Tooning In:
No Longer Bit Players ,
Animators Draw Fame
As Hollywood Stars
--They Command Big Salaries
And Get Celebrity Perks
In Wake of Disney Hits
--A Job Offer at the Airport
By Thomas R. King and Lisa Bannon
10/06/1995
The Wall Street Journal
Page A1
(Copyright (c) 1995, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
Tom Sito didn't get much respect when he told people he wanted to be an animator and draw cartoons for a living.
His own father thought he should get a more stable job, perhaps join the Navy. "Most people," Mr. Sito says,
"thought I was crazy."
Even Mr. Sito thought that, at best, he might someday eke out a modest living. How wrong he was. This month,
DreamWorks SKG lured the 39-year-old Mr. Sito from Walt Disney Co. to its new animation studio by nearly
doubling his salary to about $182,000 a year, handing him a hefty signing bonus, and -- in a stunning coup for an
animator -- promising him a piece of the profits of forthcoming features he works on, a perk usually reserved for
big-name movie stars like Tom Hanks.
"Animation was always the bastard child of Hollywood," says Mr. Sito, who recently traded in his Toyota Celica for
a Mercedes 240. "We were always fighting for legitimacy and to be taken seriously. Finally, our time has come."
Animators have suddenly become Hollywood's new stars. At Disney's annual stockholders' meeting earlier this year,
it wasn't Demi Moore or Julia Roberts whom Chairman Michael Eisner trotted out to impress the crowd. It was Glen
Keane, the company's star artist, who drew the title character in "Pocahontas."
An ambitious push by nearly every major studio into the risky business of producing full-length animated features,
however, has created a crisis in Toon Town, for demand far exceeds the supply. It also has turned what had always
been a low-paying and nearly anonymous profession into one of the hottest career tracks in Hollywood. Even
unpracticed young artists are being treated like they were hot prospects for the NFL, snatched off college campuses
before they even graduate.
Studios are spinning their feet as fast as the Road Runner for one reason: the immense profits earned by Walt
Disney. A cartoon renaissance that began with "The Little Mermaid" in 1989 has generated an estimated $4 billion
in profit for Disney since then. "The Lion King," Disney's biggest animated hit, is alone expected to generate profits
-- including merchandising -- that will reach nearly $1 billion. Now Disney's competitors are investing tens of
millions of dollars to build animation businesses, including Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros., News Corp.'s
Twentieth Century Fox and Turner Broadcasting System Inc.'s Turner Pictures, as well as DreamWorks, the new
studio formed by Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and David Geffen.
The animation studios are putting all their creativity to work as they raid their rivals and romance hot prospects.
Pure gumption is in plentiful supply as well: Paul Berry, an animator currently working on Disney's coming "James
and the Giant Peach," recently received a Federal Express delivery at home from rival Warner Bros. with a detailed - and unsolicited -- employment contract inside. It promised a handsome raise to work with "Batman" director Tim
Burton on a new project. A few days later, on an out-of-town trip, Mr. Berry received a message on his home
answering machine in San Francisco requesting that he secretly meet Warner executives at the hip Triton Hotel
there.
Mr. Berry didn't get the message, but it hardly mattered: Warner executives ambushed him at the airport when he
returned. The stealth attack eventually failed, but it did lead to Mr. Berry and fellow "Giant Peach" animators, who
had received a similar pitch, winning a share of the profits of some future animated movies. One of his colleagues
also demanded a regulation-size basketball hoop in his office.
"This recognition is a long time in coming," says Mr. Berry, a 34-year-old Briton. "We definitely are the actors in
these films and, as such, we should be treated in a similar way to actors. We're giving performances as much as
anybody."
Disney animators are in especially heated demand. Two star Disney animators have set plans to defect in just the
past few weeks, both to DreamWorks: James Baxter, who drew Belle in "Beauty and the Beast" as well as the title
character in next summer's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," and Will Finn, who drew Iago the parrot in "Aladdin"
and Cogsworth the clock in "Beauty and the Beast." (Top animators like these oversee a single major character
through every scene, while other artists create backgrounds and minor characters.)
DreamWorks also has lured several other top Disney animators under a plan orchestrated by Mr. Katzenberg, who
oversaw Disney's animation revival as studio chief there. Among them are Duncan Marjoribanks, who drew the
villainous Gov. Ratcliffe in "Pocahontas," and Don Paul, who was visual-effects supervisor on "Pocahontas." Mr.
Katzenberg declined to be interviewed.
For years, animators at Disney have been paid surprisingly modest salaries even as the company's films became
what Wall Street analysts call the most successful entertainment products in history. People at the studio, for
example, say the highest salaries in the animation division -- about $200,000 to $300,000 -- had been drawn by only
a few star animators and a handful of producers and directors.
But these people say Disney has raised salaries sharply in recent months. It also recently instituted a rich bonus plan
in its feature-animation division, and, in the past few weeks, has been scrambling to sign new, long-term and
extraordinarily lucrative contracts with many of its key personnel. John Musker and Ron Clements, the directing
team behind "Aladdin" and "The Little Mermaid," are said by people close to them to have inked pacts that will pay
them each around $900,000 a year. Neither returned calls seeking comment, and Disney declined to comment.
At first, Disney was slow to react. "They didn't believe any animators would leave," says Jon Cantor, an attorney
who represents more than 100 animators. "Once everybody gave notice, Disney did a 180-degree turn. They really
opened up their checkbook."
As stars command ever-higher salaries, the trickle-down effect is pumping up price tags all the way down the line.
