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Little Birdy- New Disney Series

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Little Birdy- New Disney Series

hi,
fellas. just had someone in my office who told me about a new series under production in Bombay for Disney. tentatively called Maggy(sp) 11 mins (confirmed) x 52 episodes (so i have been told)
it will be made in Flash and i would rather not give out the name of the studio.
any one else have any other information?

The Buzz on Maggie

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

It's freakin FLASH man, animate it here you cheapskates!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Motionmilitia, Thats a very sad attitude you got there :|

Hey skinnylizard, I heard that Maggie happened to be one of the tougher flash animation projects. Other than the Bombay house, did the Korean Studio also get it ?

It's freakin FLASH man, animate it here you cheapskates!!!!!!!!!!!!!

seriously. How long untell there is no flash work at all around here?

I agree with spacemonkey. I haven't worked in Flash yet but I think whatever is done by the right hands and looks good is worth it.

Uh...I agree with MotionM's attitude.

Motionmilitia, Thats a very sad attitude you got there :|

Hey skinnylizard, I heard that Maggie happened to be one of the tougher flash animation projects. Other than the Bombay house, did the Korean Studio also get it ?

hey. im not sure if it was split up.it is quite possible but the impression i got was that it is being done by them entirely. it is freaking flash thats for sure but i doubt any studio has the set up thats being used in Bombay and can compete on price.
in the end its the product and its economics that matters not where it was made.
maybe aimators fearing loss of work should get involved more in the pre-prod side of things because thats where the strength lies.the studios here just do production pre and post is always done in the US (for an american series anyway) that and 3d is always an option.

maybe aimators fearing loss of work should get involved more in the pre-prod side of things because thats where the strength lies.the studios here just do production pre and post is always done in the US (for an american series anyway) that and 3d is always an option.

I'm sure you will still feel the same way in 5 to 10 years when all your jobs are being exported to new cheaper studios in Africa. Besides, preproduction isn't animation. There is something magical about seeing a character you animated come to life in front of you eyes and knowing that you did it. This as oppossed to drawing the storyboards, then 5 months later seeing you boards animated by someone else, and quite often get it wrong.

Any way, it is to bad for us US animators that Maggie isn't animated in the US. Both Disney and Warner Bros. are just too big corperate companies and all they see any more is the profit margin. So they do what they've done for the past several decades, pre production here, then ship it overseas. There are a buch of people in the US that are trying to change that mentality, but it's hard when you're an artist to convince CEO's when all they know is money.

Sorry for the derailment.

Aloha,
the Ape

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

There are a buch of people in the US that are trying to change that mentality, but it's hard when you're an artist to convince CEO's when all they know is money.

Money is the key, if you could show them how monkeys could do the work and make money then monkeys would be doing the animation. :eek:

It's too bad there couldn't be an amalgamated unit of all sorts of independent factions of animators that got together and did these sorts of things vs. the major companies; though who knows that the mindset wouldn't change if the group got large enough, to be exactly that of those from whom they are trying to differentiate themselves.

well here is the way i see it. all the outsourced works leads to good animation, the quality rises but it dosent foster any creativity. my set up we do zero outsourcing. we infact are only focusing on our first IP. i know a bunch of studios tht survive on outsourced business and their own creativity is so lacking its amazing.
so there is a price to pay.
cheaper studios dont scare me because in the end it is only a quality product that sells not a cheap one.
but people need a perspective. the costs are restrictively high. not a lot of people can say ok i have an idea ill take this to production without begging from everyone and pleading for meetings. there are many ways of collaborating and using this cost difference. artists who didnt have any shot of producing can now see their work come to life. they might have to get up and move for a few months but thats a small price.
i am not defending either perspective. its just tht there is an inevitablity to this. the economics will always win because in the end its a business.
anyway. i digress.

I wonder if that's why so many people hail the Lasseters of the world for allowing artistic stuff to come out in lieu of being a business.

Incidentally, isn't creativity an important part of quality? Or do you just mean production value?

cheaper studios dont scare me because in the end it is only a quality product that sells not a cheap one.

the economics will always win because in the end its a business.

I think you're contredicting yourself there.

Aloha,
the Ape

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

Wow, I'm pretty good with catching those and I missed it. I guess I saw the word "economics" and my mind shut off. Math involved and all.

Pixar is a good example of a start up company. So if someone wonts too they could try to start another Pixar like company.

