hyenas by hula dancing? Well, this guy animated that in a mere two days! He showed us clips of his work, including line-tests where he used his hands as stand ins for the the characters. He told us all about how he got into animation, and what it was like working at Disney.

After Brian's presentation, we got on with the actual tour. As we were led through the building, there were areas with black carpet, and areas with red carpet. Black carpet areas were strictly forbidden, other than that, we pretty much had free run of the place. There was production art up from all the movies I mentioned before. We looked into Roy Disney's office, which is located in the giant wizards hat which adorns the front of the building, and basically we just wandered around looking at the artwork and occasionally poking our heads into the artists work spaces. Most of them don't have actual offices: they are a little short on room.

The artists at Disney are so talented, it's no wonder they are considered to be the best in the industry.

California Trip

Hanna Barbera

The World Animation Celebration

Philip Alexy (ILM animator)

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