Risk

Several recent events have reminded me of the risks involved in animation.

Brenda Chapman's dismissal as director of Pixar's Brave is old news, but she recently spoke out  about being fired.

Henry Selick's untitled film with Disney was cancelled, forcing the layoff of over a hundred artists at the Cinderbiter studio in the San Francisco area.

Finally, and this won't be as well known, the CEO of the Go Go Gorillas operation, Christopher Turner, is under investigation for fraud.  Further details here.  I've written about John Celestri in the past.  John's a friend and former co-worker who was looking for an alternate financial model for animation and connected with Christopher Turner.  The company was attempting to use a restaurant/arcade to fund animation.  That's the reverse of the typical approach where popular cartoon characters are used to brand other enterprises like theme parks.  In any case, it is doubtful that the company will be able to move forward or survive with this shadow hanging over it.

The important thing to realize is that risk is unavoidable and the above events are not the result of malice.  While the people who have been affected by this will suffer, there was no intent for that to be the case.  Pixar would have been better off not hiring Chapman rather than deal with the public relations problems of taking her off the film.  Disney expected to release Selick's film or it wouldn't have bothered to invest in it to begin with.  Time will tell if Christopher Turner was a businessman who got in over his head or whether he deliberately planned to defraud, but there are much quieter ways to steal money.  Ask Bernie Madoff.

There's no shortage of studios that have lost projects in mid-production or been forced into bankruptcy by creditors.  The artists at those studios have fallen victim to forces beyond their control.  If Chapman and Selick, who were working for the largest animation company in the world, couldn't avoid risk, no one can.

That's the moral.  No matter how solid things look, they never really are.  It pays to plan for losing your job.  Can you survive financially if you're laid off?  Are you in touch with enough people in the industry to find your next job?  Are your skills up to date so that you can easily fit into another production?  If the answer to any of the above questions is "no," then you're more vulnerable to risk than you should be.

John Celestri Blog

Animator and friend John Celestri (Rock and Rule, Space Ace) now has a blog. John made some contributions to this blog early on, so it's nice to see that he's set up a blog of his own. I've added his link to my list of links.

Go Go Gorillas!

I met John Celestri at Nelvana in Toronto, even though we were both New Yorkers by birth. At the time, John was animating on Rock and Rule. In the years since Nelvana, John has worked for a variety of studios including Don Bluth.
Currently, he’s the COO of Grace Global Media Corp. which is trying a new variation on an established business model. Lots of cartoon series spin off merchandise or themed locations. Lots of brands spin off cartoon series. Go Go Gorillas! was created to simultaneously be both a retail brand and an animation series.

The first facility opened last December 3 in Danville, Kentucky. It’s 30,000 square feet housing a restaurant and indoor theme park, which contains a rock climbing wall, an arcade, mini-bowling, bumper cars, blacklight miniature golf, party rooms and an educational space for classes to use for field trips based on Kentucky’s core curriculum . The characters are the Avenging Apes of Africa, a group built around the themes of ecological and social responsibility.

The company’s goal is to expand the number of facilities and once there is a steady cash flow, build an animation studio that will create a featurette a year to explore the characters’ stories, as well as create arcade and video games for the chain. John is committed to using drawn animation for these films and to doing it all under one roof in Danville, with no outsourcing.

The website is located here and the center is located at 2900 South Danville Bypass, Danville, KY.