Disney

Four Insightful Articles From Animation History

3 Comments / Animation /

By way of Sherm Cohen’s excellent blog, I learned of the truly fascinating Modern Mechanix blog. A site devoted to all those old magazines that said we would have flying cars and living on the moon by now. Anyway, Sherm has already posted a few articles on his blog but here are four more insightful articles from animation history.

View each article in their entirety by clicking on the images.

How the First Color Cartoons were Made

MOVIE CARTOONS Gain THIRD Dimension

The Fleischer 3-D backgrounds to be exact.

The Magic Worlds of Walt Disney

A massive (50 page) article in the National Geographic from 1963 that’s all about the man himself and the organization he built with his brother Roy. Quite literally a must-read.

Tron: Computer Technology Goes Hollywood

 

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There’s Little Reason To Freak Out Over Motorcity’s Ratings

1 Comment / Animation /

 

Via: Wired

Now I will admit that I have yet to see Disney/Titmouse’s latest series, Motorcity, but what I have heard has been mostly positive, so I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt here. Last week, I cam upon this post over on Tumblr (I know, I know, grain of salt  etc.) that extols fans to watch and talk about the show. The reason is simple; :”It’s not doing very well”.

This apparent lack of success is measured thus:

According to wikipedia, the show only scraped up half a million views for its premiere episode, and since then each new episode premiere has averaged at around 0.3 million views. That’s only 300,000 people an episode, and reruns are probably getting even fewer views, as the fanbase is tiny and almost every single episode has been leaked onto the internet prior to airtime. The show’s on hiatus right now and could be in serious danger of getting canceled soon.

In a country of 300 million, 300,000 does seem like an appallingly low number. However, things are not as bad as the post’s author makes it out to be.

A cursory glance around the interwebs reveals that Disney XD (the channel on which Motorcity is broadcast) actually doesn’t have an audience much larger than 300,000. In fact, that’s about as high as its ever gotten (Q2 2012 viewer numbers was 390,000). So in fact, Motorcity is performing pretty much in line with the channel’s overall performance.

So if the show is performing as good as the network itself, there is little reason to freak out over the ratings is there? No, there isn’t. Now naturally more viewers is better, but networks always aim for a specific number (that is never known unless the show tanks) and in this instance, I would doubt they were aiming for a million viewers for the simple reason that the network itself doesn’t support that many viewers.

What certainly isn’t known is how viewers are faring on other platforms such as DVR or streaming. Those numbers are likely to be of much more value because as yesterday’s post alluded to, many young ‘uns spend a lot of time watching content online, far away from the Nielson box.

So to conclude, Motorcity’s viewer numbers are not so bad as to get in a tizzy over. If the show was to be cancelled over low ratings, it would have done so already.

UPDATE: So it would appear that the show is now officially cancelled, but don’t forget that this post was written months ago at a time when all the indicators pointed to a successful season. Remember that networks can cancel a show at any time and for practically any reason. By all accounts, Motorcity was performing commendably.

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Which American Kids Network Online Store is the Best?

Animation /

Funnily enough, it never crosses my mind that they three major kids networks here in the US actually have online stores of their own (the Hub has no store of their own, yet). My default destination for online shopping is Amazon, and not just because they have everything. So I thought it might be interesting to actually visit said stores and have a nosey around in there to see what they sell and how well they’re doing it.

Nickelodeon

NIckelodeon online shop screenshot

Starting with Nickelodeon, the homepage greets us with some featured shows, some specials some top sellers and an advertisement (because we all go to shops to buy stuff. In fairness to Nick, they’ve got merchandise for a good chunk of their shows (no Teenage Robot though) and actually go pretty far back too, Alex Mack anyone?

What they’re actually selling though is up for debate. Setting aside SpongeBob as the exception, Nick is a bit odd when it comes to certain things. For example, men’s apparel; which consists solely of skateboard decks. Yup, that’s a new one for me too. Naturally the kids apparel and toys are well catered too, but adults are going to feel distinctly left out.

Interestingly enough, Nick does have a ‘Nickelodeon U‘ section of the store that contains four pieces of apparently random SpongeBob merchandise. Yes, you can buy SpongeBob golf balls, golf club socks, a hamper and a shower curtain. Surely this wins as the most amusing thing I found on there.

