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Earlier this month, it was announced that DreamWorks Animation had purchased the YouTube channel AwesomenessTV for $33 million in cash. Factoring in earning and performance targets, the sale has a maximum earnings potential of $117 million.

An online aggregrator-network aimed at young male entertainment consumers, AwesomenessTV was founded as collaboration between TV producer Brian Robbins (Smallville), United Talent Agency and law firm Ziffren Brittenham. According to the May 1st press release, it “has already signed up over 55,000 channels, aggregating over 14 million subscribers and 800 million video views”.

“Awesomeness TV is one of the fastest growing content channels on the Internet today and our acquisition of this groundbreaking venture will bring incredible momentum to our digital strategy,” said DreamWorks head Jeffrey Katzenberg. “Brian Robbins has an extraordinary track record in creating family content both for traditional and new platforms and his expertise in the TV arena will be invaluable as we grow our presence in that space.”

Under the new partnership, the network AwesomenessX, that will offer “original sports, gaming, comedy, pranks and lifestyle content” targeted toward males in their teens and 20s. Robbins, who has stayed on to run the company, has also been rewarded with an executive position at DreamWorks to develop a DreamWorks Animation-branded family channel.

AwesomenessX will pick up some AwesomenessTV faves like The City – Basketball, Sk8 Spotterz, That Was Awesome and How To Be Awesome as well as launch a new series around Winter X-Games gold medalist David Wise and videos of choice game moves and swimsuit model photo shoots. Shows like Frank the Dog, Baby Gaga and Fingerlings – which provide pop and web culture commentary from a dog, a baby and finger puppets, respectively – will also be featured.

“[AwesomenessX] will attract some girls as well,” Robbins added.

The new print issue of Mother Jones (May/June 2013) has a fascinating piece about DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg and his central role during the 2012 U. S. Presidential elections. The article will be an eye-opening read for anyone who considers the animation business to be detached from American politics. It makes clear that Katzenberg’s involvement in Obama’s Presidency has opened doors for him at the highest levels of both U. S. and Chinese government, and given him the ability to more quickly expand into the Chinese film market, whose box office returns are expected to overtake the American film market within the next decade.

The six-page Mother Jones piece by Andy Kroll isn’t online so here are some of my takeaways from the piece:

• Katzenberg, who is worth an estimated $800 million, donated $3.15 million to Democratic super-PACs during the 2012 election cycle. (He potentially donated more to other groups which aren’t required by law to disclose donor lists.)

DreamWorks’ The Croods opened in first place at the U.S. box office with $43.6 million. That is almost the exact same opening as Chris Sanders’ last film, How to Train Your Dragon, which opened with $43.7 million in 2010. It is also much stronger than the studio’s last film, Rise of the Guardians, which earned $23.8 million during its opening weekend last November. The Croods netted an additional $62.6 million from its foreign debut. Russia, which as we’ve established is crazy for DreamWorks animation, was the film’s top foreign market and generated $12.9 million in box office earnings.

In other box office news, The Weinstein Company’s Escape from Planet Earth is winding down its theatrical run. It grossed $477,522 in its sixth frame, upping its total to $53.4 million. GKIDS expanded Goro Miyazaki’s From Up on Poppy Hill into 6 theaters and grossed $59,693. The film’s two-week U.S. total stands at $131,927.

Nearly 600 people took our Croods box office poll which asked readers to guess how much the film would earn during its opening weekend. The correct choice—$42-44 mil—was the sixth most popular answer, guessed by 7.35% of readers. Here were the top five guesses:

10.93% of readers guessed $38-40 mil
10.04% of readers guessed $40-42 mil
9.5% of readers guessed under $25 million
8.78% of readers guessed $36-38 mil
7.53% of readers guessed $30-32 mil

Ogres are so yesterday. DreamWorks Animation just announced that they have acquired the IP for the Trolls franchise from the Dam Family and Dam Things of Denmark. DreamWorks now becomes the exclusive worldwide licensor of the merchandise rights for the humorously-deformed Don King-hairstyled Troll Dolls, with the sole exception of Scandanavia where Dam Things will remain the licensor. The studio had previously announced that they were developing a Trolls feature.

DreamWorks also announced that they have tapped American Girl veteran Shawn Dennis to lead the Trolls brand development. “Trolls is a brand with over fifty years of deep heritage and we are thrilled to bring this iconic, multi-generational property to DreamWorks Animation,” said Chief Operating Officer Ann Daly. “We have big plans for this franchise and Shawn Dennis is uniquely suited to lead this charge. She helped grow the American Girl brand into a household name and by bringing this expertise to Trolls she will introduce these characters to legions of new fans around the world.”

