Don Bluth
Don Bluth
Donald Virgil "Don" Bluthis an American animator, film director, producer, writer, production designer, video game designer and animation instructor who is known for directing animated films, such as The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heavenand Anastasia, and for his involvement in the LaserDisc game Dragon's Lair. He is also known for competing with former employer Walt Disney Productions during the years leading up to the films that would make up the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAnimator
Date of Birth13 September 1937
CityEl Paso, TX
CountryUnited States of America
But I've been surprised over the years. I mean, someone told me the other day that maybe 360 million people have played this game in the world. That's a lot of people.
It's whatever sells; it's the business of it.
The only one that seems to be able to hold the business is Disney. They do it is because they have a fabulous philosophy about marketing- but even they wavered.
Reese Witherspoon. She's sophisticated enough that you just like her. You like her and she's smart.
A picture will wind up costing $90 million dollars... Well, animation can't stand that. It can't bear the weight of a $90 million dollar budget, because it can't recoup. Then everybody's surprised when it only pulls in $50-$60 million domestic.
Computers have taken so much drudgery out of it. Just one to mention, painting the picture. It used to be that everything was wet, everything was with a brush. Everything was wiggle it in water, wipe out your brush, get a new jar of paint, spill the paint, mop it up.
The studios are not hiring right now, and they're beginning to have second thoughts about what they're producing. Even Dreamworks.
We figured out that we were going to have to do CGI and 2-D animation on screen at the same time. Sixty-five percent of the picture is CGI. That's a big mix. When you marry those two, they can either look very foreign to each other, or they look like they belong together.
With movies, you are always in search is a good story, one that everyone will relate to and love. I love finding those stories and creating a visual world to tell the story.
How can you have a director that doesn't go to work with the crew every day and talk to them?
I think we have to bottom out. When the studios jump out of the ring, perhaps the artist can get back in.
The studios will go wherever they smell money. It's like sharks to the blood.
If you look at the game and everything, it's not quite like looking at an animated film, because that's total character. This, this is really movement, but it's got funny little things if you look for the humor. They're actually getting to the character.
It just seems like the whole, overall animation world is trying to go where maybe animation doesn't belong.