Once upon a time, the company that Uncle Walt built was a beacon of quality in the often ill-defined world of animated features.
Sure, there were a couple of missteps during the counter-cultural 60s (Robin Hood, anyone?) but the conservatism of the 80s ushered a new demand for family – friendly entertainments and the house of mouse duly obliged, producing some of their greatest work in films such as Beauty And The Beast, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid.
One could only imagine that an Academy Award for feature length animation would be handed over annually with few challengers. Yet tellingly, though it has distributed two winners – Finding Nemo and Spirited Away – since the inception of the Oscar category in 2000, a Disney Studios’ cartoon has yet to take a single gong.
By the end of the '90s, their in-house formula – a winning cocktail of spunky heroines and smaltzy showtunes – was overstretched into damper titles – Mulan and Lilo And Stitch were sweet, but hardly enthralling. More importantly, since Toy Story, Disney’s partners at Pixar have been the primary pony to beat.
While rival studios jumped the CGI bandwagon – Dreamworks would produce the Shrek films, Fox released Ice Age and Robots – Disney persevered with traditional 2D animation. Sadly, their romantic line drawings for Brother Bear and Home On The Range just couldn’t pack in the punters like they used to. As Pixar’s deal with Disney had an expiry date of 2006, it looked as though the parent company had missed out on the 3D revolution altogether. Drastic action was needed.
“The transition to CG was painful,” admits Chicken Little director, Mark Dindal. “When we began work on Chicken Little, we thought it would be a 2D movie, as the studio was set up that way. They changed their mind a year into the process and it was easy to make the transition to CG. There was a talent base of 300 staff who were able to cope with the switch. Obviously some 2D artists we had known forever lost their jobs. But generally there was high morale on the set of our movie as everyone was growing and learning together. And often those who made the switch found it surprisingly easy. 18 with no prior computer experience agreed that despite the pain of learning the new process, they would not go back after the first six months. Some of them still draw prior to going onto the computer but they’re happy with the technology.”
“With CG we can still capture that classic '40s Disney style,” adds producer Randy Fullmer. “But CG adds elasticity, such as when a character stretches out their arm. Disney had lost its way with 2D animation.
The main attribute of Disney is their artists. Our philosophy is that an artist with a computer can do same as pen. You don’t need to be a programmer to use it.”
Chicken Little, Disney’s first CG release, is a comedy adventure that combines the zaniness of Jimmy Neutron, the snarky pop-culture riffs of Shrek and the cutesiness of Uncle Walt’s classic pictures. Zach Braff (Garden State) provides the vocals for the eponymous alarmist, a weedy avian specimen who causes widespread panic with his claim that the sky is falling. Humiliated by the entire sorry incident, the chicken claws back some respect with a baseball victory, only for a giant hexagon to fall on his head from above. Fearful of further ridicule, he enlists the aid of dorky friends, Runt Of The Litter and Ugly Duckling (Joan Cusack) to investigate, only to discover that a full scale War Of The Worlds invasion is imminent.
“When we tested the film, parents liked it but did not know what kids were going to like,” explains Mr. Fullmer. “They felt the aliens were too scary but the kids were much more sophisticated than that. When Disney do test screenings with kids we monitor the squirming. Kids squirm if not interested, like little worms. By the end of previews – we did 14 in all – they stopped squirming, so we knew we had something.”
Were the filmmakers constantly looking over their shoulder at Pixar across the way?
“Not at all,” says Dindal. “At the beginning of Chicken Little, Pixar was part of Disney. We blocked the idea of competing out of our heads as there is enough pressure without worrying about that. But on an artistic level, we’re friends with Pixar. There’s no politics on a personal level, the politics are at a corporate level. We could always call them up and ask, ‘How did you get the eyelashes to look that way?’”
Happily, Disney’s first CG outing seems to have paid off, with the cartoon fable taking top spot at the box-office and $40.1 million in the first two days of release, easily justifying the CG pravda. Certain studio traditions, however, still remain. Each Chicken Little character is still assigned their own supervisor, with the lead fowl watched over by Dublin animator, Jason Ryan. Looking decidedly at home in the imposingly magical surroundings of Disneyland Paris, the Ballyfermot animation graduate first came to Disney to work on Fantasia 2000, after a stint with Don Bluth.
“Chicken Little was brilliant to work on,” he gushes. “But there were a million fiddly things to look after. He doesn’t have proper pupils so we had we had to squish his eyes. There were 70,000 feathers to animate on his face alone. Actually I don’t think I’ll ever be able to face a chicken again.”
Next up for Jason and the Disney CG crew is Rapunzel Reloaded. Hair tongs at the ready…