Kenversations™
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As of this day, you are out of Disney, and for now, out of the animation game. It hurts. It stings. And no matter how cautious you were about planning for the future, it still makes you worried about what is ahead of you.

You want to lash out. You want to give some executives a piece of your mind. You want to paint a satirical illustration on the hood of a certain executive's car. You want to write copious vitriolic essays for a tabloid unofficial Disney web site and drown your sorrows in a lemon quench slushie, sitting in the Disneyland Central Plaza mid-day on a Sunday, griping to whomever will listen.

There's a lot you're going to miss, from the Disney Family Holiday Party at Disneyland Park, to the coworkers who kept you in stitches.

But then you realize that being bitter or feeling sorry for yourself will do nothing positive or productive. Business is business. Your job did not come with a guarantee. If the executives are making a mistake, it is their prerogative to do so. If they are doing what is truly best, it is better for everyone in the long run.

The best things for you to do now is clear your head, consider you situation, polish up your portfolio, freshen up your resume, call your connections, and put that creative, passionate, determined mind to work finding new opportunities. This could be the best thing that has ever happened to you.

But for now, it hurts.

As you take down your personal effects, you pause to look at a caricature of you one of your friends here drew. You can picture Judge Doom holding that cartoon version of you over a vat of Dip, cackling.

Mighty Morphin' Animation Industry
If you've read previous editions of Kenversations™, you know that I think Walt Disney Feature Animation is the heart of Disney, or at least it should be. So, when word came down that there would be even more layoffs in that historic unit of The Walt Disney Company, it was sad to read. It appears that we've finally seen the end of the second Golden Era that was kicked off by Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and The Little Mermaid.

The animation game is in flux again.

In recent years, Disney has increased production of "television animation" (TA), which is typically made outside of the United States, isn't the same quality as Feature Animation (FA) work, especially in the illustrations and animation itself, and is cheaper to create. Most of the productions have been sequels, using the properties made popular by the sweat of the folks in FA.

Disney is not the only company to try this tactic - Universal has made seemingly endless sequels to The Land Before Time. I can't wait for Part XX, in which the dinosaurs become extinct after their musical acts are left without a record company after theirs is swallowed up by a gigantic music conglomerate. But I digress.

Walt Disney Television Animation has taken the FA properties and turned them into television shows, direct-to-video movies, and even theatrical movies. One recent production, Return to Neverland, bought in a respectable amount of money at the box office, and will no doubt do well on home video.

Sure, it didn't bring in as much as the FA productions, but it didn't need to, because it cost a lot less to produce.

On the other hand, the films brought to the cinema by the teaming of Disney and Pixar - Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, and Monsters, Inc. have each been artistic, financial, and critical successes.

"Three-dimensional" computer animation in general has been doing better than "traditional, two-dimensional" hand-drawn animation in general. In fact, all three of the nominees for Oscars® in the new category of Best Animated Feature were of the computer-production media. Disney & Pixar lost the historic first statue to Dreamworks, which won for Shrek. For some reason, I can picture a short mogul dancing on top of a table.

The key, however, is not really the medium. After all, Disney's Dinosaur, while bringing in about $150 million (which had to be shared with the theaters), didn't bring in enough money relative to its cost of $128 million and failed to get the critical raves of the other films.

The medium does play a part, as it catches the eye of a generation raised on images created via computers. It is strong characters, entertaining stories, and other elements, however, that make a film a genuine success.

In general, the computer animation has been less expensive than the hand-drawn animation. The high costs of Dinosaur included the ramp-up to being able to produce films in that medium. Disney didn't follow through by making more films in that medium. Also, location shots used for backgrounds contributed to that cost. Speaking of location, Sony's Final Fantasy film brought in just $32 million in domestic box office but cost $137 million to make at a new studio in Hawaii, of all places.

Add to this to the fact that yet another company has done well with computer animation: Fox's Ice Age has done very well in its recent premier in theaters, breaking records.

This -the success of the TA productions and the computer animation productions- has left Walt Disney Feature Animation in the mushy middle position it is in now. About 250 Feature Animation personnel have just been shown the door, in addition to the 500 shown the door in the past year or so. That leaves about 1000 left.

There are two FA films coming out this year - Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet. If they don't do well enough, we'll probably see even more changes. If they don't do well and Dreamworks has a hit with Spirit, their newest traditional-look animated feature, will Disney move further away from focusing on hand-drawn animation, or will it work to do better and dominate the genre?