What exactly is a startup? 1986 was a long time ago. Is it like a spinoff, because it started out as a division of another company and broke away?

the disney show maggie premiered today..

i saw the show today.. looks good.. looks like it was split between bardel in canada and future thought productions in bombay.. disney's done a great job - it animates real well for flash!

Let me ask this dumb question.

I saw on www.coldhardflash.com that two animators are Jorge Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua.

Do you know exactly where these two of several animators are doing the work?
Their domain name Mexopolis.com is registered in California.
http://www.coldhardflash.com/2005/06/disneys-buzz-starts-tomorrow.html
I guess they just do the animation that they are supposed to do and upload it to a website, email it or ftp it somewhere.
That's why I was confused when you guys said "Maggie" wasn't done in the U.S.

A startup company is a company recently formed, usually till IPO.

In the late 1990s during the dot-com boom much stock market speculation and hype surrounded small hi-tech startup companies seeking early IPO and promising enormous future profits. Many such start-ups started as spin-offs from university research groups.

Initial Public Offering - IPO
The first sale of stock by a private company to the public. IPOs are often smaller, younger companies seeking capital to expand their business.

I think you're contredicting yourself there.

Aloha,
the Ape

actually im not. im not very clear because im a stream of conciousness kinda typer :)

when i meant a quality product sells i meant in terms of writing,characters, production value and entertainment. thats between a show and the people who watch it.
the second one was from an animator/pitch perspective. if you take something that looks great and is funny but costs $15,000 a minute to produce and a producer listening to the pitch that dosent like the economics will let the economics of it win out.
come to think of it thoughat the same time if i go to a producer with something for 400$ a minute and obviously its crap they wont buy it coz its cheap. so there has to be some kind of a mix of the two to make an ideal sale.
making sense?

I can probably guess what studio in Bombay is doing the series (U.T.V. was its name, but I am not sure... I think they changed it). We used them here in Montreal as well to do a Flash series called Daft Planet. The work was, to put it bluntly, horrible. Maybe over the last few years, they have gotten better?

"Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard" - Paul Simon

Oops... Just saw the "Future Thought" mentioned in a later post. Any idea if this studio was formerly called UTV?

"Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard" - Paul Simon

Oops... Just saw the "Future Thought" mentioned in a later post. Any idea if this studio was formerly called UTV?

the Studio is Future Thougt www.futurethought.tv (iirc). they are like 10 mins down the street from my studio (we move sunday :))
UTV is kaput and has been for alteast 6 months. They had a lot of trouble with their staffing (overstaffing) and they laid off their senior personnel as well as their creative director (Ram Mohan).
dodgy the way they went down considering they are becoming quite the distribution/production house for normal programming (not only in India but in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Bangkok and Indonesia) went public as well.
they should have handeled this better

The main part of a pitch is not the cost but the demographics of who will be watching the show. You could have the greatest product on the planet but if its market is people over the age of 60, then you are not going to have a easy time sell it.

Wow, Future Thought, no kiddin? We've worked with them on some web based stuff. We had to drop them because their sense of humor was not translating over. They we're also very inconsisitent with the quality. Some projects would look amazing and others would look totally half-arsed. It took me months to convince upper-management to finally realize that they were actually LOSING money by using FT.

FT definately has some very talented people over there, but we saw a big lack of direction. That was another argument of mine... that we were giving them too much creative freedom.

Anyhow, this is officially the first debate I've triggered on AWN... YAY! But serisously I feel like Flash (aside from 3D) is a US animator's last hope!

Regarding this unexciting talk of economics... I recently watched a documentary on WalMart and how they've single-handedly changed the ecomony with all their outsourcing. Any US company that doesnt want to be run out of business must now outsource production oversees. Tons of peeps have lost their jobs and our Trade Deficit continues to run through the roof! I guess the animation industry has been in the same boat for years, but it's just kinda sad to see Flash go the same route...

Yah, because everyone knows senior citizens lose their eyeballs on midnight the day they get that old. Plus thanks to the second world war people 60 and over are terribly hard to come by... :D

The main part of a pitch is not the cost but the demographics of who will be watching the show. You could have the greatest product on the planet but if its market is people over the age of 60, then you are not going to have a easy time sell it.

the demographics can be adjusted but not necessarily the cost. i have had a conversation with a few people out of europe regarding some 3d stuff. i mean you should see some of this stuff it is Pixar good in quality, the concept is spot on, its a winner. but they are budgeted at something like $12,000 a minute.
thus far its not happening. so they are losing out to the economics.