Don Bluth: an independent autuer of the animation world?

Don Bluth born September 13, 1937, started out, like most animators, working as an animator at Disney. He left Disney in 1979 to work as an independent animator. He’s worked on many great animated films, such as ’an American tail’, ’Land Before Time’ and ’the secret of NIMH’. He has also ventured into other outlets for animation including the game ‘Dragons lair’.

 news and history:
http://www.donbluth.com/index.html

Don Bluths animation lessons online:
http://www.donbluthanimation.com/

I think he makes a good candidate to analyze as an auteur, as he uses certain techniques in his film that identify his style. He favours traditional 2D animation. Even in the games ‘Dragons Lair’, the game play is all created using 2D techniques. He is clearly passionate about animation, and even runs lessons and online workshops. He is very much an active member of the animating community.

He always worked closely with storyline and storyboarding. This an area I am particularly interested in so I will look at certain framing techniques and styles that he favours.

His first success as an independent animator was ‘The secret of NIMH’. It was shown to the creators at Disney, but was rejected for being too dark to be a commercial success. For this reason, Don Bluth and fellow animator, Gary Goldman, left to work on the project. They were followed by about 20 other animators and were labelled ‘ the Disney defectors’ by trade press.

This new independence gave them the freedom to try new techniques that had not been tried before.

They were the first to use ‘split exposure’ to create shadows and translucency in the cels. Combined with ‘diffusion’ they could create reflection effects. They also used newer techniques such as using video animation for testing and the use of backlighting.



After the success of there first feature length animated film, song writer, Jerry Goldsmith (who wrote the music for ‘the secret of NIMH’) approached Bluth and Goldman about a working on a production with Steven Spielberg. They had a meeting and the animators were praised for their work on NIMH. In the meeting they all agreed that their common goal was to restore the production values of the ‘golden age’ (1935-1955).

It was some 2 years before they made contact again and started producing the film! During this time they pursued other areas and made the game Dragons lair at this time.



1986 they released ’an American Tail’. The animation was clean and polished and a certain realism characteristically shows through. The story is of a Russian-Jewish family of mice, who escape their homeland on a boat to America! Unfortunately the young mouse Fievel, is separated from his family and neither know if they will ever see each other again.

There is a historical reference to social views and don Bluth particularly likes to express real life hardships and experiences. One scene in particular showing Fievel looking through a window at mice school children. This is a scene from a story Steven Spielberg heard from his grandfather. He described how Jewish children had to listen through open windows to the lessons inside. This is the nature of Don Bluth films, with some hard cutting truths of life in his stories.



Land Before Time was probably one of his biggest successes. This was finally aimed as a children’s production. It tells the story of five orphans who find themselves having to work together to cross the perilous land filled with predators and other obstacles!

Originally there were several more scenes, some involving more graphic tyrannosaurus rex scenes. However these were cut as it was thought it might be too scary for a film aimed at children. Don Bluth was not pleased by the decision, but agreed it probably benefited its success.
He has worked independently on many great animations including ‘Thumbelina’, ‘Anastasia’, ‘A troll in central park’, and ‘Titan AE’.