DISNEY’S MAGIC SCHOOL : CalArts Students Are at the Core of the Animation Boom

It may be the best investment Walt Disney ever made.

Not the mouse who grew to become an American cultural icon, nor the soggy Florida swampland that cost Disney about $185 an acre in 1964 and is now worth more than $1 billion as the home of Walt Disney World.

Disney’s masterstroke may have been his founding of a private arts college that squats in relative obscurity among the brown, dusty hills of Valencia about 50 miles north of Los Angeles.

Conceived three decades ago, partly as a clever way to funnel an army of skilled animators into the Disney studios, California Institute of the Arts has spawned a generation of students who have become the creative nucleus of the Disney empire--responsible for animating the long-locked princesses, chubby lion cubs and other characters that have brought the company billions of dollars in entertainment and related merchandise revenue.

If there’s one elusive ingredient vital to the incandescent Disney magic, CalArts is it.

As Walt Disney Co. continues to dominate the animated film business with hits such as “The Lion King” and “Aladdin,” CalArts alumni continue to dominate its animation ranks.

More than 50 CalArts graduates contributed to “The Lion King,” which has grossed $267 million domestically so far. The co-producer and co-director of 1992’s “Aladdin” came from CalArts, as did more than 50 other animators on the film.

More CalArts grads were behind the 1993 movie “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” including producer Tim Burton and director Henry Selick. Nearly 70 CalArts alumni worked on “Beauty and the Beast.” More are now at work on “Pocahontas,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and “Fantasia Continued.”

These feature films have helped ignite an industrywide boom in animation and become Disney’s financial core. While attendance at the firm’s theme parks lags--the Euro Disney investment is undergoing a massive refinancing effort amid losses of more than $550 million--and its live-action record is mixed, animated movies and ancillary products have driven revenue to record levels of $7.36 billion for the first nine months of 1994.

Since 1989, the year of “The Little Mermaid,” Disney’s filmed entertainment revenue has swelled from $1.59 billion to $3.67 billion in 1993, and product sales have more than tripled, from $411 million to $1.42 billion. Today, “animated products affect about 30% of Disney’s (annual) cash flow,” says Harold Vogel, an entertainment analyst at Merrill Lynch in New York.

Exactly how big a contribution CalArts makes to Disney’s bottom line is nearly impossible to measure, and both Walt Disney Co. and the school like to play down their interdependence. Disney executives point out that they also recruit from Sheridan College in Toronto and Ringling Brothers School of Art in Sarasota, Fla., among others.

CalArts emphasizes that many of its graduates migrate elsewhere for work and that animation artists represent only about a fifth of the school, which is also highly regarded for its programs in live-action filmmaking, fine art, music, dance and theater.

But both CalArts and Disney acknowledge that the longtime bond between them has grown into a powerful synergy that keeps Disney well at the forefront of the animation business--and brings CalArts money, cachet and connections.

Walt Disney Co. Vice Chairman Roy E. Disney, whose father, Roy O. Disney, took over CalArts’ construction upon younger brother Walt’s death in 1966, says CalArts has had a “huge amount” to do with the studio’s ability to produce one highly profitable film after another.

CalArts students “have such good groundwork that they can start out at a much higher level in the art than someone coming in from the outside,” says Disney, who along with recently deposed Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg and Animated Features President Peter Schneider, is credited with the revival of animation at Disney.

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CalArts opened its animation department in 1972 and graduated its first animation class in 1976. But the dynamic partnership didn’t fully gel until the mid-1980s, when CalArts hit its stride academically and Disney emerged from a long companywide downturn that had depressed earnings and resulted in a series of dismally performing animated films such as “The Black Cauldron.”

At the time, Disney leaned on the school simply to provide warm bodies. Roy E. Disney says that when he rejoined the company during a dramatic management coup in 1984, “there was a bit of an exodus” in the animation department. “We had to go to CalArts and say, ‘Who wants to come and work?’ ”

The beginning of the resurgence was “The Little Mermaid” in 1989, which critics said recaptured the Disney magic and which drew millions of moviegoers.

But Disney’s tradition of investing in and nurturing animation artists--and keeping them in the fold--is as old as its treasured mouse. In the 1930s, when Walt Disney started art classes at his studio, a visitor was likely to encounter 30 men in tailored suits gathered around a sandbox, sketching the movements of a live deer in preparation for “Bambi.”