Dennis joins DreamWorks from American Girl, where she was Senior Vice-President of Marketing (Product Development and Publishing). Prior to that, she was group head of global branding at Dell, and Chief Marketing Officer and Vice-President of the NFL.

Calle Ostergaard, CEO of Dam Things, said, “DreamWorks Animation is renowned for telling wonderful stories about imaginative worlds while bringing characters with universal appeal into the hearts and homes of families everywhere – I can think of no better future for Trolls. We are confident that the time-honored legend of the Trolls, which holds such special significance to the Dam family and the people of Scandanavia, will now live on in new and exciting ways with DreamWorks Animation.”

DreamWorks Animation is moving into live-action. At a Beijing news conference last week, Jeffrey Katzenberg announced a co-production agreement between Oriental DreamWorks and the Chinese state-owned China Film Group Corp. The deal will result in a movie franchise based on the bestselling Chinese book series Tibet Code.

Katzenberg said that the film will become “China’s Indiana Jones,” while China Film Group chairman Han Sanping proclaimed that the film’s “characters represent traditional Chinese culture and Chinese morality.”

The Wall Street Journal offers the most in-depth piece I’ve read about the new Tibet Code deal. In the same article, they report that Oriental DreamWorks is taking the lead on the production of Kung Fu Panda 3.

Whew, for a second there, we were worried that DreamWorks Animation was struggling, but if their executive pay is any indication, they’re doing just fine. The Hollywood Reporter reports that executive pay at DreamWorks rose significantly in 2012.

Jeffrey Katzenberg’s compensation rose 31% from $4 million to $5.24 million. Katzenberg, who has typically taken a $1 annual salary and has waived option awards in the past, still earns a pittance compared to other major media honchos, like Viacom’s Philippe Dauman who took home $33.45 million last year and Disney’s Bob Iger whose pay package totalled $37.1 million.

The same Reporter article also offered numbers on other DreamWorks execs:

As for other executives at the company, COO Ann Daly’s compensation increased from $3 million to $4.6 million and CMO Anne Globe’s compensation was upped from about $2.3 million to $2.8 million. Losing out was Lewis Coleman, president and CFO, whose compensation package decreased from $3.7 million to under $3.2 million.

DreamWorks Animation announced yesterday that they will layoff 350 employees by the end of 2013. The news of the layoffs become public in early-February when the studio told employees that it was reshuffling its production and release schedule.

DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg talked about the layoffs with \The Hollywood Reporter:

“These things are very, very difficult to do. I would say it’s the hardest thing I’ve had to do since we started DreamWorks. We’ve never had to lay anybody off. It was against our culture. But it’s the right thing for us today, and it makes DWA strong going forward.”

Yesterday, the reduction of the book value of an asset.

Croods week continues for our Artist of the Day profile. Steven A. MacLeod worked as a storyboard artist on The Croods as his first job straight out of college, bounced over to How to Train Your Dragon, then as that wrapped up, he switched back again to The Croods. On his blog he shows off several design ideas that he contributed for Croods teaser posters such as the above image.

Steven’s personal work includes many studies of landscapes sketched in oil pastels and pencils, and larger pieces drawn exclusively in pencil. Steven keeps an art blog here and another main blog here that includes doodles, artwork and commentary.

Shane Prigmore designed many of the creatures in The Croods along with Carter Goodrich, Takao Noguchi, and Shannon Tindle. He has worked on other Dreamworks, too, including How to Train Your Dragon and Rise of the Guardians. Some of Shane’s development work on Rise of the Guardians is posted on his blog, with a few examples below. Here is an interview with Shane from the Character Design blog. It includes some earlier personal work and designs from movies such as Coraline.

Yesterday, DreamWorks released the full trailer for its summer feature Turbo directed by David Soren. If I had to cite a few positive qualities, I’d point out the simple appeal of the character designs, as well as the exaggerated range of motion and funny mouth shapes on the snail characters.

Continuing our week of looking into the work of The Croods crew, take a look at the work of Louie del Carmen who was a story artist on the movie. Louie’s website gallery features drawings, sketches, and examples of his storyboard work.

Louie regularly produces personal projects such as original books and comics in addition to the work that he does in television and feature animation.

