Dr D Studios lays off 600 staff?

SamHowell · Post by **SamHowell** » 25 Nov 2011, 16:30

It's always depressing to hear of a studio in trouble, especially a Softimage one.

http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/happy-feet-2 ... flops.html

Very sad news if it's true. Hope all the staff find more work in the near future.

ActionArt · Post by **ActionArt** » 25 Nov 2011, 18:33

Bad news indeed. Sounds like they migrated from SI to Maya though so no wonder it tanked ;)

http://www.awn.com/articles/3d/happy-fe ... and-krills

I noticed in another article that they used 3Delight as the renderer. Interesting! Good for the guys at DNA.

There's a million variables that may have contributed to it's poor box office performance. I'm looking forward to seeing it at some point.

Too bad it didn't do well.

swann · Post by **swann** » 25 Nov 2011, 19:37

They have big Houdini group there too... Cough... "had".

ActionArt · Post by **ActionArt** » 25 Nov 2011, 20:10

Ironically, even though they claim right on their home page "if we were to define ourselves we would say we are......Storytellers." it would appear that the lack of a decent story is what killed the movie.

Studios never seem to learn that you can animate and render all you want but if the story blows chunks it won't matter. It's a shame all that work went to waste, the sample scenes I saw looked fantastic.

Perhaps software development is in currently the wrong area. Maybe instead of a new renderer, a nice little package that would analyze a script and tell you if it sucks or not would be a great tool. Perhaps call it "Softstory".

But I suppose any 10 year kid could do that. All the studios have to do is read the script BEFORE making the movie.

Even Pixar is not immune to this syndrome it seems judging by the dreadful Cars 2 story-line. Even my kids who usually like almost any cartoon turned it off and watched Looney Tunes instead.

Mathaeus · Post by **Mathaeus** » 25 Nov 2011, 20:27

I also think it was a Houdini - Maya house, maybe no one Softimage there... They had a recruitment a few years ago, asking especially for people proficient with Houdini.
It was almost a "private" house of author of Happy Feet One (and what not else...), something like that... Happy Feet Two probably was the only project....

Hirazi Blue · Post by **Hirazi Blue** » 25 Nov 2011, 20:40

I think there is a slight mix-up going on. Happy Feet 2 was produced by Dr D Studios, the original Happy Feet was produced by Animal Logic. Animal Logic uses Softimage, AFAIK, I haven't got a clue what Dr D Studios used...

I agree fully with ActionArt: More attention to the story is a good way to try and prevent the sinking of a project. And sequels to animated features aren't always the best of ideas to begin with. For one thing: part of your original audience has often outgrown your movie by the time the sequel is done (and the "new crowd" doesn't know of the original yet)...
;)

ActionArt · Post by **ActionArt** » 25 Nov 2011, 21:00

Very true. Unless you have a real killer idea for a sequel that could easily stand on it's own, don't do it.

It's just amazing sometimes what stories make it to production where 5 minutes spent with any kid would tell them it's not going to work. It would seem a lot cheaper to really prepare the story first but quite often it just doesn't seem to happen.

swann · Post by **swann** » 25 Nov 2011, 21:25

"Happy Feet 2" estimated budget was $140 million. Someone please tell me where those money gone ? 1/4 of this I could maybe understand but 140 ? please.

SamHowell · Post by **SamHowell** » 25 Nov 2011, 22:03

Hirazi Blue wrote:I think there is a slight mix-up going on. Happy Feet 2 was produced by Dr D Studios, the original Happy Feet was produced by Animal Logic. Animal Logic uses Softimage, AFAIK, I haven't got a clue what Dr D Studios used...

Of course, my mistake. I assumed it was the same studio as it was located in Australia.

Bellsey · Post by **Bellsey** » 25 Nov 2011, 23:26

Raffa might be the guy to ask about all this, maybe. But from my understanding.....

Animal Logic did Happy Feet 1, but for Happy Feet 2, George Miller and KMM decided to take the IP and do it at their own production studios Dr.D.
AL does use Softimage (XSI as it was), but to the best of my knowledge they also used Maya on HF as well. Giant provided the mocap.
My understanding is that Dr.D mostly uses Maya and probably some other stuff but no Softimage.

Sad to hear about people being let go though.

EricTRocks · Post by **EricTRocks** » 26 Nov 2011, 01:37

Hey everyone,

I'm currently working at Animal Logic here in Sydney, recently started a few months back. Animal Logic did do some work for Happy Feet 2 but was restricted to some environment work for the opening sequence. No animation or creature work was done for Happy Feet 2. Animal Logic did do the original Happy Feet though.

Dr. D studios is located here in Sydney as well. Many folks have been finishing up on Happy Feet 2 and moving on to new adventures. Some coming over to Animal others going back to their respective countries. One thing that has been discussed on the 3d Pro list is that while many people are now done with their jobs at Dr. D, it should be noted that many if not all of those people now not working at Dr. D had short term contracts or longer contracts, but on a project bases. From my understanding, most if not all of the people who "got laid off" knew that their contracts were expiring. It wasn't something that came out of the blue.

Also, Dr. D from what I've heard from various people is a Maya and Houdini studio. No Softimage.

Animal Logic is a mixed pipeline. Maya is used for layout, while rigging and animation is done in Softimage, I believe that rendering is done using RenderMan via Maya. It's a bit more complicated than that as well since there are many in house tools for various aspects of the pipeline as well.

Hope that helps clear the air of some of these misinformed (I dare to say non-researched) articles.

ActionArt · Post by **ActionArt** » 26 Nov 2011, 13:44

That's good to hear it wasn't a surprise for most working there. If it's just the end of the job that's quite different.

Congrats on Happy Feet 1 by the way. One of the best looking animated features ever!

I think I'll still go see 2. Even though some didn't like it doesn't mean I won't. Curious to see 3Delight in action on a major project anyway

EricTRocks · Post by **EricTRocks** » 26 Nov 2011, 18:27

Just to make it clear, I've only been at Animal Logic a few months. Not responsible for anything Happy Feet related.

SamHowell · Post by **SamHowell** » 27 Nov 2011, 21:12

EricTRocks wrote: Hope that helps clear the air of some of these misinformed (I dare to say non-researched) articles.

Oh dear, I started a whole thread and got almost all the facts wrong.

I felt quite sorry for all the people in the industry over there and thought I should say so. I'm glad to hear it's not as bad as I first thought.

I'll shut up now.

Hirazi Blue · Post by **Hirazi Blue** » 27 Nov 2011, 21:18

I think what EricTRocks meant was more of a criticism of the original article you mentioned than of the original poster...
;)

EricTRocks · Post by **EricTRocks** » 27 Nov 2011, 21:22

Yeah I was definitely speaking about the original article. I find that journalism these days puts little to no research into the articles run and the facts are always inaccurate. It's definitely a topic that should be discussed, being that it seems more and more likely that having a staff position at a film studio is not going to be common any more.

Wasn't digging at anyone, just criticizing the original article.

Dr D Studios lays off 600 staff?

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