EVER-SHIFTING DIMENSIONS TO DRAW PAYCHECKS, ANIMATORS MUST ADAPT TO TECHNOLOGY.

Byline: Sandra Barrera Staff Writer

Computer animators, keep those brushes handy.

Though traditional animation of the two-dimensional kind appears to be losing out to the keyboard and mouse, nearly everybody agrees it still comes in handy.

In fact, many believe the technique of fusing the old tools of the trade with the new is the future.

``The name of the game is convergence,'' says Tom Sito, president of the Hollywood Animators Union, Local 839.

However, convergence is coming at a time when studios such as Disney are laying off workers. This makes it doubly hard for old-fashioned animators who are trying to learn new digital skills in order to make themselves more marketable. The new breed of animator does it all.

Mark Walsh was fresh from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia when Pixar took him under its wing in 1997. The Simi Valley native knew zilch about computers, let alone typing. But he could make a drawing come to life.

``Being able to breathe life into a drawing or a computer model at Pixar, they feel, is the same thing,'' says Walsh, 25. ``So they hire you for your acting ability. Can you make a drawing act? If you can make a drawing act, you can make a wet rag act; you can make Woody or Buzz act,'' he says, referring to the characters in the ``Toy Story'' movies.

After nine weeks of training on Pixar equipment, Walsh was given the job of animating the ant character Mr. Soil from ``A Bug's Life.'' He also worked on Flik, Hopper and Princess Atta.

Then he was recruited for ``Toy Story 2,'' the sequel to the film that sold him on computer animation while he was still in art school.

He fleshed out Woody, Buzz and some of the Prospector. Walsh was also asked to put his drawing to use by storyboarding the Al's Toy Barn commercial, featuring Al dressed like a chicken.

These days, he divides his time between animating Pixar's November release, ``Monsters, Inc.,'' and consulting artists on the characterization of computer models for ``Finding Nemo.''

But for older animators, adapting to a new technology isn't as easy. Whereas Pixar has nurtured Walsh, many veterans haven't had the opportunity to learn new skills.

Kellie-Bea Cooper is fostering the effort. The 32-year-old independent filmmaker opened the Webisode Academy in Studio City to teach newcomers and veterans alike how to animate a cartoon on the Internet.

``Two people can finish a project easy, quick and output it directly to video,'' says Cooper. ``It's perfect if you're an independent filmmaker or just want to use it to pitch a project to a studio.''

With work shipping overseas, a majority of Cooper's pupils are either out of work or subcontracted for companies managed by techies who know little about animation.

``There is a point where you worry about walking into the office of a 19-year-old, and you're 40-ish, and he says you stopped having ideas 20 years ago,'' says Linda Miller, president of the Los Angeles chapter of Women in Animation.

Miller has managed to combat some of that bias by working her way up the chain of command, from being one of the first women promoted to animator at Disney, to storyboard artist for veteran animation director Don Bluth, to becoming an animation director herself. But these days she's unemployed with the rest of them.

Last year saw Fox Animation Studio in Phoenix grind to a halt after six years of operation because of the lackluster performances of ``Anastasia and ``Titan A.E,'' both under the direction of Bluth.

That's not all, folks!

Warner Bros. scaled back its 2-D production staff after a series of box- office bombs, including ``Quest for Camelot.''

Now even Disney is shrinking its animation department. The company announced recently it would be laying off an undisclosed number of people at its Burbank facility.

Disney animation chief Thomas Schumacher says that he's seen booms and busts before in the animation field. Part of the reason Disney is restructuring, he says, is because other studios are cutting back.

``I'm re-engineering because technology allows me to do it,'' says Schumacher. ``But the piece that most people have missed is that animation is very complex, and there's a lot of new production efficiencies that allow us to do this as well as before.''

And part of that, he says, is cross-training. ``We've got a lot of people here who can paint on a computer and they can paint traditionally.''

He goes on to explain that many of Disney's animators were hired for one skill but learned others on such films as ``Tarzan,'' ``Dinosaur,'' ``The Nightmare Before Christmas'' and ``James and the Giant Peach.''

But even as the ax falls at studios, the industry continues to produce cutting-edge animated features, many of them only computer-generated.

On May 18, DreamWorks will release the digital fairy tale ``Shrek'' from the same people who made ``Antz.'' DreamWorks is touting the facial-animation system employed for the film. This allowed ``us to put all those emotions into (the character's) face,'' says supervising animator Raman Hui. Nevertheless, DreamWorks is not abandoning traditional animation altogether. ``Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron,'' which is due in summer 2002 and is being produced at the Glendale Studio, is a combination of drawing and computer-generated technology, says Fumi Kitahara, a DreamWorks spokesperson.

Over the holidays, Nickelodeon partners with Paramount for ``Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius,'' a computer-animated adventure starring a fresh-faced character that will spin off a TV series on the kid's cable channel.

``Jimmy Neutron'' is the first ``squash and stretch'' computer-animated feature, meaning it borrows the kind of mallet-squashing gags used in such classics as ``Tom & Jerry.''

``Unlike 'Shrek,' we're not trying to create people that look exactly like people,'' says Julia Pistor, vice president of Nickelodeon Movies, who oversees production of Nickelodeon's feature films based at Paramount Pictures. ``We are embracing our cartoon heritage.''

Schumacher says that despite the cutbacks at Disney, the company currently has two films a year in production scheduled for release through 2004. Several others are currently in preproduction for 2005 and 2006.

While Disney has committed itself to releasing more computer-animated films with its partner Pixar, Schumacher assures the company is just following in the footsteps of its namesake.

``I think we will always go for the look that will be the signature look to Disney,'' he says. ``Traditionally drawn animation, I don't think, is going away.''

In fact, Schumacher sees the future of animation embracing many tools. His company is already doing it.

On June 8, Disney releases what it calls the greatest integration of 2-D and 3-D animation ever with ``Atlantis.''

Schumacher says that the same thing is happening with `'Treasure Planet,'' set to be released next year.

``Where in 'Treasure Planet' one of the principal characters is computer- generated, the backgrounds are heavily computer graphics, and most of the characters - but not all - are traditionally drawn,'' he says. ``So as you go forward, the question is not as simple as, is it a CG movie or a traditional movie, because the line is quite blurred in between.''

As an animator, Pixar's Walsh knows that it's useful to be able to jump either way or walk that blurred line. He thinks if he had taken the route as a traditional animator, he'd ``still be in the cleanup department working my way up.''

Instead, Pixar gave him a chance that many other animators would like to have.

``There are all these people out there looking for work because those films didn't do so well,'' he says. ``What's really doing well now is computer animation. So a lot of people are training on the computer so they can do that, too. Knowing a little bit of both drawing and computer just makes you that much more flexible in your career.''

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Disney's ``Atlantis''

(2) DreamWorks is trumpeting the facial-animation method used to make characters emote in ``Shrek.''

(3) Nickelodeon's ``Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius'' combines computer animation and the antic violence of classic cartoons such as ``Tom & Jerry.''

(4) The makers of ``Atlantis,'' from Disney, say it employs both flat and 3-D styles like no other film before it.