Louie recently returned to television work from features to be a director for Dreamworks’ Dragons: Riders of Berk.

We can’t seem to get over our obsession with the caveman, who has appeared on screen since at least 1912. In fact, anthropologist Judith Berman has written that a new caveman character has been introduced into pop culture every year since World War II.

DreamWorks’ The Croods, directed by Chris Sanders and Kirk De Micco, presents the most recent version of prehistoric man; Grug, is a responsible father facing such dad-like issues as a teenage daughter who just wants to be her own person. He transcends the behavior expected of a typical caveman, but his character design doesn’t evolve past a stereotype that is largely of our own making.

We’ve distilled an entire subspecies of human down to a single iconic image, one that is perpetuated year after year through film, animation, comic art and bad Halloween costumes. The caveman is always brutish, dressed in some type of fur loin cloth and possessing limited intelligence. Some stereotypes of prehistoric humans are certainly based on archeological facts: the structure of the skull, anatomical proportions and pelt-based wardrobe. But other stereotypes, such as wielding clubs, communing with dinosaurs and pulling women by the hair, are our own projections of prehistoric behavior.

The iconic caveman image we know today was already established by the 1930s, seen in the comic strip Alley Oop. He carried a stone axe, manhandled women and rode a dinosaur named Dinny. Alley Oop, along with the Fleischer’s Stone Age Cartoons series, was a response to western society grappling with what it meant to be modern. The simple world of the caveman was a nostalgic comfort to those who feared progress.

Alley Oop was the pop culture bookend of a caveman fiction trend that began in the 19th century. One of the earliest examples is Paris Before Man, a novel written by Pierre Boitard in 1861. The frontispiece print (above) shows a club-wielding caveman, protecting his mate. As the genre developed, the caveman became more brutish and ill-mannered—an 1886 short story written by Andrew Lang describes a marriage custom in which women are “knocked on the head and dragged home.” By the 1920s, numerous newspaper headlines used “caveman” and “neanderthal” as adjectives to describe senseless male brutality.

The mid-century resurgence of cavemen in film (The Neanderthal Man, Monster on Campus), comics (B.C.) and television (The Flintstones) can partly be blamed on World War II rhetoric. Newscasters sang the praises of atomic power while warning of its devastating potential to send us back to a new Stone Age. To help us deal with these fears, the caveman was domesticated; The Flintstones showed that, even as the worst case scenario, the Stone Age wasn’t so bad. Even cavemen could wear neckties and accomplish an honest day’s work.

Over time, films and TV shows have moved away from the wife-clubbing caveman of the 19th century to fit G-rated expectations of civilized society. In fact, The Croods has pushed the caveman to the opposite end of the spectrum, with a father figure that seems like he could handle modern-day discussions of co-parenting and all-terrain strollers. No longer a commentary on uncivilized man or our fears of the future, the caveman and his era presented in The Croods is merely a backdrop ideal for contrasting our modern reality of iPods and WiFi.

Chris Sanders and Kirk De Micco’s The Croods opens todsay in the United States as well as over 45 other countries. Critics haven’t been particularly kind, and the film has a mild 61% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Typical reviews include Richard Corliss in Time who complained that, “The family-dramedy genre that the film inhabits demands a bit more narrative ingenuity than is on display,” and Leslie Felperin in Variety who wrote that the film “adopts a relatively primitive approach to storytelling with its Flintstonian construction of stock, ill-fitting narrative elements.”

The good news is that mainstream audiences seems to disagree with the critics. They’ve given The Croods a robust 87% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

So who do you agree with? Check out the film and report back here with your opinion in the comments below. As usual, the talkback is open only to those who have actually seen the film and should be about your opinion of the film.

To conclude our week of exploring (a few) of the crew members on The Croods, let’s take a look at the work of Gabriele Pennacchioli, who served as a story artist on the film.

Gabriele’s blog is where you can see more of his personal work, such as his “Young Minotaur” character who battles all kinds of other creatures. He released a collection of these drawings as a book in 2008, which is still available here.

Scrolling further through his blog you’ll also find some other spear-wielding people, panthers, a cyclops and all sorts of expertly executed cartoon drawings.

A few thousand copies of this Croods print drawn by Chris Sanders and painted by Arthur Fong were handed out at Comic-Con last week. The charm and vitality of Sanders’ sinuous line artwork will inevitably be lost in the transition to CGI so enjoy this little taste of what the film could have been. (Click on the image for a bigger version.)