“CalArts started with Walt’s having housed a great group of talented artists under one roof, and seeing them rubbing off on one another and the synergies that happened when they got together. And so his notion for the school was to do the same thing as a school instead of as a business,” Roy Disney says. “For sure, he saw it (CalArts) right from the beginning as a wellspring of finding talent.”

Sixty-odd years later, the school sends forth a steady stream of new talent that receives in-house classes and training programs at the studio.

“School just goes on here after they leave there,” Disney says. “We think it’s probably the single most important thing we do.”

That commitment translates into generous support of CalArts. Roy Disney sits on the school’s board of trustees. So does Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael D. Eisner. So does Katzenberg, who helped drive Disney’s vigorous comeback in animation before he left the company in August.

When Disney hosts an animated movie premiere, the proceeds usually go to CalArts. Following a benefit screening of “The Lion King” in June, for example, Roy Disney wrote a check to the school for $800,000. When CalArts President Steven D. Lavine decided in 1988 that it was important to equip the animation department with computers, the Roy Disney Family Foundation and Walt Disney Co. put up the money for a three-year plan.

In financial terms, Disney’s investment in the school represents only a smidgen of the company’s annual revenue, and Lavine says Disney’s total contribution represents only about 5% of the school’s annual budget. But Disney aids the college in other, vital ways.

For instance, when the Northridge earthquake caused $30 million in damage to the campus in January, Eisner directed the real estate team at Disney to find a temporary site for the school. And “it was Frank Wells (the late chief operating officer of Disney) who approached the Bank of America for us and helped arrange the financing to get us through it,” Lavine says.

Lavine also turned to his board of trustees to write letters urging the Federal Emergency Management Agency to grant money to the school, which received more than $22 million in federal aid. The school’s A-list board includes Creative Artists Agency Chairman Michael S. Ovitz; QVC Chairman and Chief Executive Barry Diller; Bruce Berman, Warner Bros. Pictures president of worldwide production and a former student at CalArts; L.A. Music Center board Chairman Robert B. Egelston, and computer software guru Peter Norton.

“We wanted to be sure that the people at FEMA understood that there is a powerful synergy, and that since in the economy of California the strongest element is the entertainment industry, that there is good reason to be concerned with the well-being of an institution that feeds the health of that industry,” Lavine says.

CalArts’ ability to feed Hollywood’s health derives from a curriculum that is extraordinarily industry-oriented for a fine arts school. Classes emphasize what is new and how the arts will define the next generation of entertainment.

Hartmut Bitomsky, dean of the School of Film/Video, says that “especially the character animation students . . . are very industry-driven,” inviting comparisons between the CalArts-Disney link and traditional corporate-university relationships such as that between Eastman Kodak Co. and Rochester University or the aerospace industry and California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Not that Disney is the school’s only Hollywood supporter. Lavine says Ovitz has been a key help in CalArts’ recent move into multimedia.

“His agents have been exploring which of the new technologies they think are going to be the most valuable for their clients to get involved in. . . .” Lavine says. “We’ve been getting advice from that group of agents about those new technologies.”

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A steady influx of Disney-loving students is only one resource CalArts provides its corporate founder. The obsessive control Disney exercises throughout the Magic Kingdom extends into animation largely through CalArts, creating what critics call the “Disney-CalArts look” in its films.

“Disney has found a formula and it’s working for them,” says Becky Bristow, CalArts’ director of character animation. “They are always within their corporate icon.”

That predictability has been a key element of Disney’s success, driving everything from film attendance to patronage of live attractions such as “The Lion King Celebration” parade at Disneyland to sales of millions of pajamas, CDs, videos, pop-up books, Halloween costumes and other merchandising spinoffs.

Characters with the so-called Disney look crop up often in the work of students at CalArts, where seven of the 20 teachers in the character animation department are employed by Disney. Mark Kausler, a CalArts graduate and veteran Disney animator, says the trademark Disney design “pervades every aspect” of its films, from the story line to the character types to the colors.

“I wouldn’t say they teach Disney style there (at CalArts) per se,” Kausler says, “but they teach Disney building blocks.” Beyond that, he says, “it comes out by imitation.”

Animators point out the similarities in the latest generation of Disney characters: Pocahontas looks like the Native American cousin of the “Aladdin” princess, who in turn looks like the Arab reincarnation of Belle in “Beauty and the Beast.” The evil Scar in “The Lion King” and the villainous Jafar in “Aladdin” could be relatives. Even the large-beaked Zazu in “The Lion King” resembles Jafar’s parrot sidekick, Iago.

