That these digital animation companies are cropping up in the Bay area is no accident. Civic leaders here are rolling out the red carpet for computer animation firms.
Computers, however, have done little to speed up the process or reduce the costs of making animated films. Pixar has produced only six films in 11 years and spent an average of US$77 million per movie, according to Bruce Nash, who runs The Numbers, an online movie information-data tracker.
Lacking those kind of resources, Wild Brain and Orphanage plan to leverage their expertise animating television shows, which require a faster turnaround, to produce films for about half as much money, executives from both companies said.
After spending 11 years producing mostly commercials, Wild Brain made its first significant strides toward the big screen when it penned a five-picture deal last year with Dimension Films, a unit of Walt Disney Co's Miramax Films.
Based on their agreement, each company will co-finance and co-produce films that Miramax will distribute.
Orphanage, headquartered in San Francisco, will seek a similar financing and distribution partnership once the company's story ideas are ready for production, Tartakovsky said.
Wild Brain plans to keep its costs down by contracting out the work to artists overseas, such as South Korea and China, to draw background and other scenes that can be easily mass-produced.
Some of the work for Wild Brain's Higglytown Heroes, a daily Disney Channel show, is done in South Korea, Rivkin said. Sending work overseas doesn't hurt the quality, he said.
Others aren't so sure.
Pixar and Dreamworks do all their work in-house.
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