What's it like! Disney style classic animation studio in Shanghai, China!?

Often when I head out to a bar or meet up at the China Indie Film Makers weekly "Meet Ups" people ask me what do I do? Well it is always fun to explain but I get that look on their faces. "I do classic animation" . . . . "What?" they always say? "Like Disney, you know, Old School . . . Animation" The usual response is "How is that possible? I thought it was dead?" "No, not dead . . . we are here and still drawing on the Animation Desks"

Tim is the co-founder of Crashdown Studio, he head technical development and animation pipeline.

During the earlier time, classic animation was a stable job in US, and could make a living out of it, but then later they outsourced a lot of the work to Korea and Japan. The studios did cost cutting and/or moved to 3D animation, for TV series and movies. (Thanks Pixar. . . Love your earlier movies by the way ;) Traditional animators all were lay off, which was hard for any one working in North America with the experience because you were considered "out of date".

Even now, it would be hard pressed to find work. The art form is a long and hard learning process, education takes years of practice and even so, the pay is horrible, we found a way out in the middle of no where to setup and steadily bring in a livable income.

Pierre and I met a while ago, thanks to a friend, Richard Trombly, who we made special animation visuals for.

I was coming from Pittsburgh, lay off from Fox Animation and Pierre had an extensive experience in Warner Bros, Hanna Barbara and other various big studios. We put together our funds and made a working production unit in Shanghai, China.

We got our first big contract with LoveTalk English, because in China, the educational market is huge and we been developing flash animation for that sector for a few years now to pay the bills. On top of education, we had institutional projects and did some visuals for feature films as animation consultants. So we survived as animators and still have our heads up high doing animation in the same spirit, following format as old 1940's Disney art style and methodology.

Almost the same, in our studio we had made some progress. We still have (animation tables), but they are now portable. We have a wide variety of art tools, plus, digital work stations, a digital editing bay, audio recording room, and Toon Boom Harmony, the same Ink and Paint System used in Disney "The Lion King" that quickly lets us capture and professional ink and paint animation.

We have a full green screen set and video area and much more! So we adapted to the process a little bit but we still have fundamentals.

What is interesting is there is not many left like us, so we have to always hold lectures and try to teach as much as possible the traditional way of doing animation. Myself, I find it hard to reach so many people, but I get the usual "I never met anyone like you before . . . " only because the linage of the golden age of animation is fading away. I always ask someone I met "When was the last time you saw a new 2D feature animation in the theatre" It is hard to remember because not many are made now. There is a lot of 3D features being made, but the quality and story is not the same as a good old fashioned 2D animation feature. So that is the fall out from the US entertainment industry kicking the classic animators to the curb.

"We have so many wonderful ideas and art to share, and continue to create and draw traditionally. The artwork we make is in the same nature as old school animation which gives us an unique "niche", because not many people can draw and animate like us, and no one has a full working production line in Shanghai like we do. It is just one of those situations where we found luck at the end of our ropes." - Pierre

We have a lot of good stuff to share but it is tough to do on this article, please feel free to visit us at http://www.crashdownstudio.com You can see animations and pencil tests, we are updating it a lot and more behind the scenes as well of one of the last traditional animation studios in the world today. When someone asks me ". . .what is hard about your job?" I always say " Creating . . . it is a brain twister to make something move fluidly" But we use our methods to get the right look and feel to things.

We have a variety of projects but still need help, as many do not know about us and want to spread the word. Our hope is we can make one feature film this year. Last year we did numerous small projects. A lot of little ones added up to and past the 120 mins mark for feature film. So we said, if we could get the funds to focus our development cycle to one (instead making many small projects and animations to get by monthly) we could actually make features (not just one) but bang out in traditional animation method, one after another and get to that same level as classic "Disney".

Well one could only hope, I am here still working away doing daily checks and updates. Pierre is still drawing and planning away for client projects, and in the mean time we are pulling some resources invested by myself to make our first feature, "Feathertop" which we put into pre-production development (I got the script and license to make the movie) so we took steps toward making a feature right now.

Thank you for reading and let me share the links:

www.crashdownstudio.com (we have lots of cool stuff to see)

Crashdown Studio Tumblr

#crashdownstudio (Instagram)

IMDB Feathertop Page

You can reach me at [email protected] for interest in animation.
I always like to chat about that topic as long as it is an honest question and not solicitation, I have a lot of say about classic animation :)