Don Bluth

My cousin wanted to check out the spring Sacanime convention. To my astonishment, Don Bluth was one of the guests. That's right - the guy responsible for films such as The Land Before Time, and Secret of NIMH.  Who gave Disney a run for its money for a while. One of the most famous American animators. 

While we waited in line, I checked out some of the other convention guests. Jeff Bennett would have been cool to meet. He played characters like Kiki's dad in Kiki's Delivery Service. I never got the chance to talk to him though. 

I really wanted to meet Sam Vincent. He voiced Julian in Cardcaptors (or Yukito, if you don't watch the older English version). I really liked Julian as a kid, though it's only recently that I realized why. In the shows/movies I had, he was the only teenage boy that was really sweet and kind. I wanted to tell the actor how much that character meant to me, but once again I didn't get the chance. 

It took about an hour for my cousin and I to reach the front of the line. We read the price list, bewildered. A signed poster was $120. He'd also written a book, and an autographed copy of that was $80. So I bought the book. I want to read it anyway. To get the book personalized in any way, even just your name, would cost an extra $40. When they asked for my name, I gave it. And when they tried to charge me for it, I said no. So they crossed it out. 

Seriously, how do they figure out these prices? Fanime hasn’t charged me for an autograph. Does Sacanime just do this so they can skim off a lot of the money? Because some of these guests don’t seem like their autograph should cost $50. 

When we stepped up to meet Don Bluth, he autographed my book, and wrote my name anyway. So that was cool. He said that if I bought his book, I must be able to read. I said I like learning how things are made. And that my graduate project had been about environmental fiction, so I’d discussed themes in The Secret of NIMH and Titan AE. He didn’t have any response of that. But I think he commented on my Haku plush, because I ended up saying that I should make a Mrs. Frisby plush. He encouraged that idea. So I guess I’d better do it. I wish I could show him the result. It sounds fun. I already have the perfect pattern. 

It was a pretty quick meeting, after waiting for an hour and paying $80. I asked my cousin if she’d talked to him. She said she smiled at him, and was charged $5. I laughed. It sounded like the kind of thing that would have been on the price chart. 

Don Bluth had a panel coming up. Joining him were three voice actors from The Land Before Time: Gabriel Damon-Littlefoot, Candice Hutson-Cera, and Dan Molina-Spike. I was crazy about that movie in preschool. Me and some friends would pretend we were the characters. One of those girls ended up playing in band with me years later. She was an absolutely fabulous trumpet player. We played a whole piece featuring her. I hope she still plays. 

The four panelists talked for a bit. (Spoilers) Don Bluth talked about the scene where Littlefoot’s mom dies. He said that it was inspired by the scene in Bambi. Then he recited the whole build-up to the meadow. He combined the two meadow scenes, but the dialogue was spot-on. 

He said that digital animation is just puppetry. I can see his point of view. It's an entirely different art form to hand animation. He also said that AI isn't art. It doesn't feel. Amen to that. 

It opened up for questions. One person asked Don Bluth which movie he though was worse: A Troll in Central Park, or The Pebble and the Penguin. The crowd erupted in protest and I laughed. Don Bluth said that he’d trash both of them. Either he was joking, or he hadn’t gotten to do those movies the way he wanted to. 

At another point, he said that all of his films are about bringing family back together. And that someone had calculated how long it would have taken Walt Disney to animate and ink Pinocchio all by himself.  400 years. So the entire crew of the film is worth praising. 

I got in line to ask a question. I figured that this was my first chance to ask a filmmaker about environmental themes in their work. But Don Bluth didn’t answer that question. Instead, because I mentioned Secret of NIMH, he talked about his idea for a sequel in which NIMH realized that the rats were smart, and came after Mrs. Brisby’s family. I thought it was hilarious that he answered a totally different question, but it was a cool response. I wonder if he’s not interested in environmental problems, and it was just a side-effect of story. But I'm curious what that sequel would look like. 

Hmmm. 

Sometimes I'm Unpredictable

I just did something that even I didn't really expect. I got a tattoo XD

Of a fern. What else? A design I've had in my head for probably over fifteen years. I always knew if I got a tattoo, it would be this. (Then again, my dad's covered in tattoos, so anyone that knows him might not be surprised that I got one too). 

