Don Bluth
Don Bluth
Donald Virgil "Don" Bluthis an American animator, film director, producer, writer, production designer, video game designer and animation instructor who is known for directing animated films, such as The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heavenand Anastasia, and for his involvement in the LaserDisc game Dragon's Lair. He is also known for competing with former employer Walt Disney Productions during the years leading up to the films that would make up the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAnimator
Date of Birth13 September 1937
CityEl Paso, TX
CountryUnited States of America
We had this laserdisc before, you know, and now you just put it on this little teeny-weeny thing.
We figured out that we were going to have to do CGI and 2-D animation on screen at the same time. Sixty-five percent of the picture is CGI. That's a big mix. When you marry those two, they can either look very foreign to each other, or they look like they belong together.
The studios are not hiring right now, and they're beginning to have second thoughts about what they're producing. Even Dreamworks.
Dragon's Lair, for some reason, still commands shelf-life. If you go into a store, they will have Dragon's Lair somewhere in the store. And for 18 years this has been going on. So let's say that must mean there's an audience that wants to see it.
A picture will wind up costing $90 million dollars... Well, animation can't stand that. It can't bear the weight of a $90 million dollar budget, because it can't recoup. Then everybody's surprised when it only pulls in $50-$60 million domestic.
I'm saddened to see that everyone's pitched out the baby with the bath, in that we say that it can't be one or the other, it could be both. I mean, just because we listen to classical music doesn't mean that we can't listen to jazz.
We've written a song for this game, which is a bubble-gum song and is only to be listened to once, I think.
Now they call in all of the authority figures they can find and hire them-the cost has gone up. The picture may or may not get better, but definitely, it gets more cumbersome.
Now they call in all of the authority figures they can find and hire them - the cost has gone up. The picture may or may not get better, but definitely, it gets more cumbersome.
When we originally made the game Dragon's Lair, we had no idea the impact it would have on the game market. It was something new at the time; it was the first of the laserdisc games, and random-access was a brand-new technology.
I can look at one that Warner Brothers just did - The Iron Giant. A really cool movie. I truly enjoyed that movie.
I have been involved with script approval, approvals of character designs and the art direction, on kind of a consultant basis.
I knew nothing about sci-fi. We took it. I figured, space hardware, everybody's seen, and you can call in Industrial Light & Magic and all the pros in the world.
I'd put David Schwimmer as Dirk... he's just kind of got that look.