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It's not a happy holidays for at least 170 Dreamworks employees.

The post Dreamworks Layoffs, Round 2: 170 Employees, Including Artists, On The Chopping Block appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Moonbot is laying off employees in Louisiana, but might be growing even larger in Florida.

The post Breaking: Oscar-Winning Studio Moonbot Lays Off Employees After Possible Studio Sale appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The Dreamworks Animation layoffs have begun following Comcast's acquisition of the studio.

The post Comcast/NBCUni Lays Off 200 Dreamworks Animation Employees appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Major layoffs are coming up at DreamWorks Animation; hundreds of people could potentially be let go.

It's been known since last month that Disney Interactive was planning to lay off several hundred employees, but the job slashing is far more extreme than had previously been anticipated.

According to former Disney animator Tom Bancroft on Twitter, Disney gutted their hand-drawn animation division this afternoon, and laid off some of the studio’s biggest names: Nik Ranieri, Ruben Aquino, Alex Kupershmidt, Frans Vischer, Russ Edmonds, Brian Ferguson, Jamie Lopez and Dan Tanaka. Two of the animators who still have jobs are Eric Goldberg and Mark Henn. The news of cuts in their animation division was leaked last week, but I, for one, did not anticipate that all these top animators would be let go. We’ve reached out to the studio for comment.

More workforce cuts are coming to Disney. Following the closure of LucasArts, Reuters news service reported yesterday that Disney will begin a new round of layoffs within the next two weeks. Most of the cuts will come from the marketing and home video units, but layoffs in the animation department are also expected. The staff reductions are the result of an internal audit that happened in late-2012 to identify positions that were redundant or no longer necessary thanks to technological advances.

The Animation Guild doesn’t know where the animation cuts will come from. Their take on the news:

Since there are multiple divisions (Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Disney Toon Studios, and Disney Television Animation) they could be anywhere…Walt Disney Animation Studios has been hiring of late, putting staffers on Frozen and Big Hero Six as they ramp up into full production.

The image at top was sent in by a Cartoon Brew reader. The chalk outline of Mickey Mouse allegedly appeared this morning at the studio’s Glendale campus.

If you’re an animation studio executive and you’ve just laid off a a crew of artists, what’s the first thing you should do? Going on Tumblr to blog about it should be nowhere near the top of that list. In fact, you shouldn’t even be thinking about whether that’s something you should be doing. Don’t tell this to Colum Slevin, Lucasfilm Vice-President, Head of Studio Operations, who decided that he would blog his company’s layoffs.

The layoffs probably weren’t Slevin’s decision. They are owed to the inevitable restructuring resulting from Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm. Disney’s cancellation of the Clone Wars TV series caused an initial round of layoffs last week. After crew members working on the show were let go, Slevin made this post on his Tumblr account:

In another context—like an Oprah TV special—this might have been a nice thought, but the fortune cookie-worthy sentiment is more than a little icky coming from a well-paid executive who doesn’t have to worry about where he’s getting his next paycheck.

Executives love to promote the idea that studios are families, which is a silly analogy for countless reasons. For starters, families don’t lay off their own members. That’s why it’s a good idea for execs like Slevin to reserve the paternalistic pep talks for their own kids, and avoid telling former employees that they have Character (with a capital C no less) and showing them garish personal photos—though the latter does bode well for Slevin’s bid to become a Creative Exec.

(via RebelScum.com)

In a cost-cutting measure, 62 branches of Queens libraries in New York City stopped adding new books in December 2010. According to The New York Daily News, Queens libraries annually purchase 8,500 new books.

This means Queens patrons do not have access to the latest titles or new copies of old favorites. With mayor Michael Bloomberg‘s  looming “Agency Gap Closing Programs” proposal, things look worse than ever for New York City library services.

Here’s more from the article: “Overall, city libraries are facing nearly $100 million in budget cuts, which they say would lead to an estimated 1,500 layoffs…Without restored funding, city libraries would be forced to shorten hours and close dozens of branches, library officials testified.” (via Ron Hogan)

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