Don Bluth

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Don Bluth
Born September 13, 1937 (1937-09-13) (age 71)
El Paso, Texas, U.S.
Occupation Film director, animator, founder of Sullivan Bluth Studios

Donald Virgil Bluth (born September 13, 1937) is an American animator and independent studio owner.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Born in El Paso, Texas Bluth became one of the chief animators at The Walt Disney Company in the 1970s. Along with fellow animators Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy, he set out in 1979 to start his own animation studio, Don Bluth Productions. His style tends toward rougher and more energetic portrayals than that of Disney films, and tend to have a mystical element to them.

Bluth received a bachelors degree in English Literature from Brigham Young University.

[edit] The Disney years

The first two films he worked as an assistant animator on were Sleeping Beauty and The Sword in the Stone, for both of which he was uncredited. He would not return to Disney until in the 1970s, when he was an animator on Robin Hood, The Rescuers, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Pete's Dragon. His last involvement with Disney was the 1978 short The Small One; he drew a few scenes for The Fox and the Hound (where he was once again uncredited), but left early in production.

[edit] The independent years

When leaving Disney, Bluth brought several other Disney animators with him to form a rival studio, allegedly upset with how the Disney animated features had "lost their charm" at the time. This new studio demonstrated its ability in its first production, a short film titled Banjo the Woodpile Cat, and this led to work on an animated segment of the live-action film Xanadu (1980).

The studio's first feature-length was animation, The Secret of NIMH (1982), an adaptation of the award winning children's book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. The film grossed twice its somewhat small budget at the box office and many consider it to be Bluth's masterpiece.

Teaming up with Rick Dyer, Bluth then created the groundbreaking arcade game Dragon's Lair (1983), which let the player control a cartoon-animated character on screen (whose adventures were played off a laserdisc). This was followed in 1984 by Space Ace, a science-fiction game based on the same technology, but which gave the player a choice of different routes to take through the story (Don not only created the animation for Space Ace, he also supplied the voice of the villain, Borf), and Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp, a sequel which was very rare in arcades.

His next film would have been an animated version of East of the Sun and West of the Moon, but was never made as the financial resources were drawn back. Teaming up with producer Steven Spielberg, Bluth's next projects instead turned out to be An American Tail (1986) and The Land Before Time (1988), which did well in theaters and became animation classics. Although his next film, All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), had only moderate theatrical success, it was highly successful in its release to home video, becoming a cult classic.

By the end of the decade and through the 1990s Bluth films such as Rock-a-Doodle, Thumbelina, A Troll in Central Park, and The Pebble and the Penguin were earning much less at the box office, and were less praised by critics. This could be in part because in 1990, Don Bluth downsized his animation staff, cut ties with Spielberg, and as well as a possible case of innovation fatigue.

[edit] Work at Fox Animation Studios

Bluth scored another hit with Anastasia (1997), which grossed US$140 million worldwide and gained very favorable critical reviews, in part because it used well-known Hollywood stars as its voice talent and stuck closer to long-proven Disney formulas: a sassy and resourceful princess driven to become more than she is, a cruel and conniving villain who uses dark magic, a handsome and endearing love interest, and a comic-relief sidekick. Anastasia was produced at Fox Animation Studios in Phoenix, Arizona, which established 20th Century Fox as a Disney competitor.

Bluth's troubles continued when he directed the futuristic space adventure Titan A.E. which failed badly at the box office despite huge critical acclaim.

In 2000, after the studio's third film Bartok the Magnificent (released direct to video as a spin-off of Anastasia and the only sequel directed by Bluth), 20th Century Fox Studios decided to shut down the Fox Animation Studio facility in Phoenix.

[edit] Recent work

A recent attempt to capitalize on Dragon's Lair nostalgia by releasing the computer game Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair (2002) was unsuccessful; the game was panned by critics as being flat and uninteresting, despite groundbreaking cel-shading techniques that lent the game a hand-animated feel. Don Bluth and Gary Goldman are currently seeking funding for a film version of Dragon's Lair.[1][2]

Despite the failure of Dragon's Lair 3D, Bluth and Goldman continued work in video games when they were hired to create the in-game cinematics for Namco's I-Ninja.

In 2004, Bluth did the animation for the music video "Mary", by the Scissor Sisters.[3] The band contacted Bluth after having recalled fond memories of the sequence from Xanadu.

[edit] Bluth as an author

Bluth has also authored a series of books for students of animation: 2004's The Art of Storyboard, and 2005's The Art of Animation Drawing. Additional books are planned.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] As director and/or producer

[edit] Trivia

  • The fourteen people that incorporated Don Bluth's studio are Bluth, Gary Goldman, John Pomeroy, Lorna Cook, Will Finn, Dorse A. Lanpher, Vera Lanpher, Heidi Guedel, Skip Jones, Kevin Wurzer, Dave Spafford, Emily Jiuliano, Linda Miller, Dan Kuenster, David Molina, and Terry Shakespeare.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Joystiq.com, "Don Bluth Trying to Make Dragon's Lair Movie"
  2. ^ Cinematical, "Don Bluth Still Wants to Make a 'Dragon's Lair' Movie"
  3. ^ Animated News, "Don Bluth Animates Scissor Sisters Video"

[edit] Sources

  • John Grant, Masters of Animation, 2001, Watson-Guptill Publications, ISBN 0823030415

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bluth"
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