The site itself is horribly difficult to navigate and is clearly not intended to be kid-friendly. It seems to be more of a token effort than something that is given serious attention by Viacom.

Disney

This one is a clear winner. Selling merchandise has been the cornerstone of the Disney empire since its foundation and their current online outlet continues the tradition. You can buy anything and everything there (including some fabulously overpriced fine art) and the company isn’t shy about leveraging the entire organisation either. You can buy Disney Channel, studio and park merchandise all in the one place. In other words, if it’s Disney-related, you can buy it. The store itself is easy to navigate and with tons of products, its possible to find something you want.

What I did find to be the interesting part of the store is the homepage itself. Take a look at it. Who’s it targeting? Kids obviously, but if you scroll just a wee bit further down the page, it becomes clear that the Disney Princess brand is being flogged for all its worth. You’ll also note that girls come before boys in the menu bar. Now that is not to say it’s a bad thing, but like Rebecca Hains, I just tend to take a dim view on how Disney targets girls in particular.

Cartoon Network

Lastly, we come to Cartoon Network, long the dark hose of the three but now enjoying either top or second billing. The network has really improved its online store over the version I visited a couple of years ago. Now instead of nothing, there is a ton of stuff, but not just any old crap.

All three networks have the now-obligatory iPhone cases but only CN puts them on the front page. Behind the facade there is a very well-designed and laid out store that could easily be navigated by anyone.

Besides the clear groupings of shows and types of merchandise at the top of the screen, the stuff itself is perhaps the best of all the networks. It would seem that Turner has gotten its act together as of late with a really good variety of products. I mean, OK, there still is the odd dodgy article and the usual toys, but how about not one, but two choices of Powerpuff Girls canteens? Or the fact that they sell stuff for a good many of the classic shows that have been off the network for maybe 10 years or more?

Of course as good a job as CN does, it could do better. Plenty of the shirts that are available elsewhere aren’t available here. So anything in Hot Topic or WeLoveFine isn’t there. A loss for sure on CN’s part because as good as their stuff is, the most exciting stuff is being done away from corporate control.

Overall

Overall, the winner in terms of range is clearly Disney. However in terms of actually creating a great looking shop that will appeal to their audience, Cartoon Network is on top. The loser in all of this is Nickelodeon, although they sell so much through traditional channels, they are likely not as worried as they should be.

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A Comparison of Merida and Rapunzel

5 Comments / Animation, Disney, Pixar /
Guess which one scares me more?

It struck me there just last week that we’ve seen two major princess movies from the Disney umbrella in the last few years, although despite claims that we’ll see no more, one is already well under way. So I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at the two already released to see just how different, or similar they are. The two in question are of course Merida from Pixar’s Brave and Rapunzel from Walt Disney’s Tangled.

For starters, they’re both teenagers. Yes, every adults favourite people to hate and for good reason. Teenagers tend to be obnoxious, whiny, annoying, conniving, rude, clumsy and above all, rebellious. Both Rapunzel and Merida imbue all these qualities ans more in their respective films. Merida directly disobeys her mother as does Rapunzel.

Both seem to have issues with issues with the life that is set out for them. Merida as a wife to an eejit and Rapunzel as an everlasting source of life for Mother Goethal. Neither is satisfied and both disobey the requisite adult. However, that is where the similarity ends, as Merida dashes off into the woods, her mother is fully aware that she has left. Rapunzel, in contrast, sneakily knows that her mother is gone and is more than willing to head off without her knowledge. Rapunzel is clearly the fuller character in this case.

Both characters coincidentally have wild hair, but whereas Rapunzel’s is a plot device, Merida’s is more of a set piece that is played up multiple times throughout the film. It’s fair to say that while Rapunzel’s hair adds to her character, Merida’s can’t help but distract the viewer, as was the case when it was highlighted in just about every single review of the film.

Both princesses are strong female characters 9the kind we all know and love) but Merida is undoubtedly the lesser of the two. The reasons here are complicated, but the long and winding gestation and execution of Brave are probably the root cause. In Tangled, Rapunzel’s character evolves throughout the film. She has to learn to trust Flynn Rider Eugene Fitzherbet (a good ol’ Irish surname there) and only by going through her experiences does she learn the truth about her past.