One obvious hallmark of Disney design is characters with huge, expressive eyes. “Disney has a fixation on the eyes, because they feel that the story is told through the eyes,” Kausler says. Other Disney perennials are a lovable lead character, goofy sidekicks that provide the gags and a moralistic tale with an upbeat ending.

CalArts’ Lavine insists that the studio maintains a hands-off approach to the school’s curriculum. Indeed, much of the impetus to create Disney-esque animation seems to come from students who view the school as a ticket to a job at the studio.

“There are guys (at CalArts) who have big Disney stars in their eyes, and that’s where they want to be. That’s where they want to go,” says one recent graduate who declined to be named, out of fear of being blacklisted by Disney. “People sometimes do a Disney-looking film because they want to work for Disney rather than take risks artistically,” he says, adding, “Everyone in my class that wanted to go to Disney went to Disney.”

“Disney has made the most profound investment in carrying animation . . . to the highest level, pushing the field more, so clearly they attract a lot of our best students,” Lavine says.

The studio’s lure is powerful, despite a strict hierarchy and rigid rules that have led some young critics to label it Mouseschwitz.

That analogy also extends to Disney’s tight grip on its animators, most of whom sign three- to five-year contracts. Rival companies hoping to acquire a piece of the lucrative animation market accuse Disney of monopolizing talent. Sources at Warner Bros., Turner Pictures and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment--which will be merged into the new studio being formed by Spielberg, Katzenberg and record mogul David Geffen--say Disney has unofficially posted a “no poaching” warning to the industry.

The implied meaning, they say, is that competitors who don’t want to sully their relations with Disney would be wise to keep their hands off contracted Disney animators. Roy Disney says he is “not aware of anything like that,” adding that if there is such a practice at Disney, “I don’t want to know about it.”

Disney often scoops up fledgling animators halfway through their schooling, taking advantage of their eagerness to make money after spending $14,600 a year in tuition.

Animators’ salaries have soared as the business has gained momentum in the past few years. The Cartoonists Union minimum for beginners in theatrical animation is $800 a week, and higher-level positions command an average of $1,500 to $2,000 a week, topping out at $5,000 or so a week for the industry’s handful of superstars.

“Students are much more job-conscious now than when I was at CalArts. . . . The films are so successful now, there’s a desire to be part of it, like being part of a winning football team,” says Larry White, who graduated in 1979 and is currently animating a pug dog character for “Pocahontas.”

White, who has worked for Disney on and off for 15 years, says he was referred to CalArts when he applied for a job at Disney in 1976. White earned a Disney-sponsored scholarship to help pay for much of his schooling, and he now teaches beginning animation classes at CalArts two nights a week.

White is one of the more than 600 animation artists moving in November into new animation headquarters on Disney’s Burbank lot, a move symbolic of the division’s growth both in size and importance to the company.

At the same time, Disney’s resurrection of the art has more young people wanting to animate: CalArts’ Bitomsky says the number of animation applicants has grown 60% in the last several years, to 480 in the current school year. The school accepted 88.

The fact that competitors are starting to lure CalArts graduates hasn’t dampened the Disney hubris:

“Maybe there are kids who would prefer to work somewhere else for a while. And I think probably that it’s good for them,” Roy Disney says. “Because you find that if you do get out there to most places that do animation, and then you come in here and realize what an enormously high standard we have, it’s a whole new challenge.”

Analysts say Disney’s animated film revenue has grown so high, it will inevitably flatten over the next few years, no matter what the level of CalArts input. Vogel projects that Disney’s filmed entertainment revenue for 1995 will leap beyond this year’s estimated $3.7 billion and that filmed entertainment earnings for 1995 will pass the $1-billion mark, due largely to “The Lion King.”

“Now, at this stage of the game, it gets tougher. ‘The Lion King’ was extraordinary in its success,” Vogel says. “There has to be a ceiling somewhere.”

The Return of Animation

While the contribution by theme parks to Walt Disney Co.’s bottom line has steadily waned, from a 64% share of the company’s $1.23 billion in earnings five years ago to 35% today, filmed-entertainment accounted for 21% of profit; for the nine months ended June 30, it made up 44% of the $1.53 billion in earnings.

Walt Disney Co.’s operating income by business segment, for 1989 and 1994:

1989

Theme parks and resorts: 64%

Filmed entertainment: 21%

Consumer products: 15%

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1994*

Filmed entertainment: 44%

Theme parks and resorts: 35%

Consumer products: 21% (* For nine months ended June 30)

Source: Company reports