Good piece in today’s LA TIMES - “Walt’s Shoes at Disney Could Be a Fit for Jobs” - that draws parallels between Jobs and Walt Disney.

Today’s NY TIMES discusses how the Disney/Pixar deal might affect Jobs’s other company, Apple.

Also in the NY TIMES, a piece that compares Iger and Jobs to Woody and Buzz.

Disney buys Pixar. Apple buys Disney. A very interesting thought on this blog. If this were Vegas, I’d personally put money on this scenario happening within the next 18-30 months.

I would have preferred that Pixar create its own distribution company and compete with the industry as a full-fledged stand alone player - but this possible buyout by Disney may be the next-best thing. (The worst scenario would’ve been for Pixar’s films to be distributed by another studio - Universal, Sony, or heaven forbid, Warner Bros.). Disney may be buying Pixar - but Pixar will be running the show - at least creatively, from the feature animation point of view. The optimist in me is delighted to have a visionary (Jobs) emerge as Disney’s largest stock holder. An innovative risk taker and business leader, Jobs could truly reinvigorate the studio. The optimist in me is thrilled that an animator (Lasseter) will likely be head of Feature Animation. With a proven love of the medium, and as a skillful filmmaker himself, Lasseter will no doubt push the studio forward and, at the same time, surely find a place for traditional (hand-drawn) animation at the studio that mastered it for so long.There is an opportunity here for an incredible Disney renaissance - as the creative reigns are handed, for once, to the right people at the right time. In this age of big corporations (and Disney is one of the biggest) and “bottom line” thinking, it’s easy to see how this can all go wrong. But I think the pieces are in place for an exciting new era in animation. At least, I hope so.

It’s beginning to look official. Britain’s TELEGRAPH is reporting today that Pixar’s board will meet on Monday to approve Disney’s $7 billion takeover bid. The deal would make Steve Jobs the single largest Disney shareholder. It’s a little too early to begin discussing the implications of what all this means, but this is truly as massive a shakeup in the animation world as could be imagined. At this point, it’s easy to see it going either way: either Lasseter and company will shine their creative light upon Disney helping to revitalize the Mouse’s slumbering animation division or Disney’s corporate bureaucracy will drag down Pixar with it and we’ll enter a new era of films like THE INCREDIBLES MEET WOODY AND BUZZ. One thing is for certain: there’s going to be a hell of a lot to talk about on the Brew here in 2006.

HOODWINKED writer/director Cory Edwards recently defended criticism of his film on Animation Nation. The primary purpose of Edwards’ post is he would like everybody to believe that the reason HOODWINKED looks the way it does is because of the film’s meager production budget combined with the inexperience of his Philippines production crew.

I initially wrote a lengthy response addressing his comments, but afterwards realized that my thoughts could basically be summed up in two brief ideas:

1.) The budget of HOODWINKED was not the primary barrier to its low artistic quality. Sylvain Chomet’s THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE was produced for a slight $8 million and Masaaki Yuasa’s recent masterpiece MIND GAME was produced for a similarly low figure. My favorite Bill Plympton feature, HAIR HIGH, was produced for well under $1 million. These films, however, were created by artists who understood the medium of animation and who wanted to exploit the unique possibilities inherent within the medium; the films were also created by artists who understood their budget going into the production, and the possibilities and limitations of what such a budget presented. If anything, a small budget can be a blessing that allows filmmakers the freedom to take creative risks that would not be possible on a big budget feature. But HOODWINKED lacks any such artistic motivation. The only vision behind this film, as far as one can tell from the finished results, is a shrewd opportunity to capitalize on the fairytale-skewering success of the SHREK franchise. The production was clearly set up to create a lame CG knockoff of SHREK, and not to create a distinctive animated film appropriate to the budget, like TRIPLETS, MIND GAME or HAIR HIGH.

2.) Edwards argues that the film wasn’t made by executives, but by struggling filmmakers. Yet, in true executive fashion, he blames the artists for the film’s shortcomings: “I KNOW the animation could be better! The film was made with the skill levels we had at the studio we could afford,” he says. Real artists don’t blame the other hard-working artists on their crew for their film’s shortcomings. In fact, the visual deficiencies of HOODWINKED originated long before the overseas studio ever got its hands on the film. In the latest issue of ANIMATION MAGAZINE, there are hand-drawn model sheets from the film, and the model sheets are as poorly designed as the CG characters in the film are modeled. In other words, the skill levels of the overseas artists seem to have been fine, and they did a good job of translating the designs to CG, but the artwork they had was weak to begin with. Similarly, the quality of animation was likely the result of the direction the overseas artists were receiving rather than their own doing. It’s disingenuous to blame the overseas production crew for problems that could have been addressed in pre-production if the filmmakers had had a more solid grasp of the animation medium.

Edwards says that the only way he can create something of artistic value is for somebody to give him more money. “If I direct more animation, my first choice will always be to make it in the U.S. and for a much bigger budget.” Perhaps first he could explain though why HOODWINKED looks the way it does when he already had a more than adequate budget to create a quality piece of animation.

Cory Edwards, director/writer of HOODWINKED, defends criticism of the film and discusses the process of its production on the Animation Nation forums.

Animation character designer and PIGTALE comic creator Ovi Nedelcu has just released a new book of his drawings and designs called DESENE: SKETCHES & SCRIBBLES. The full-color hardcover book is 104 pages and has a foreword by director Henry Selick. I haven’t seen the book yet, but I’ve always enjoyed Ovi’s work and I’m sure there’s solid work throughout. There’s a 10-page preview of the book HERE and it can be ordered at Amazon.com. Ovi will also be doing a signing in LA next Saturday, January 28, at Meltdown Comics from 6-8pm.

Story Boredom is a new blog with lots of great drawings by a bunch of feature storyboard artists. The artists use nicknames so it’s not clear who’s who, but one of the contributors seems to be the co-director of Disney’s HOME ON THE RANGE, John Sanford. Among the cool things worth seeing are these sketches by LILO & STITCH’s Chris Sanders.

Animator/director Norman McCabe passed away last Wednesday at age 94. McCabe had a long and impressive career in animation from animating on Clampett’s PORKY IN WACKYLAND (1938) to directing TV commercials in the 1950s at Swift Productions and TELE-mation to animating on the first Pink Panther short PINK PHINK (1964) to sheet timing on ANIMANIACS and FREAKAZOID. Between 1934 and 1999, McCabe worked at Schlesinger’s, Warner Bros., US Army Air Corps Training Film Unit, MGM, Swift Productions, Five Star Productions, Telemation, Pacific Title, Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, DePatie-Freleng, Ruby-Spears, Filmfair, Marvel and Universal. Services will be held on Tuesday, January 24 at 10am at the Shadow Hills Presbyterian Church (10158 Johanna Ave., Sunland, CA 91040). Here are McCabe’s credits at IMDB and here’s a nice little write-up about Norm at Jaime Weinman’s blog.

UPDATE: Mark Evanier has posted some additional thoughts about McCabe on his blog NewsFromME.