Dreamworks vs Pixar

[Guest fanofcoils]

People tend to no sell Dreamworks. Dreamworks shockingly made Shrek when you would assume Pixar did. I am wondering since Dreamworks does make computer animation movies, will Disney switch to them since they are no longer feeling it with Pixar?

[Mole 0]

Umm, they can't just switch like that.

 

Dreamworks and Disney are completly different companies.

[Guest fanofcoils]

They can agree to work with each other. I think Eisner hates some guy in Dreamworks, so I'm not sure if they would.

[WrestlingFan4Ever 0]

Dreamworks, despite making both Shreks, are still very underrated. Ice Age was really good.

[Mole 0]

That was 20th Century Fox.

 

I believe that Dreamworks has only done Shreks and Shark Tale this fall.

[JasonX 0]

People tend to no sell Dreamworks. Dreamworks shockingly made Shrek when you would assume Pixar did. I am wondering since Dreamworks does make computer animation movies, will Disney switch to them since they are no longer feeling it with Pixar?

Yes and no.

 

The two things that would keep such a collaboration from happening would be:

 

1. Division of the profits for any films they produce together

 

2. The issue of which studio would distribute said films

[Mole 0]

Well companies distribute films together all the time, to save production costs.

[Steviekick 0]

Umm, they can't just switch like that.

 

Dreamworks and Disney are completly different companies.

Jeff (I forget his first name) Katzenburg wound up forming the company with Spielberg and Geffen (Hense the copmanie's official name being Dreamworks SKG).

 

While Eisner was the CEO, Katz was the president (basically the second in command) of Disney. The two started to really hate each other over the years, especially after the other high level exec whose name escapes me at this moment died in a helicopter accident.

[Guest CronoT]

Umm, they can't just switch like that.

 

Dreamworks and Disney are completly different companies.

Jeff (I forget his first name) Katzenburg wound up forming the company with Spielberg and Geffen (Hense the copmanie's official name being Dreamworks SKG).

 

While Eisner was the CEO, Katz was the president (basically the second in command) of Disney. The two started to really hate each other over the years, especially after the other high level exec whose name escapes me at this moment died in a helicopter accident.

YOU ARE CORRECT, SIR!

 

The reason Shrek was made was so the two former Disney employees could piss all over their old job. The most telling example is the Prince in the movie. He looks like a caricature of Michael Eisner, except he's a short guy. Eisner is really tall, and uses it to intimidate people.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

People tend to no sell Dreamworks.  Dreamworks shockingly made Shrek when you would assume Pixar did.  I am wondering since Dreamworks does make computer animation movies, will Disney switch to them since they are no longer feeling it with Pixar?

Dreamworks is looking to sell the Animation studio.

 

They may want to hurry it up, "Father of the Pride" isn't doing them any favors.

 

Also, Katzenberg is equally as big an egomaniac as Eisner is. Eisner enjoys being richer than God, but Katz is convinced that he's the second coming of Walt Disney himself.

[Mole 0]

I don't understand why the CGI movies cost so much.

 

What about them makes them so expensive?

[Guest CronoT]

I don't understand why the CGI movies cost so much.

 

What about them makes them so expensive?

Traditional animation is done with ink, paint, and cels. There are two, sometimes three layers of cels. First, is the background. Next is the foreground; the background and foreground are sometimes on the same cel, but not always. The last cel is the action cel, where the characters are painted on. Then, all of the cels are put together, one on top of the other.

 

Now, comes the hardest part. The person who has this job is usually someone far down on the food chain, most times it's an intern or a new employee. This person has to take a picture of each action cel, up to several hundred thousand, over their corresponding backgrounds and foregrounds. One Disney movie, although I forget which one, had over one million cels. All that stuff takes up a lot of space, so they have to warehouse it. All of this everntually gets condensed down to one or two reels of film. Talk about the whole being greater than the sum of it's parts.

 

For CGI, you basically do the same thing, except it's all done on computers. The expensive part is all the memory it takes to store all that information. The warehouse full of animation cels is basically equivalent to several hundred gigs of memory, which is very expensive. It wouldn't surprise me if one of those longer films ended up being a terrabyte in size. For those of you who aren't fluent in computer-ese, that's equal to 1,024 gigabytes, or almost ten 120 gig hard drive PC's.

[MrRant 0]

*Wonders if he should point out that a 120GB HD is arould $150 or less...*

 

 

The real reason for the cost is the workstations they use are very... very expensive. Hardware costs + software costs x amount of people working on it.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Traditional animation is done with ink, paint, and cels.

 

For CGI, you basically do the same thing, except it's all done on computers. The expensive part is all the memory it takes to store all that information. The warehouse full of animation cels is basically equivalent to several hundred gigs of memory, which is very expensive.

For many years now, traditional animation has been done on computers. Most anime from Japan has been that way for a while which is how it looks so clean, and Disney adopted it more and more before finally putting ink-and-cell to rest with Brother Bear, the last Disney cartoon to be done the old fashioned way.

 

What makes CGI so expensive is the amount of power needed to render every scene, as well as the artists to take the models and have them do everything required in the movie. It's not like a video game where the same 4-step animation of the character running is repeated over and over, that would look lousy and cheap.

 

Then you have to do all the effects and light sources, reflection, etc.

[Kaertos 0]

Basically, animation of any type is incredibly labor intensive. And ask any business owner you know what the most expensive part of their operating costs is and they will tell you labor. Yes, all movies move slow, sometimes taking a day or two to film one scene and they require a huge crew and support staff, but animation sometimes takes a day or two to do a few frames of action (24 frames = 1 second of film) and requires about the same number of people if you include voice talent.