THE DISNEY 2D SAGA…

You may have heard that Walt Disney has laid off all its 2D features animation staff. That’s it. Kaput! Disney is going to produce only 3D animated features from now on.

Just found this discussion thread - Animation Nation Bulletin Board: Burbank Feature Animation desks head down under

May be old news but as i was saying my goodbyes at the Mousehouse on friday, a friend who’s in ‘ the moving of heavy things around like desks and stuff ‘ dept. mentioned to me that Disney Tv had bought features animation desks.

They were stored in a wherehouse and just last week were put in 2 big crates and shipped to the Disney Australian division.

So if anyone really wants to keep drawing with a disc, and has no commitments here on this side of the world, you may give that division a call, if you’re interested.

Sounds like they would need those desks for something, besides collecting dust.

Do you think they could train kangaroos to inbetween ? - pudd

Yeah, and I’m sure they could train the wombats and possums too. They’re in abundance over here. (sarcasm)

Eddie: And apparently crocodiles. Crikey! (<– more sarcasm)

So I suppose this means there will be lots of 2D work at Disney Australia if you’re into that sort of thing …

Eddie: No thanks, I’ve been there.

Related Link from smh.com.au: Bambi is Dead

Four months ago I was sitting in a Production meeting with some WBA execs. Bruce Timm was present and he directed this question at Sander (the president):“Is it true that there will be no more 2D features at Disney?”

Sander’s ‘insider’ take was that it was all a whole lotta bullshit and media hype. 2D is not dead. They WILL still produce 2D movies.

Personally Eddie and I think the 2D-3D thing is just a whole lotta overblown paranoia.

For a start, we will ALWAYS produce 2D animation because we LOVE TO DRAW. And there are lots of animators out there who love to draw. There are viewers who love the hand-drawn, 2D aesthetic. These are facts there are not going to change simply because Disney and Dreamworks have decided to invest their money in CGI features.

The industry is full of talented 2D artists who still love drawing.  Surely they are not just going to drop their pencils (or wacom styluses) and throw their hands up in the air?

“People have been somewhat spoiled by the high production values of computer-generated films, but the enchantment of watching drawings move on a screen is undiminished. As long as a child can hold a pencil in his hand, there will always be a future for it.”

Commercial Animation Art from the 50′s and early 60′s! There’s some really awesome stuff here.(linked from Cartoon Research)

 
© Ray Patin

THE MESS… THE MESS…

As Eddie said this afternoon: “We’re officially homeless!”

That’s right! We’re in transit, in between homes, in nomadic state. It’s kinda liberating. 

So we’ll be camping out on the sofa bed in our studio and going to work on the other side of the room each morning. Reminds me of old times in pre-Fwak days when we used to work from home.

In 2 weeks we’ll be repacking our bags and heading over to sunny Southern California. Today’s mission was to take all these boxes and bags of stuff….

…and store them, organise them. Make them fit in the studio, and make the studio liveable in. We’ve been moving stuff, packing, unpacking and cleaning for the past few days. So glad that’s over.

It’s only our first night staying here, so it’s hard to say what it’s like, yet. Tomorrow night the water’s going to be cut off. If we can ignore that and the Chinese Opera downstairs, there ARE some perks staying here:

• 
  
  FOXTEL! (can you believe that in our ex-apartment building, 70% of the apartment owners voted AGAINST cable tv? Cheapskates.)


• 
  
  MORE BLOGGING! Well, the computer is right here…


• 
  
  THAT ARTSY-WAREHOUSE-LIVING FEELIN’. We’ve all done this at some point in our lives. We’ve both lived in share-warehouses when we were young struggling artists. It’s no “perk” sharing with 6 people is a large messy space and arguing over who does the dishes, but with just the two of us and all this space to ourselves, it’s kinda cool. Our ex-apartment was the size of a shoebox. You could say that we practically live here anyway.


• 
  
  IT’S WARMER. You would assume it’s colder here but so far, it has been warmer than our ex-apartment.

More later…

Eddie Guerrero – CHEAT 2 WIN! - by Eddie

Say what you like about the now defunct World Championship Wrestling (WCW), but one of its shining achievements was promoting great wrestling talent from Mexico and Japan – hell, it was through watching WCW that I first heard the phrases ‘Lucha Libre’  and ‘Luchador’.  Let’s face it, I wasn’t going to hear them in a dubbed ‘ El Santo’ movie.

Alongside Rey Misterio Jr, La Parka, the great Ultimo Dragon, Halloween, Villanos 3 & 4 for Chrissakes!, Juvi and Silver King - to name but a few, WCW also featured one of the biggest heel assholes to ever grace a wrestling ring – Eddie Guerrero!

The Guerrero clan is well respected in Lucha Libre – Gory, Chavo, and now Eddie and his nephew, Chavo Jr.  Eddie was also one half of Los Gringos Locos  - a rudo tag team with Art Barr.

My favourite angle in WCW, was when Uncle Eddie decides that Chavo Jr. isn’t tough enough.  After weeks of coaching Chavo – which included preaching the Guerrero philosophy; ‘Cheat 2 Win’ - Eddie finally lost patience and beat Chavo’s ass, the stipulation was that Chavo Jr. had to wear an ‘Eddie Guerrero is my favorite wrestler’ T-shirt whenever he was on camera.

Eddie followed up this bastadry by organising all the Latino wrestlers into the LWO (Latino World Order), then beat Rey Jr’s ass and made HIM wear an LWO T-shirt that was at least 4 sizes too big for him.

Okay, so why the big Eddie rave?  Well he’s now in the WWE and currently one of thir top draws.  To get there, he’s had to battle cheesy gimmicks like ‘ Latino Heat’ and an addiction to painkillers that threatened to kill his career in the US.  And he got there by way of his own charisma and classic heel persona alone!

Of course we HAD to have some sort of tribute to Los Guerreros in ¡Mucha Lucha!  ¡Arriba Eddie Guerrero!

“The Big Dipper” © WB Animation

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EDDIE!

Yep. It’s Eddie Mort’s birthday today!

And I’m sick again with some sort of flu; the second time this winter….

We’re also packing up our apartment contents today. So as of tomorrow, Eddie and I will no longer be residents of Crown Street, Darlinghurst. We’ll be staying HERE at the studio until we move to L.A… yeah, with the very noisy ‘Chinese Opera’ school downstairs and the Korean Karaoke restaurant next door. Ah, the joys of Chinatown living…