Among the items set out for our visit, books of Jungle Book sketches caught everyone's attention.

Written by Dan Sarto

One of the highlights of the week was a morning spent at Disney's Animation Research Library (ARL).  Housed in the non-descript former feature animation studio, the library houses more than 65 million pieces of animation art representing over 80 years of work from Walt Disney Animation.  Formerly housed in the basement of the Animation department in the aptly named "Morgue," the library opened in its current location in 1989.  Complete with fire supression systems, climate controled vaults and state of the art scanning and database systems, the library serves both to preserve the company's heritage as well as to provide an inhouse resource for studio personnel needing access to the immense repository of Disney animation assets. If you love animation, or have any sense of animation history, then the Disney ARL is a little slice of heaven.  Actually, it's the whole pie.

The entire assembled group. From left to right, me (Dan Sarto), Bastien's girlfriend Julie, Connie Siu, Bob Kurtz, Bastien Dubois, Ron Dyens, Max Lang, Jakob Schuh, Ron Diamond, Geefwee Boedoe. Everyone is quite animated because this was taken with a prototype 3-D stereoscopic camera. Image courtesy of DreamWorks Animation.

Written by Dan Sarto

Every year for more than a decade we’ve toured DreamWorks’ expansive Glendale campus with either the Animation Show of Shows, our Oscar Showcase tour, or both.  We’re always greeted with open arms and we’re always shown tasty morsels of upcoming films – last year, for example, Simon Otto showed us 20 minutes of How To Train Your Dragon well before it was released.  This year did not disappoint.  We scampered about all over the newly built-out animation building, over 100K square feet of offices, high-res monitors and talent.  Talking to people here, you can’t help but sense their enthusiasm as they discuss their work, the studio and DreamWorks’ string of successful films.  From Jeffrey Katzenberg’s lunchtime visit to our jaunt through the new motion-capture studio, our afternoon at DreamWorks left a tremendous impression on our assembly of animators and producers, and myself as well.

The nominees start their day with a tour of the Sony lot.

written by Rick DeMott

The Los Angeles leg of the tour picked up on Tuesday, Feb. 22 at Sony. Jakob Schuh and Max Lang were back for the second round; while Bastien Dubois, the director of Madagascar, Carnet de Voyage, his producer Ron Dyens, and Michael Rose and Martin Pope, the producers of The Gruffalo, joined them for the first time.

The day began with a guided tour of the studio lot. The nominees had a chance to see the 12 Oscars the studio has won over the years, as well as the backlot and stage for Wheel of Fortune (which was less impressive to the European crowd.) On one of the soundstages, we saw a crew diligently constructing a sewer pipe set for a secret project filming pyrotechnics later in the week.

Looking down from the second floor bridge onto the Pixar atrium.

Written by Dan Sarto

If it’s Friday, it must be Pixar.  And as most would attest, a visit to Pixar is pretty special.  In no particular order, we met John Lasseter, crawled around the infamous Love Lounge, drank Scotch with Andrew Gordon in the Lucky 7 Lounge, met up with Oscar-winner Ralph Eggleston and his mending broken finger, had lunch with Roger Gould, screened the nominated films for 235+ staff, saw concept art, original models and other visual goodies from several films and talked to Bob Peterson.  And, we bought Girl Scout cookies in the Pixar lobby.  Quite the day indeed.

If it’s every animation fan’s dream to visit Pixar, then at the conclusion of our Friday visit, the fan in all of us was ready to die and go to heaven.  The pouring rain outside did little to dampen our enthusiasm as we piled out of the van and into the lobby.  There, our host, Michelle Radcliffe, coordinator for in-house education at Pixar University, greeted us warmly and after a few introductions, patiently marched us all over the main building, answering all our silly questions and making sure we had a good time. 

The main case of model figures from the Tippett foyer.

Written by Dan Sarto

Tippett Studio is a well-known cg studio that specializes in feature film visual effects and creature animation.  Legendary founder Phil Tippett is the creative force behind some of the most iconic animated creatures and characters in cinematic history, including the miniature chess scene in the first Star Wars movie, the animated robots in RoboCop, the breakthrough animated dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, the deadly arachnids of Starship Troopers and the transforming werewolves of the Twilight movies.  The studio is located in Berkeley, California, housed in a collection of small buildings nestled within walking distance of each other.  Our second day ended with a screening and highly anticipated tour of their main production facilities. We were not disappointed.

The group out front of PDI/DreamWorks. From left to right - Jakob Schuh, Max Lang, Geefwee Boedoe, Ron Diamond and Dan Sarto.

Written by Dan Sarto

Day 2 of our tour started exactly as Day 1 ended – everyone sleeping snugly in their rooms at the Skywalker Ranch Inn.  Each room at the Inn is named after and designed in the style of a noted celebrity – I was in the Frank Lloyd Wright room, Ron was in the Norman Rockwell room, others scattered within Orson Wells, Ella Fitzgerald, Lillian Gish rooms, to name a few.  A fast breakfast of bagels, yogurt and sugary, creamy, caffeiny Starbucks’ coffee drinks, followed by a mad dash to load the car without getting soaked and we were off in the pouring rain towards Redwood City and PDI/DreamWorks. Our stay at the Inn was way too short, but I can honestly say it was truly cool with a capital K.

The Walt Disney Family Museum. And some cars.

Written by Dan Sarto

Like intrepid but warmly dressed explorers venturing into mysterious but GPS-identified territory, our group set forth into the crisp morning air in search of our first tour stop, the new Walt Disney Family Museum.  We caught a break – the rain had stopped, at least for a few hours, leaving behind a beautiful sunny sky.  No traces of the hail that had pounded our motel earlier that morning. Max Lang, Jakob Schuh, Geefwee Boedoe, myself, Ron and his daughter Sara (who is also my niece and our photographer) all drove together.  Teddy Newton drove separately and met us later in the day at Skywalker Ranch. 

Dinner at Gracias Madre - (from left to right) Ron Diamond, Max Lang, Saschka Unseld, Geefwee Boedoe, Jakob Schuh, Alex Woo (with apologies to Sara Diamond in the bottom left corner)

Written by Dan Sarto

In a couple hours we’re off to the Disney Museum and then over to Skywalker Ranch for the rest of the day and evening. It’s funny – in all the years we’ve been doing this annual tour and get-together with the animated short nominees, this is the first year I’ve gone on the northern California leg.  One thing or another has always kept me in LA. I’m excited, though my room is freezing.  I should drag this room heater back home – it would make a great air conditioner for my office.

AWN would like to congratulate all the animation and visual effects Oscar nominees. This is the place for exclusive coverage of AWN Oscar Tour, where the nominees for Best Animated Short tour studios in Los Angeles and the Bay area. Hear from the filmmakers about their Oscar-nominated work right here. For now find out the facts about all the animated nominees at the AWN Oscar Showcase.

2010 Oscar Tour Videoblogs

Now with the crazy award season over, AWN offers readers a chance to catch up with all the adventures of the animation nominees.

Watch interviews with the nominees and a who's who of the animation community as part of AWN's Oscar Showcase videoblog! New episodes will be posting weekly. Check them out on AWNtv.