Animation Legend Don Bluth, Creator Of ‘The Land Before Time’ And More, Has Formed A New Animation Studio
Don Bluthmade waves in the 1980s and 1990s as an animation alternative to what was being made by Walt Disney Animation Studios. With titles likeThe Secret of NIMH,The Land Before Time,An American Tail,All Dogs Go to Heaven,Rock-a-Doodle, andAnastasia, Don Bluth Productions carved out a nice niche for themselves during the Disney renaissance. Now he’s going to try again by ushering in a renaissance of their own with the recently founded Don Bluth Studios, which will be focusing on bringing hand drawn animation back in a big way.Cartoon Brewcalled our attention to the creation of a newFacebook page for Don Bluth Studios, which says:
As of now, there aren’t any feature length animated projects that have been revealed, but as the page indicates, they have various pitches and ideas that they’re working on. In the meantime, recently named vice presidentLavalle Leehas been working on a project to whet the appetite of Don Bluth fans.
In a series of YouTube livestreams,Lavalle Leeis coloring and cleaning up drawings done by Don Bluth for a project calledBluth Fables. This isn’t an animated movie or TV series, but rather a kind of video storybook that features “multiple short stories similar to nursery rhymes and Aesop fables” that were written by Bluth, who will also narrate the stories. For any aspiring artists out there who may want to work in animation or illustration, these livestreams seem like pretty detailed and helpful resources.
Lee has been working with Don Bluth for awhile now. He started studying with the filmmaker in 2009 ad has been running theTraditional Animation website, a valuable resource for animation fans and creators. Lee also workedon the crowdfunding campaignfor an animated feature film adaptation of theDragon’s Lairvideo game Bluth created, which was recently featured in the second season ofStranger Things. That project doesn’t seem to have made much progress yet, though there is a live-action adaptation with Ryan Reynolds in the works at Neflix, and Bluth is attached to produce.
Perhaps the resurgence ofDragon’s Lairas a feature film project at Netflix will garner renewed interest in Don Bluth’s work. Traditional hand drawn animation has mostly fallen by the wayside with computer animation dominating the medium on the big screen. Is there enough of an interest from the younger generation out there to make hand drawn animated movies viable again? Or will it merely be a novelty that can never quite capture the same magic had years ago? Bluth attempted to mesh the worlds of hand drawn animation and computer animation with efforts likeTitan A.E., but it didn’t pay off and it ended with Bluth’s company falling apart. We’ll have to wait and see if Don Bluth has any more tricks up his sleeve for this revival.
