I believe the harsher criticism of Disney’s current Feature Animation administration is unfair and a little premature. For one thing, Feature Animation president David Stainton has not yet had a chance to deliver a product to market that gives the film going public and critics a look at what can be delivered under his leadership. No single film has yet been under his full guidance, having inherited all releases to date from his predecessors while they were in production. On the other hand it is not at all premature to look at Pixar’s record since every single one of their films has been under the guidance of the highly visible and ever-present John Lasseter. So even if comparing Stainton to Lasseter isn’t really possible for lack of track record, comparing the elements that are in place for each of these guys is possible.

Pixar currently boasts a sizeable staff, with over 700 people working at this time. That’s nearly 20% more people under one roof than Disney had in Burbank at the time of the Orlando closure last year. I point this out because while Burbank was more prolific during this time, it was far less successful than Pixar; looking at both box office numbers and critical response, where box office is presumed to reflect at least some measure of audience response (afterall, you can’t blame everything on marketing.) While Disney had an output far more ambitious than Pixar’s, I’m not concerned here with starting some academic argument about “how many artists is too many artists.�? It’s never too many if they’re all productive and the end result continues to be both financially and critically positive – be two or two thousand.

One critical difference I believe helped Pixar during these past ten years is having the team all in one place working together, not separated by an entire continent or an ocean. For all the tragedy that followed, I hold out some hope for Disney’s (presumed altruistic) move in bringing everybody back together in one location. I am convinced that whether intentional or not, it was in Disney’s best interests to consolidate their animation talent in order for real creative cross-pollination to take place. The one true regret I have as an observer regarding the closure of Feature Animation in Florida is that Orlando had proved to function more like a great creative animation division than Burbank, with an astoundingly solid track record for critical and financial successes – both moderate and mind-blowing – a level of enthusiasm and forward thinking that was far more spirited and akin to what one experiences in the halls of Pixar and (from what I’m told) closer to what was happening at Hyperion and the early years at Burbank. In a perfect world Disney would have nurtured this unit and rebuilt their success in a fresh place and shuttered Burbank. But talk about academic…..*sigh*

Another difference between Pixar and Disney during this time is that, until this year, Disney had an approach to production that required much more staff. Without getting into a debate over pencils versus pixels, there is a simple, hard, cold fact about moving from so-called traditional animation to digital animation that bears repeating – it takes fewer people. Period. This shift in the animation industry bears some resemblance to how automobile manufacturing changed in the last century in America. Where old auto production required more workers doing hands-on assembly of each car, so traditional animation required countless final-line or clean-up artists. Similarly it required more animators per character on the front end, with assistants and in-betweeners and break-down artists. When Detroit moved out of the machine age into the computer age and assembly jobs were lost to mechanization there were countless layoffs and downsizing throughout the industry. Detroit was not particularly good at re-training workers and preparing them for the change, either. Even so, when they eventually caught up the fact remained that there were a limited number of jobs to be filled. Robotic assembly meant fewer jobs period. You can’t make the public buy more cars than they need, so the solution was not in upping production, clearly. Disney was far better at preparing staff for the change than most other animation houses. Even so, there are only so many animators needed and not everyone can stay on payroll just because you like them. Just as consumers only buy so many cars, so audiences will only go to so many movies and so upping production for the animation industry to cover jobs lost to computers makes absolutely no sense at all. And just like Detroit, Disney shipped many of the alternative TV animation jobs overseas where production and labor costs are much, much cheaper. I happen to personally think that overseas production also looks cheaper and that over time audiences expectations lower, box office numbers drop, and what was once visible and tangibly couture starts looking like every other off-the-rack product and so there’s no reason to rush in to sample it. I think this choice leaves room for a great deal of discussion, but cost of production is a very real consideration that current economics decide in a rather wicked way. No matter how many times Tink sprinkles her magic across film and television screens it doesn’t change the fact that this is show business and the not so magical bottom line has to be considered, or else the trend for downsizing turns abruptly into a trend toward bankruptcy and the industry experiences the closing of doors on nearly all operations. It’s a harsh and bitter pill to swallow but that’s the reality. So while artists are making magic, somebody has to recharge the wand. Remember, Walt had Roy. In the next editorial installment of this series we’ll move on to look more closely at who does what, how they do it – and why, as we compare job title to function and the present structure of management in both houses.