Merida on the other hand is very much presented as is. Yes, she does learn a lesson in the course of the film, but that doesn’t change her character. She’s still fundamentally the same person at the beginning as she is at the end. We learn (comparatively) little about her. A rather disappointing state of affairs given the wonderful setup we’re given (ancient Scotland and all that).

The princesses approach to love is also drastically different. Rapunzel is more than happy to comply with the established Disney norms; Merida, not so much. It should be noted that neither approach is right or wrong but in Tangled, love is clearly meant to imply marriage whereas in Brave, marriage does not necessarily imply love; an important distinction but one that tends to go against the formula for princess movies.

Overall, both are likeable character that despite their teenage label have mass appeal beyond the kids. It’s curious how different the two characters are despite Pixar’s attempt to make Brave a different kind of film. In the end though, we should be grateful that both films give the characters enough room for them to come into their own.

 

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Disney, Nick, Netflix, No?

Animation /

This is an interesting story, an analyst called Todd Juenger has come out with a report about children’s programming, and one of the key points he makes, is that both Disney and Viacom (owner of Nickelodeon) should limit the amount of programming they give to Netflix. The problem as he sees it is that Netlfix, which is sans ads and allows users to cherry pick what they watch. is a threat to both companies’ existing business models:

 His advice for entertainment companies is to be cautious about how much kids programming they make available to the online video streaming provider and in which windows. “We remain firm in our belief Viacom and Walt Disney should limit their content availability on Netflix,” Juenger wrote.

As big a no-brainer as it is, it’s still amazing to see this kind of recommendation being made. Yes, it is a threat to the existing business model, but it also represents opportunities for new revenue streams, or even attracting new audiences to existing properties. I can tell you right now that if Avatar: The Last Airbender wasn’t on Netflix, there is only a slim chance that I would have even tried to watch it. Now that I have, I plan on buying all the DVDs. Yay new revenue for Viacom!

Instead we get a recommendation to partition content into individual companies’ services, not unlike Disney’s Keychest. Hardly a practical solution. I’m old enough to know that the internet didn’t really start firing on all cylinders until people discovered a world outside the walled garden that was AOL. Online viewing should not be going in the opposite direction.

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Disney & Pixar Should Not Make Any Marvel Cartoons [repost]

2 Comments / Animation /

Via: Screenrant

Just a little bit over a year ago I posted a bit of a rant about how Disney & Pixar had no business engaging in productions of Marvel properties, despite the fact that Disney owns the lot. My position hasn’t changed but the fact that there is a supposed co-production in the works, has spurred me to re-post it below.

There I said it. Disagree if you must, but please hear me out before you judge me!

Two years ago, The Walt Disney Company agreed to buy Marvel Entertainment in a massive deal that cost so much money, I could very happily live for the remainder of my years on 0.01% of it. The question arose at the time and it still exists today in what will the company do with the new acquisition?

Many answers abounded with one of the most prominent being the possibility that the Walt Disney Company could use its superior animation skills and artists to create some wonderful new Marvel-related entities.

There are numerous problems with this approach and I suppose the fact that we are discussing it two years after the fact is proof enough. Firstly, Disney and Marvel do not see eye to eye when it comes to their content.

Who would a Disney-produced Marvel TV show/film appeal to? Oh sure the likes of the X-Men films can be theoretically suitable for kids, but I’d be willing to be that the Old Maestro would be spinning in his grave at the thought of the company he built putting out such stuff.

Disney is purportedly all about the family whereas Marvel is about the individual. Each approach tends to deal with very different approaches to the story and characters and there is little common ground between them save for the fact that individuals can enjoy family-orientated entertainment too.

Who would produce the content? Marvel has its own department for such things but Disney has all the necessary staff. Can you imagine Disney artists working under people accustomed to comics? I can’t and I doubt the artists can either.

Comic animation is also very different to what Disney is accustomed to. The current artists wouldn’t be able to work on it so new ones would have to be found. Besides that, Disney has never done a comic-style film or TV show. Tron is about as close as they got and even then that was technically live-action.

