How Don Bluth changed the face of fea­ture animation

There was a brief moment in the mid to late ​’80s when a rel­a­tive­ly small com­pa­ny, backed by a stu­dio in Dublin, suc­cess­ful­ly com­pet­ed against Dis­ney with the likes of An Amer­i­can Tail, The Land Before Time (which cel­e­brates its 30^th anniver­sary this year) and All Dogs Go to Heav­en. But the mon­strous suc­cess of The Lit­tle Mer­maid at the tail end of 1989 swung things in Disney’s favour. The ani­ma­tion giant’s biggest com­mer­cial hit since 1967’s The Jun­gle Book marked the begin­ning of Disney’s so-called renais­sance – and ulti­mate­ly the end of Sul­li­van Bluth Stu­dios. But let’s get to all that in a moment.

Don Bluth is a Tex­an and a Jack of all trades. He trained as an ani­ma­tor but also worked as a direc­tor, pro­duc­er and design­er. From 1959 to 1977 he worked for Dis­ney on a num­ber of projects (Sleep­ing Beau­ty, The Sword in the Stone, Robin Hood, The Res­cuers), and in 1979 struck out with a small group of ani­ma­tors to set up his own rival stu­dio with the aim of keep­ing tra­di­tion­al cel ani­ma­tion alive – a style that Dis­ney was grad­u­al­ly mov­ing away from.

But after releas­ing just one fea­ture-length pro­duc­tion, The Secret of NIMH, Don Bluth Pro­duc­tions filed for bank­rupt­cy. After strug­gling to get var­i­ous new projects off the ground, Bluth filed for bank­rupt­cy for a sec­ond time in 1985. The busi­ness side of things, it appeared, was not his strong suit. Enter Mor­ris Sul­li­van, a promi­nent busi­ness­man who had found­ed his own finan­cial con­sult­ing com­pa­ny, Sul­li­van was impressed with the com­bined tal­ent of Bluth and his two clos­est allies, fel­low Dis­ney defec­tors Gary Gold­man and John Pomeroy. He agreed to form Sul­li­van Bluth Stu­dios with an ini­tial cash injec­tion of $5 mil­lion, and the com­pa­ny was reborn.

Arriv­ing in Dublin with an ini­tial staff of 85 to cut costs between Ire­land and Cal­i­for­nia, the move was made per­ma­nent in Novem­ber 1986 after the Irish gov­ern­ment offered Sul­li­van Bluth Stu­dios the largest grant in the country’s his­to­ry to relo­cate per­ma­nent­ly in return for five per cent own­er­ship of the stu­dio. Togeth­er with Sullivan’s invest­ment, it was enough to open up an extreme­ly mod­ern six-storey, 42,000 square foot stu­dio next to Phoenix Park. The Stu­dio boast­ed 21 depart­ments and employed over 350 peo­ple in jobs rang­ing from ani­ma­tion to admin­is­tra­tion (75 per­cent of which were Irish). Anoth­er $4.5 mil­lion was spent on equip­ment and fur­nish­ings to cre­ate what came to be known as one of the most sophis­ti­cat­ed clas­si­cal ani­ma­tion stu­dios in the world.

There was a lab for devel­op­ing black-and-white footage, the­atres and plen­ty of audio and edit­ing facil­i­ties. The edi­to­r­i­al space itself was made up of view­ing rooms replete with large screens and Movi­o­la equip­ment sent over from Bur­bank. There were air-con­di­tioned pro­jec­tion rooms, one of which had a sin­gle 35mm pro­jec­tor sys­tem for dailies and anoth­er with a 32-seat screen­ing room and two uni­ver­sal pro­jec­tors for smooth turnover between reels.

The sound depart­ment boast­ed cut­ting-edge equip­ment, includ­ing Tas­cam mul­ti­track record­ing sys­tems, Magna-Tech sound trans­fer and mod­i­fi­ca­tion equip­ment, a room specif­i­cal­ly for record­ing nar­ra­tion and sound effects, as well as a huge in-house sound effects library. To top it off, Bluth then set up The Irish School of Clas­si­cal Ani­ma­tion in Bal­lyfer­mot Col­lege to solid­i­fy links with his new home­land. If all things went well, there was even talk of a Sul­li­van Bluth theme park revolv­ing around all their onscreen char­ac­ters. With every pos­si­ble angle cov­ered, suc­cess seemed almost guaranteed.

Yet not every­one shared Bluth’s vision of cre­at­ing dark­er, decid­ed­ly more mature ani­mat­ed fea­tures. Chil­dren and adults alike want­ed colour, adven­ture, end­less joy. But Bluth liked to push things this way and that, often to his detri­ment. Released in Novem­ber of 1986, An Amer­i­can Tail, a film full of heart and whim­sy, made a strong return on its $9 mil­lion bud­get despite receiv­ing mixed reviews. Two years lat­er, The Land Before Time proved a some­what unex­pect­ed smash hit, gross­ing a mas­sive $84 mil­lion. Reviews were gen­er­al­ly pos­i­tive and the film was seen as a vast improve­ment on the studio’s pre­vi­ous release. It had a gen­er­al appeal that brought in audi­ences young and old. So, had Bluth final­ly found the recipe for success?