(via The Croods blog)

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Arthur Fong, Chris Sanders, dreamworks, The Croods

DreamWorks released a poster this afternoon for its upcoming hybrid feature Me & My Shadow slated for release in spring 2014. The film, which is about a shadow that takes control of its owner’s actions, will combine CG and hand-drawn animation, the latter which will be used for the shadow animation.

The film’s director is veteran story artist and animator Alessandro Carloni, who served as head of story on How to Train Your Dragon and who is directing for the first time. The original director of the film back when the project was announced in 2010 was Mark Dindal (The Emperor’s New Groove, Cats Don’t Dance), but he appears to no longer be involved. Regular updates about the film can be found on Me and My Shadow’s official Facebook page.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Alessandro Carloni, dreamworks, DreamWorks Animation, Mark Dindal

DreamWorks Animation has been in the news plenty lately. They released their first consumer app, acquired a huge library of classic animation properties and released the poster for Me and My Shadow, their first CG/hand-drawn hybrid film. Now, we hear about the studio’s first major exhibit of artwork from its films. The show, “DreamWorlds: Behind the Scenes, Production Art From DreamWorks Animation,” will open next Monday, July 30, at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Gallery (Steven Spielberg Building, 900 West 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA).

The exhibit will feature artwork from the 24 animated features released under the DreamWorks Animation label, as well as a peek at the upcoming Rise of the Guardians. More from the press release:

The exhibition includes more than one hundred digital prints and approximately thirty traditional paintings and drawings on paper; two miniature sets; three character maquettes; two set pieces – an 8′ high Kung Fu Panda “Po” statue and the new Rise of the Guardians standee; and three media stations displaying animation tests, stereo footage, and the Rise of the Guardians trailer. There will also be a contemporary animation work station on display, with demonstrations given by current Hench-DADA students.

The show will be on display through September 7. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday, 9AM-5PM, and Saturday, Aug 11, 9AM-5PM. (Closed Labor Day.)

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: dreamworks, DreamWorks Animation

DreamWorks Animation has unveiled the most ambitious animated feature slate of any cartoon studio in history. Beginning next spring, DreamWorks will release a total of 12 features in 3-1/2 years under their new distribution deal with Fox.

More details about DreamWorks’ plans can be found at the Wall Street Journal and The Hollywood Reporter. Here is the list of films and release dates:

The Croods (March 22, 2013)
Turbo (July 19, 2013)
Mr. Peabody & Sherman (Nov. 1, 2013)
Me and My Shadow (March 14, 2014)
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (June 20, 2014)
Happy Smekday! (Nov. 26, 2014)
The Penguins of Madagascar (March 27, 2015)
Trolls (working title, June 5, 2015)
B.O.O: Bureau of Otherwordly Operations (Nov. 6, 2015)
Mumbai Musical (working title, Dec. 19, 2015)
Kung Fu Panda 3 (March 18, 2016)
How to Train Your Dragon 3 (June 18, 2016)

Already one the most anticipated animated features coming in 2013, Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco’s The Croods keeps looking better and better with each new tease. Dreamworks’ released the first poster today (below) and its gorgeous. It’s also the first of their 20th Century-Fox releases – note the logo bottom right.

In case you want to see what the characters faces actually look like, here’s the cover to Noela Hueso’s Art Of The Croods which Titan Books will release in February. (I’ve already pre-ordered mine).

Here it is, the first trailer from Dreamworks initial 20th Century-Fox release, Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco’s The Croods. Eye candy awaits:

Remember the DreamWorks artist who was accused of shooting a dog and then pounding it to death with a hammer? Last Friday, Young Song, 41, who has done CG surfacing since 2003 at DreamWorks, admitted in court that he went into his neighbor’s yard, beat a German Shepherd that was tethered and muzzled, and then disposed of the body.

Song had initially entered a “not guilty” plea, but on the first day of the trial, jurors were shown surveillance footage that showed him attacking the dog. After the tape was shown, Song changed his plea to “no contest.” The judge sentenced him to one year in county jail, three years of probation, and ordered him to not own any pets or animals for ten years. He will begin serving his sentence next month. More details at the Pasadena Star-News.

(Photo of dog via Shutterstock)

Wreck-It Ralph director Rich Moore is conducting a Reddit AMA today and he had a rather pointed answer to the question, “What concerns did you have going into production of the film? Was there anything in particular you were worried about?” Moore’s response: “Dreamworks stealing the idea, slapping it together and getting it out first.”

