Disney's Future in Animation

Disney Animation Arm Adds Depth with 5 New Films

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Walt Disney Feature Animation has made its first public recruiting pitch to the animation community in four years with executives from the studio unveiling five films on which they are working. They also showed off the animation tools they are using as Disney makes the transition from traditional 2-D pen-and-ink animation to 3-D computer animated features. A team of Dis-ney executives on Tuesday made an impassioned plea for the Los Angeles Professional Chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH – the area's premiere computer graphics artists – to join the animation studio during a ses-sion at the ArcLight cinema complex in Hollywood. The program included preview material from five 3-D computer animated movies in the pipeline, which will comprise the studio's homegrown animation slate through 2008.

? Nearly 10 minutes of scenes and set pieces from "Chicken Little" demonstrated how Disney is tack-ling such technical and artistic computer animation challenges as fluid simulations, chicken feathers and fur, subjected to sophisticated wind modules.
? The Disney team touted the company's new Glendale-based computer animation building, which is earmarked for "Toy Story 3" production, which Disney is proceeding with under its contractual right to produce sequels to the Pixar films. The story follows Buzz Lightyear as he is recalled to Taiwan af-ter a series of malfunctions. Learning of a product-wide recall, all the toys in Andy's room, under Woody's leadership, head to Taiwan to save Buzz from doom.
? A second project, tentatively titled "A Day With Wilbur Robinson," based on the book by William Joyce, follows a time-traveling 12-year-old orphan who hooks up with a 13-year-old kid from the fu-ture in settings that recall 1930's "Metropolis" and the cartoon television series "The Jetsons." The project stars stylized young human protagonists and a mustachioed and bowler-capped villain.
? Ten minutes of rough story boards, hand-drawn animatics, and raw computer animation were shown from the tentatively titled "American Dog," from director Chris Sanders ("Lilo & Stitch"), which is scheduled for release in 2007. Sanders' canine, a TV star, drinks martinis with starlets and showboats on sets until he is suddenly abandoned in his trailer in the Nevada desert where he meets up with a radioactive rabbit and a one-eyed cat who are trying to find new homes.
? Also shown were brief test shots from "Rapunzel Unbraided," scheduled for release in 2008. Long-time Disney animator Glenn Keane, best known for animating the Beast in 1991's "Beauty and the Beast," is making his directorial debut with the movie starring a computer-animated princess.