We have a family friend who does tattoos. But I didn't know until recently how well known he is as a tattoo artist. I thought it would be simple, but he made it really fancy! He said taht "elaborate" is his middle name. 

I can't show you, because it's bandaged up XD And it hurts! He said that leg tattoos often hurt more than expected. 

Adding Action

I need to figure out how to make my Beauty and the Beast story more exciting. There's almost no action until the end. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I want more than people just talking and getting to know each other. 

Luckily Maya does have some good stories to tell, so those could be like cool interludes. 

And since Maya reads a lot of books, I'm wondering if I could include scenes from those. I'm not sure how well that would fit in, but I might try it. 

Colors of the Wind and Defying Gravity

I recently stumbled upon something at a used bookstore. Defying Gravity: The creative career of Stephen Schwarts. 

Needless to say, I was intrigued. But I did not expect to learn that the guy who wrote the songs for Wicked also wrote the songs for Pocahontas. Which includes one of my two favorite Disney songs (Colors of the Wind and Let it Go). 

He also wrote songs for Prince of Egypt, which I love. And Hunchback of Notre Dame - the Disney version. Here's something he said about the latter movie:

"My favorite character I have ever written is Frollo, who is probably the most despicable human being in anything I've done; I love him as a character. He was so totally self-justifying and in such denial of his own true motives. It was really fun to go to dark places in myself I would never let myself do in real life. It made me understand why actors love to play villains." 

Because it made me think of the villain post I wrote a little while ago XD

Another good piece of advice from his book: Writer's block means you're acting like an editor too early. Let yourself suck first. 

Start Somewhere Else

Since I took my research roadtrip for Evva's story, I realized that some of the locations were inconveniently out of the way. I tried working that into the story, but it made for an awkward time jump. 

Sooo, that means that I had to go back and start the story somewhere else. All the research I did for the original location is no longer relevant. I did make a stop at a place that works for the new starting point. But I didn't spend much time there. Sigh. 

Fly Away Home

Fly Away Home doesn't get enough attention. It's such a beautiful movie. The basic premise, for the purpose of this post, is that a girl rescues some goose eggs. They hatch, and her dad teaches them to fly along with his small airplane, so they can migrate. 

I recently watched the bonus features on my DVD, which made me like the movie even more. The dad was based off of the guy that actually taught geese to fly with planes: Bill Lishman. His ultimate goal was to teach endangered species their traditional migration routes. Of course Bill Lishman didn't teach a little girl to fly a plane. But he is a person you see throughout the movie. Whenever the dad is flying on screen, that's Bill Lishman. And the two of them became great friends. 

They raised a few clutches of geese to make this movie, since goslings grow up fast. A couple of the cllutches were imprinted on Amy (Anna Paquin). And the rest were imprinted to fly along with the plane. 

My movie had an unusual commentary. It played the film with no dialogue - only soundtrack and commentary from the composer. So there would be stretches where the movie played with no sound. Then the composer would talk at the same time the music was playing. It was odd, but I love hearing about soundtracks. He doesn't write melodies for characters. Instead he has melodies for different themes through the movie. Such as planning, flying, and flying with the geese. 

I've always loved the music in Fly Away Home. I've looked many times over the years, but iTunes never carries the soundtrack. Just the opening song (which is gorgeous). I finally dug the soundtrack up on Youtube, so that's something. 

And the best part? At the end of the movie, Bill Lishman took his plane and flew those geese south. 

Early Miyazaki in Sherlock Hound

I just discovered that Sherlock Hound is an entire series. I rented it from the library a long time ago, but it turns out that was just a few episodes squished together into something like a movie. 

It's something Miyazaki worked on before Studio Ghibli. He didn't do all of the episodes, but you can definitely see his influence in parts of it. There's a swimming submarine, just like Fujimoto's underwater boat. Another ship looks like Goliath in Castle in the Sky. And there's plenty of air travel. 

There's also a cartoony feel about it, reminiscent of Castle of Cagliostro. 

And the girls are tough. When one lady is kidnapped, she ends up with her captors wrapped around her finger. Not unlike how the pirates all dote on Sheeta and Fio. 

And wow, I think The Great Mouse Detective stole quite a bit from this series.