Not exact­ly. In 1989, All Dogs Go to Heav­en saw a total rever­sal of for­tune for Sul­li­van Bluth Stu­dios – indeed, it all but end­ed the part­ner­ship. Crit­ics found the sto­ry con­fus­ing and the char­ac­ters dif­fi­cult to like. It was released on the same day as The Lit­tle Mer­maid, who had gone all out with a far supe­ri­or bud­get and sound­track. Despite All Dogs Go to Heav­en mak­ing a small prof­it, the company’s finan­cial back­ers prompt­ly with­drew, result­ing in all future projects being scrapped. Sud­den­ly the future of the stu­dio looked bleak. The renamed Don Bluth Enter­tain­ment pushed ahead with Rock-a-Doo­dle, going up against Fer­n­Gul­ly: The Last Rain­for­est, which impres­sive­ly blend­ed com­put­er and hand-drawn ani­ma­tion. It was a com­mer­cial dis­as­ter, and the death knell for Bluth’s career.

Between 1992 and 1995 Bluth put out a string of slop­pi­ly pro­duced, poor­ly received films after a lot of finan­cial wran­gling. Some ani­ma­tors were work­ing for free with Bluth cov­er­ing the company’s over­heads out of his own pock­et. Due to the nature of hand-drawn cel ani­ma­tion, Bluth pro­duc­tions were always incred­i­bly labour-inten­sive and expen­sive to make. From an edi­to­r­i­al stand, it took many rounds and stages to per­fect the final vision; from the sketch stage, the full devel­op­ment of all the char­ac­ters could take up to six months. The sto­ry would be processed by the lay­out and back­ground depart­ments, then passed on to a fur­ther plan­ning depart­ment, before the full set of some one and a half mil­lion indi­vid­ual draw­ings were painstak­ing­ly paint­ed out from paper and expo­sure sheet to cel.

To give some con­text as to the cost of pro­duc­ing a sound­track for one Bluth fea­ture, any­where between 50 to 100 musi­cians were used to record the final score. This could take as long as five days com­pris­ing two three-hour ses­sions at a cost of $10 – 20,000 per day. This was a hell of a lot of mon­ey back in the late ​’80s and ear­ly ​’90s. Bluth refused to cut cor­ners and by 1995 the Dublin stu­dio had closed for good and with it came the col­lapse of the Irish ani­ma­tion indus­try. Back in the US, Dis­ney had just dis­trib­uted Pixar’s debut fea­ture, Toy Sto­ry, kick­start­ing a rev­o­lu­tion in animation.

Today the hori­zon looks very dif­fer­ent at home in Ire­land. The ani­ma­tion indus­try is in good health with a wealth of award-win­ning stu­dios – Car­toon Saloon (Song of the Sea, The Secret of Kells), Brown Bag Films (The Octo­nauts and var­i­ous pieces for Nick­elodeon) and Boul­der Media (The Amaz­ing World of Gum­ball and Dan­ger Mouse) chief among them – amount­ing to an esti­mat­ed worth of €100 million.

And what of Bluth? Well, he returned to Cal­i­for­nia and con­tin­ued mak­ing films with vary­ing degrees of suc­cess. In 1997 Anas­ta­sia was a sur­prise hit, but that was fol­lowed three years lat­er by the cat­a­stroph­ic Titan AE, which effec­tive­ly shut down Fox Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios for good. From there Bluth dab­bled in video games until 2011.

His­tor­i­cal­ly speak­ing, the lega­cy of Don Bluth is a fas­ci­nat­ing one. No one had real­ly done what he did before – break­ing away from a huge albeit tired-look­ing com­pa­ny like Dis­ney to cre­ate a whole new mode of ani­ma­tion, some­thing that was dark­er, cer­tain­ly more sur­re­al than Dis­ney, some­thing that involved adults as much as younger view­ers. In the grander scheme of things, Bluth’s career was a dou­ble-edged sword.

As much as it was a nec­es­sary step in terms of tak­ing the ani­ma­tion indus­try out of its com­fort zone, it was also the nec­es­sary evo­lu­tion­ary step in the sto­ry of Dis­ney as it forced the com­pa­ny to rethink and restruc­ture itself after a 22-year slump. By turn­ing things around, Dis­ney effec­tive­ly sank Bluth in the process. Regard­less, by play­ing the giants of ani­ma­tion at their own game – and beat­ing them, for a while at least – there’s no doubt that Bluth changed the medi­um for the better.