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Don Bluth
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Donald Virgil Bluth (born September 13, 1937 in El Paso, Texas) is an American animator and independent studio owner.
h became one of the chief animators at The Walt Disney Company in the 1970s. Along with fellow animators Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy, he set out in 1979 to start his own animation studio, Don Bluth Productions. His style tends toward rougher and more energetic portrayals than that of Disney films, and tend to have a mystical element to them.
Bluth received a bachelors degree in English Literature from Brigham Young University.
first two films he worked as an assistant animator on were Sleeping Beauty and The Sword in the Stone, for both of which he was uncredited.
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Encyclopedia
Donald Virgil Bluth (born September 13, 1937 in El Paso, Texas) is an American animator and independent studio owner.
Biography
Bluth became one of the chief animators at The Walt Disney Company in the 1970s. Along with fellow animators Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy, he set out in 1979 to start his own animation studio, Don Bluth Productions. His style tends toward rougher and more energetic portrayals than that of Disney films, and tend to have a mystical element to them.
Bluth received a bachelors degree in English Literature from Brigham Young University.
The Disney years
The first two films he worked as an assistant animator on were Sleeping Beauty and The Sword in the Stone, for both of which he was uncredited. He would not return to Disney until in the 1970s, when he was an animator on Robin Hood, The Rescuers, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Pete's Dragon. His last involvement with Disney was the 1978 short The Small One; he drew a few scenes for The Fox and the Hound (where he was once again uncredited), but left early in production.
The independent years
1980-1982
Upon leaving Disney, Bluth brought several other Disney animators with him to form a rival studio, allegedly upset with how the Disney animated features had "lost their charm" at the time. This new studio demonstrated its ability in its first production, a short film titled Banjo the Woodpile Cat, and this led to work on an animated segment of the live-action film Xanadu (1980) and then to its first feature-length animation, The Secret of NIMH (1982). Grossing twice its budget at the box office, many consider this film to be Bluth's masterpiece.
Dragon's Lair and Space Ace
Teaming up with Rick Dyer, Bluth then created the groundbreaking arcade game Dragon's Lair (1983), which let the player control a cartoon-animated character on screen (whose adventures were played off a laserdisc). This was followed in 1984 by Space Ace, a science-fiction game based on the same technology, but which gave the player a choice of different routes to take through the story (Don not only created the animation for Space Ace, he also supplied the voice of the villain, Borf), and Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp, a sequel which was very rare in arcades.
A String of Hits
His next film would have been an animated version of East of the Sun and West of the Moon, but was never made as the financial resources were drawn back. After teaming up with Spielberg, his next projects instead turned out to be An American Tail (1986) and The Land Before Time (1988), which did well in theaters and became animation classics. Although All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989) only had a minor theatrical success, it did much better on later Home Video sales, becoming a cult classic. Each of them launched a line of direct-to-video sequels and television spin offs, none of which Bluth had any involvement with.
The Less Popular
By the end of the decade and through the 1990s, Bluth films such as Rock-a-Doodle, Thumbelina, A Troll in Central Park, and The Pebble and the Penguin had dropped significantly when it came to box office returns.
Work at Fox Animation Studios
Bluth scored another hit with Anastasia (1997), which grossed US$140 million worldwide in part because it used well-known Hollywood stars as its voice talent and stuck closer to long-proven Disney formulas: a sassy and resourceful princess driven to become more than she is, a cruel and conniving villain who uses dark magic, a handsome and endearing love interest, and a comic-relief sidekick. Anastasia was produced at Fox Animation Studios in Phoenix, Arizona, which established 20th Century Fox as a Disney competitor.
In 2000, after the studio's third film Bartok the Magnificent (released direct to video as a spin-off of Anastasia and the only sequel directed by Bluth), 20th Century Fox Studios decided to shut down the Fox Animation Studio facility in Phoenix.
Dragon's Lair nostalgia
A recent attempt to capitalize on Dragon's Lair nostalgia by releasing the computer game Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair (2002) was unsuccessful; the game was panned by critics as being flat and uninteresting, despite groundbreaking cel-shading techniques that lent the game a hand-animated feel. Don Bluth and Gary Goldman are currently seeking funding for a film version of Dragon's Lair.
Despite the failure of Dragon's Lair 3D, Bluth and Goldman continued work in video games when they were hired to create the in-game cinematics for Namco's I-Ninja.
"Mary" music video
In 2004, Bluth did the animation for the music video "Mary", by the Scissor Sisters. The band contacted Bluth after having recalled fond memories of the sequence from Xanadu.
Bluth as an author
Bluth has also authored a series of books for students of animation: 2004's The Art of Storyboard, and 2005's The Art of Animation Drawing. Additional books are planned.
Filmography
As director and/or producer
Trivia
- The fourteen people that incorporated Don Bluth's studio are Bluth, Gary Goldman, John Pomeroy, Lorna Cook, Will Finn, Dorse A. Lanpher, Vera Lanpher, Heidi Guedel, Skip Jones, Kevin Wurzer, Dave Spafford, Emily Jiuliano, Linda Miller, Dan Kuenster, David Molina, and Terry Shakespeare.
Footnotes
Sources
- John Grant, Masters of Animation, 2001, Watson-Guptill Publications, ISBN 0823030415
External links
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- Brazilian Fan-Site on the Sullivan Bluth Studios
- on Bluth and the development of Dragon's Lair
- An interview with Don Bluth Studios about the making of The Secret of NIMH
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