On a related note, would Pixar take up the challenge? According to head honcho John Lasseter, no:

No, not at Pixar. We have The Incredibles, so we’ve done superheroes here ourselves and so we have that kind of history with Brad Bird doing The Incredibles.

Arguably the best situation is to run both companies independently. There is little common ground so why exert all the effort to merge for no real benefit. Unlike TimeWarner, Disney has no need for excuses when it comes to keeping its comic department separate from its animation one.

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How Much Do You Know About Roy O. Disney?

1 Comment / Animation, Book, Disney /

Via: The LA Times

Everyone and their dog is familiar with Walt Disney. Those with a passion for animation will be intimately familiar with the man known as The Old Maestro and how he almost single-handedly made animation into something much more than a short, gag-based form of entertainment. Of course, most of those folks will also be familiar that Walt was not alone in his efforts because guiding him all the way was his older brother, Roy.

However, Roy was very much the quieter brother, silently working behind the scenes running Walt Disney Productions and managing the cash that allowed Walt to fulfill his dreams. But how much do you really know about him? To be honest, I was fairly shocked about how little I knew.

Via: Good Reads

Thanksfully, Bob Thomas (who wrote the biography on Walt) wrote a book back in the 1990s (through the Disney-owned Hyperion publishing house) that looks at everything from Roy’s perspective. Entitled ‘Building a Company: Roy O. Disney and the Creation of an Entertainment Empire‘, it catalouges how the Disney company was founded and grew under his guidance and steely determination.

Although it focuses primarily on the history of the company, the book does contain more details about Roy than it does Walt, with much revealed about Roy’s habits and mannerisms. It would appear that as conservative and restrained as Roy was at work, he was just as jovial and fun-loving as his brother.

Furthermore, the book goes into quite a bit of detail when it comes to the company’s finances and the pressures that Roy faced during the war years and 1950s when Walt embarked on Disneyland. Nothing gets too technical (thankfully) but the gist of the struggles the company faced over the years is evident, and the book doesn’t shy away from the abrasive relationship the two brothers could have at times.

The only weak point in the book is the infamous strike, which is dispensed within two pages and glosses over the root causes and the subtle changes that occurred thereafter. Seeing as this is an official publication, that is not entirely surprising, but you would think that at this point in time, it would be irrelevant.

Coming away from ‘Building A Company’, my appreciation for Roy is much higher than it was beforehand. He was much more than just the ‘numbers man’, he was an essential part of the company and very much the yin to Walt’s yang. Without him, it is highly unlikely that the Disney Company would even exist today as a separate operation. Indeed it’s just as likely that it wouldn’t have made it past Snow White!

I would highly recommend picking up a copy if even just for a casual read.

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7 Key Takeaways From Katzenberg’s “Thoughts On Our Business” Letter

Animation, Disney /

You may already be familiar with the topic of this post; an internal memo written by Jeffrey Katzenberg back in1991 while he was still at Disney. In it, he analyses the movie business as it was then with particular emphasis on how it relates to Disney and their way of doing things. Have things changed much in the past 20 years? Nope, not one bit. Here are 7 key takeaways from that letter and why they are more relevant than ever.

1. The Blockbuster Mentality – The idea that you want a film to get a big bang right out of the gate. Katzenberg ins’t in favour of it, yet every studio continues to do it.

2. People will continue to go to the cinema provided they are given the right incentives to do so – This is too often lost on the owners and studios who think people go to the cinema just to see the latest releases.

3. “The Floor” – A concept that he discusses in regards to blockbuster films that are calculated to make a certain gross based on the content and whose in it. No doubt John Carter had a floor that was used to justify its expense, but as that very film proves, floors are a concept and nothing more.

4. Being big today means little if anything – Katzenberg talks a lot about the film Dick Tracey. Apparently it was big at the time and made a decent amount of money, but have you ever seen it? I haven’t, I doubt most people today remember it very well. It goes to show that a film that makes a quick buck will be just that, whereas a film that stutters out of the gate, like Alice in Wonderland (the 1950s Disney version) can last a long time and bring in almost 100% profit for decades to come.

5. Kids movies aren’t just for kids – Sadly there are still too many people, both inside and outside the industry who believe this.

