The good, The Bad and The Ugly

A monthly wrap up of the good, the bad and the ugly in the world of animation

THE GOOD
Congratulations to Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman and the entire "Brave" crew for winning Best Animated Film at this years Academy Awards. Disney owned three of the five films nominated this year. The mouse house also came up big with "Paperman" winning the award for Best Animated short. Congratulations to John Kahrs and crew for making such a great short.


THE BAD

Dreamworks Animation is going through a restructure and as a result will be cutting about 15% or 350 of the studios 2,200 employees. This comes as a result of the poor box office performance of "Rise of the Guardians" and the recent announcement that "Me and My Shadow" was going back into development. “It’s been very hard. We had 17 hits in a row, and this is the first one that didn’t work for us,” Katzenberg said of Rise of the Guardians. “So it makes you go back and rethink everything, not just the fact that it didn’t work -- certainly we spent a lot of time reflecting on that -- but more importantly saying, ‘Let’s look at everything and say, "What could we be doing better, smarter, more effectively to really position the company in the best possible way gong forward?" ' And that’s what we’ve done, and that’s what restructuring is all about.”

THE UGLY
VFX giant "Rhythm & Hues Filed for bankruptcy protection and laid off 200+ employees in early February. R&H executives point to competition with countries such as Canada, the UK and India who benefit from tax credits and cheap labor to produce VFX at a lower cost. The visual effects business in California has taken a beating in the last few years due to this cheaper global competition. "Rhythm & Hues" won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects at this years Academy Awards and VFX supervisor BIll Westenhofer acceptance speech was abruptly cut off as he was explaining to the audience the current situation. Just down the street from the awards VFX artists held a protest as a show of solidarity.