(h/t, Jonah)

Lovely colors and great character design by Stevie Lewis, visual development artist at Dreamworks. Nice work for sale in her Etsy shop, too.

(via Stevie Ray)

Developing story…
Some unfortunate news this morning. An anonymous source at TheLayoff.com wrote about an all-hands meeting at DreamWorks yesterday to announce large-scale layoffs at the studio:

Bill Damaschke called in everyone today February 5th 2013, to announce that DreamWorks will lay off 20-25% of all Company Employees. This includes people from Glendale, India and PDI. Several meetings where arranged to announce the unfortunate news. The term ‘layoffs’ was substituted by ‘transitioning outside the company.’ Most people being let go will be from the show [Me and My Shadow] and Peabody, while people comming out from Turbo will not find many spots available in other productions such as Smekday. Additionally, everyone in production will be called in next week to be announced of his status and re-casting (another term for taking your job away) positions.

20-25% of the company’s employees could potentially mean layoffs in the hunreds. DreamWorks is currently the largest animation employer in Los Angeles, and as of January 2013, the studio employed over 825 artists represented by the Animation Guild.

The reason that so many people are being let go from Me and My Shadow is because the film was removed from the release schedule and pushed back into development, according to this report on Deadline.com. Further, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, which was scheduled for 2013 release, has been pushed back to 2014. The only films that DreamWorks will release this year are The Croods and Turbo.

If you’d like to submit news about the layoffs confidentially, you can contact me HERE.

And a note to would-be commenters: This is NOT the place to discuss the content of DreamWorks film. Keep the discussion focused on labor, or risk having your comment deleted.

The world of TV animation is changing drastically, mainly by the fact that new animated shows aren’t even appearing on TV. Netflix has announced a deal with DreamWorks Animation in which they will produce an original animated series based on the upcoming feature Turbo and stream the show on-demand.

The DreamWorks/Netflix deal doesn’t appear to be a one-off experiment The NY Times reports that Amazon’s competing Prime Instant Video is developing five children’s shows of its own.

DreamWorks head Jeffrey Katzenberg, whose company still produces TV shows like Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness and How to Train Your Dragon for traditional cable outlets, was careful to couch the announcement in a way that didn’t outright state the demise of TV, by claiming that the deal is “part of the television revolution.”

In reality, though, the Netflix deal is a paradigm shift that upends the entire television model. When Netflix debuted its live-action series House of Cards earlier this month, they offered all of the first season’s thirteen-episdes at once. There is a chance that something similar will happen with the Turbo series.

A good analysis of what Netflix is doing can be found in this New Yorker piece, “Why Netflix’s The House of Cards Could Signal The Decline of Cable Television.

And more about the new Turbo series from the official release:

LOS ANGELES — Netflix and DreamWorks Animation will create the first ever Netflix Original Series for kids. Based on the highly-anticipated DreamWorks Animation movie Turbo, premiering in theaters this summer, the Netflix series Turbo: F.A.S.T. (Fast Action Stunt Team) debuts exclusively this December in the United States and across the globe in the 40 countries where Netflix offers its service.

“Families love Netflix, so creating an original series for kids was a natural for us. And we’re doing it in a big way by adapting Turbo, this year’s DreamWorks Animation summer tentpole movie,” said Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer of Netflix. “DreamWorks Animation has a long track record of creating incredibly successful characters and stories that delight people of all ages. We’re thrilled to add Turbo the series as well as all new DreamWorks Animation films, starting with their 2013 slate, to Netflix.”

“Netflix boasts one of the largest and fastest-growing audiences in kids television. They pioneered a new model for TV dramas with House of Cards, and now together, we’re doing the same thing with kids’ programming,” said DreamWorks Animation’s Chief Executive Officer, Jeffrey Katzenberg. “DreamWorks is thrilled to be part of the television revolution.”

Turbo’s pursuit of racing greatness continues in Turbo: F.A.S.T.: an episodic animated television series that picks up where the feature film leaves off. It showcases the world-traveling exploits of our snail hero and his tricked-out racing crew as they master outrageous new stunts and challenge any villain unlucky enough to cross their path.

In addition to the original TV series Turbo: F.A.S.T., new DreamWorks Animation feature titles will be made available for Netflix members in the U.S. to watch beginning with the studio’s 2013 film line-up