6. Marketing & Testing – I’ll let the direct quote speak for itself:

There is an unfortunate tendency to think that when a film does great, it’s because it’s a great film. But when it does poorly, it’s because of poor marketing. While this logic is convenient, it can be empirically disproven.

7. Rules – Discipline is all important to maintaining your success.

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Rebecca Hains Discovers Disney Princess…Flowers???

1 Comment / Animation, Disney /

Yes, these are entirely real, believe it or not. Media studies professor and author, Rebecca Hains, came across them at her local Home Depot recently. Kinda reminds you of the Disney Princess grapes I stumbled across at the grocery store last year, don’t they? Rebecca’s written a great post about on these seeds which you should all read (as well as the comments).

While her post does a great job of analysing how such merchandise is bad for kids and parents, I can’t help but conclude that it is bad for the Disney company also. How is that, you say? Surely they are simply getting a cut and/or fee from the licensing rights and nothing more. Why should they care about it any further than that?

Well, because it’s a sign that they’re failing to care for their characters. The Disney Princess brand is a faux collection of said characters who supposedly represent the best in female traits. Now you could argue about that until the cows come home, but what’s more important is that each of the princesses is only a good fit for her particular context. In other words, the film they appear in.

The Disney Princess brand takes that context completely away, and instead mashes the characters together in a manner that attempts to blend them all into a singular idea of what good female characters should be like; read: princesses. This would be OK if it was for a once-off thing or a singular celebration of the characters, but branding them in such a manner (and licensing them to everyone under the sun) only serves to devalue the characters themselves, and worse, the films they originally appeared in.

The original films are masterpieces, they evoke they very best in art and character. These seeds and the grapes which precede them do not. They are a cheap attempt to imbue otherwise unexciting products with some sort of luster, and while even the humblest of grape can make the finest wine, a grape is still a grape, no matter which character is on the packaging or how superb the film she appeared in is.

Unfortunately, it would appear that the brand is making big bucks for Disney and shows no sign of abating.

 

 

 

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5 Reasons To Anticipate Amid Amidi’s Biography of Ward Kimball

4 Comments / Animation, Book /

Admittedly I haven’t read much on the Nine Old Men. That’s partly the result of reading other things and simply not having the time to devote more time to reading things. However these past few months, I’ve been plowing through the 11th volume of Didier Ghez’s excellent tome, Walt’s People, and through many of the various interviews, I’ve acquired a new level of respect for the esteemed group. One in particular stands out though, and that is Ward Kimball.

Amid Amidi is about to publish an extensive biography on the legendary animator and here is a few reasons why I’m anticipating its release.

  1. Ward’s characters are some of the greatest to ever appear on screen and you know there are stories behind every one.
  2. Ward put together the three space segments of the original Disneyland TV show, and together with Werhner Von Braun, got the technology surprisingly accurate to the eventual Apollo program. That could fill a book in itself.
  3. Walt Disney called Ward a genius. Surely he had a good reason to do so.
  4. Just how did such a wacky “cartoonist” wind up at a studio like Disney and manage to stay for so long?
  5. Ward supposedly started the rumour about Walt Disney’s frozen head. Will this book reveal all?

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Derivative Animated TV Shows

3 Comments / Animation, Announcements /

You may have read the LA Times article from the other day that talks about a shift that’s currently underway at the Disney Channel. The interesting thing is that it included (all the way at the end) this quote from Jerry Beck:

“Before Eric got there, [Disney Channel] had a couple of mild hits, like ‘Kim Possible.’ They were doing derivative things. They were following trends,” Beck said. “Now, they’re leading trends.”

Now I don’t necessarily agree that Kim Possible was derivative, perhaps as a kind of show it was, but there’s been nothing like it since, and it still remains a rare, female-protagonist, show.

That notwithstanding, Jerry hits the bullseye with his point that creating derivative shows will not get you very far. We’ve seen it time and time again when a show get big and a whole host of imitators follow. It happened with The Simpsons and the only shows to last more than a season or two were FOX’s own.

So when it comes to animated TV, do networks tend to follow trends rather than make them? The answer is emphatically, yes. That is by far the less risk option. However, as SpongeBob SquarePants proves, creating a trend can lead to a very long (and insanely profitable) property.

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