Don Bluth
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fr:Don Bluth Don Bluth (born September 13 1937) is a former Disney animator who, along with fellow animators Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy, set out on his own in 1979 to start his own animation studio, Don Bluth Productions. His style is rougher and more lively than Disney's, and his films tend to have a mystical element to them. Much of his early work still has devoted fans today.
Career
At Disney in the 1970s he was an animator on Robin Hood, The Rescuers, and Pete's Dragon. Afterwards he left Disney and independently produced a short film titled Banjo the Woodpile Cat as a demonstration of his ability, and this led to work on an animated segment of the live-action film Xanadu (1980) and his most noteworthy film, The Secret of NIMH (1982). Many consider this film to be his masterwork.
Teaming up with Rick Dyer, he created the groundbreaking arcade video 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; and Dragon's Lair II, a sequel which was very rare in arcades.
His next two films, An American Tail (1986) and The Land Before Time (1988), did well in theaters and each launched a line of sequels (most of which were released direct-to-video, and none of which Bluth worked on). But by the end of the decade and through the 1990s, Bluth films had dropped significantly in quality and box office returns with titles such as All Dogs Go to Heaven, Rock-A-Doodle, Thumbelina, A Troll in Central Park, The Pebble and the Penguin. He then scored another hit with Anastasia (1997) which grossed $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, and a comic-relief sidekick. However, this was followed by the financially disasterous Titan A.E. in 2000. Both Anastasia and Titan A.E. were produced at Fox Animation Studios, which 20th Century Fox established as a Disney competetor, but shut down in 2000 after the release of Titan A.E.
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 truly animated feel.
In 2004, Bluth produced an animated scene for the music video "Mary," by the Scissor Sisters. The band had contacted Bluth after having recalled fond memories of the sequence from Xanadu.
Currently, Don Bluth and Gary Goldman are seeking funding for a film version of Dragon's Lair.
External link
- Official site, DonBluth.com (http://www.donbluth.com/)
- The IMDb entry on Bluth (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0089940/)
- Extensive biography on Bluth (http://www.cataroo.com/DBbio.html)