In 1992, an average weekly salary for an animator with five years' experience was about $1,000, while the average
today is about $1,600 to $2,000, says Mr. Sito, who currently is president of the cartoonists' union that represents the
majority of animators. That helps explain why Disney's animated films from just a few years ago like "Beauty and
the Beast" cost about $30 million, while more recent releases like "Pocahontas" are estimated to have cost at least
double that.
"I'm especially happy for the super talents who are well deserving of the six-figure salaries and bonuses," says Gary
Goldman, producer and director of Fox's first feature, "Anastasia." "But the trickle-down is throwing production
budgets into catastrophic figures."
Many of the animators being wooed are already under contract. Rivals have "called and said, `Come over and see
what we're doing,' which I have done," says Andreas Deja, the star animator known for drawing Disney villains like
Gaston in "Beauty" and Scar in "Lion King." "But I have a contract here."
All Toon Town has been focused on a lawsuit that Disney filed in June in Los Angeles Superior Court to prevent
Max Howard, its former top production supervisor, who oversaw the construction of its animation studios in Florida,
from joining Warner Bros. as president of animation. In the complaint, Disney alleges, among other things, that Mr.
Howard misappropriated "trade secrets" and was guilty of "fraud and malice." Defendants Mr. Howard, Warner
Bros. and Time Warner all declined to comment.
Legal experts say Disney filed the case to set a precedent and to send strong warnings both to others thinking of
leaving and to competitors planning raids. The suit is pending.
Wooing animators is proving especially tricky for animation upstarts like Fox, which must persuade recruits to move
to Phoenix, where it has built a $100 million animation facility. It has taken to running full-page ads in trade papers
touting the advantages. In Phoenix, the ad goes, employees can buy a 2,000-square-foot home for $145,000 vs.
$300,000 in Los Angeles. "Average days ozone standards exceeded: Phoenix, three days; Los Angeles, 100 days."
There are other benefits: "Average cost of annual earthquake insurance: Phoenix, N/A; Los Angeles, $700."
The frenzy is enough to make some studio executives pine for the good old days. "Before, these animators couldn't
be choosy because there was only Disney and that was it," says Amy Pascal, president of Turner Pictures, which is
making an animated movie called "Cats Don't Dance." "Now they're in charge of where they go to work -- and none
of us like it."
Indeed, there is such a demand for animators in the U.S. that Warner Bros. has begun to look abroad. It plans to
open an animation studio in London later this year, where it will employ about 80 artists to work on its new feature,
"The Quest for the Grail."
Animators are basking in the attention, and they say it isn't just because of the fatter paychecks. "My reason for
leaving [Disney] was not financial," says Mr. Marjoribanks, 41, who is set to draw Moses for DreamWorks's first
movie, "The Prince of Egypt." "Disney has a particular mandate to produce a specific kind of entertainment. It's nice
to do something else."
Henry Selick, whose stop-motion animation production company, Twitching Image Inc., is making "James and the
Giant Peach" for Walt Disney Pictures, says the Warner sneak attack on Mr. Berry and the other "Giant Peach"
animators was "fairly naive" because it was all about money. "They showed up one weekend, met some of the key
people at a hotel and expected them to sign right there. Animators are among the most cautious, thoughtful,
considering human beings on the planet. None of them are going to jump into a situation without a lot of thought."
None have jumped so far.
Twitching Image counteracted the Warner raid in part by striking a production alliance with Miramax Films, a
Disney unit, under which animators can get a piece of profits. Lawyers drawing up the deal showed several key
animators how, under the new formula, they would have shared $2 million had the arrangement been in force when
the same team made "The Nightmare Before Christmas" a couple of years ago.
While much of the studio frenzy is directed at established animators, the cartoon boom has also prompted a tidal
wave of interest at art schools. California Institute of the Arts, considered by many to be the best animation training
ground in the country and long funded in part by Disney, says it is increasingly difficult to keep students through
graduation because job offers materialize much earlier.
"It's insane," says Christine Panushka, associate director of experimental animation at Cal Arts. "The studios are
constantly calling the school saying they want interns. The character animators are being circled." At Cal Arts, only
19 students finished the four-year program in 1994, out of a starting class of 56; the school says most left because
they got jobs.
This summer, Disney picked up the tab to fly art-school administrators from all over the country to Walt Disney
World in Orlando and put them up in first-class accommodations to attend a special screening of "Pocahontas." The
studio organized a lavish weekend of activities, including cocktail parties and dinners where professors could rub
elbows with top Disney executives.
"Disney has been very good to us," says Reeves Lehmann, chairman of the animation department at the School of
Visual Arts in New York, which has accepted Disney money to support its end-of-the-year show. Studio courting
has become so intense that Mr. Lehmann hasn't been able to accommodate all the studios that want to make
recruitment presentations: "I didn't mean to slight these people, but I couldn't find a time in which we could
accommodate Fox." Applications are soaring at the School of Visual Arts and at Sheridan College in Toronto, which
received 1,280 applications to fill 110 spots last year, up from just 211 applications in 1990.
The studios have also set up shop at numerous trade shows and animation expos, with executives on hand to review
students' portfolios and give them the hard sell. At a recent computer-animation show in Los Angeles, hungry
recruiters descended on students and young animators in a "career room," pitching job openings.
"I've only been here an hour and I've got an interview and tons of leads," says Jason Campbell, a job-hunting 21year-old computer animator now working at an ad job in Charlotte, N.C. "I look around and I see these guys making
six figures. The future looks really good."