Friday Fun Link - Chris Sanders’ “Big Bear Aircraft Company”
Originally published at The Ink and Pixel Club. Please leave any comments there.
Today’s Friday Fun Link is a fascinating piece of animation history: an illustrated story by story artist and director Chris Sanders. Created as part of a handout for a Disney offsite retreat, The Big Bear Aircraft Company is a barely veiled metaphor for Disney Feature Animation, foretelling a dim future of bland, unoriginal films that will someday be overshadowed by another studio’s productions if management and writer continue to marginalize the artists. Sanders also offers ideas that could lead to a better outcome: small groups of artists and writers working together to develop projects with minimal management interference.
Cartoon Brew posted a link to the story and Sanders himself responded, providing some additional background on the story, why he chose this particular format to air his concerns, and what the response was.
The fact that this story appears to have been written back in 1989 (Sanders doesn’t provide a more specific date) makes it all the more prescient in hindsight. Disney did have trouble evolving beyond what had worked in the past and was eventually overtaken by other studios - particularly Sanders’ current employer Dreamworks.
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