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[SmarTeeMackxs]

C'mon, Lasseter. You can be credited in a Marvel movie (as an executive producer or supervisor), any day now.

[TheTimeWanderer]

There was still a Winnie the Pooh movie released theatrically .... and more direct to video work.

Direct to video work doesn't count. That's a completely different studio. I'm positive that those will still be coming out.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

When Disney bought Marvel, it's actually part of their contract for Iron Man 3 and The Avengers that the studio still has to be listed as Paramount, even though to my knowledge Paramount has nothing to do with the films. (Certainly the constant emails I get from Disney about Iron Man 3 are testament to that. I'm also writing an Iron Man 3 article for Cinemontage magazine which has to be approved by Disney.)

[segagamer99]

There was still a Winnie the Pooh movie released theatrically .... and more direct to video work. And they were limping on with occasional hand-drawn shorts and small animations for theme parks, keeping people like Eric Goldberg in occasional employment.

Presumably that's all done with now.

I find this very strange. Disney made the "Paperman" short a while back, which was innovative and received critical acclaim...

[Garrett Gilchrist]

That wasn't hand-drawn. CGI was used to ape the look of hand-drawn animation, in what I felt was a worst of both worlds situation.

[TheTimeWanderer]

They don't care about good reviews. They care about big box office numbers. The Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh got quite good reviews, but didn't do nearly as good as their 3D movies usually do.

[ctlw83]

I think that it is sad to see 2D go by the wayside. The attention of the public tends to be drawn to only what is shiny and easily distracting, rather than materials of good quality. Production companies tend to focus on the formulas which work to make them money, instead of allowing new stories with quality content to enter into the main stream.

Despite my dislike in some of the character voices compared to the Pooh of my childhood, Winnie the Pooh was a great story and had great animation. I was told Princess and the Frog was of a similar fabric. Sadly, these films are not using "the latest technology" and weren't marketed nearly as well as CG features are.

It is quite sad that the 2D art form is slowly disappearing and being left to poorly conceived television cartoons.

[SmarTeeMackxs]

Garrett, just a while ago, I accidentally discovered a creation of your father's: the Tiny Dinos franchise
http://www.amazon.com/Guy-Gilchrists-Ti ... 1557820104
http://www.amazon.com/Guy-Gilchrists-Ti ... 1557820120
http://www.amazon.com/Guy-Gilchrists-Th ... pd_sim_b_3
http://www.amazon.com/Guy-Gilchrists-Pl ... pd_sim_b_4
http://www.amazon.com/Gilchrists-Tiny-D ... pd_sim_b_1
http://www.amazon.com/Guy-Gilchrists-Ti ... pd_sim_b_6

Hell, there was even a hotline for them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q89TSleEmVc
Thought everybody else would like to have a look..

[Garrett Gilchrist]

The Tiny Dinos were never a huge franchise, probably because a proposed animated TV series didn't get off the ground, but the books sold okay and inspired merchandise for awhile.

There were two versions of the "hotline" commercial. My sister and I were in the second one (which isn't included here), and I recall being extremely hard to work with on the set (shot at my father's studio I believe). I had acting skills but decided not to use them that day.

All the Tiny Dino puppet performers were Muppet people as I recall, including Noel MacNeal (Bear in the Big Blue House) as Plateo. The puppets were performed live at Toy Fair. We kept the recording sessions on a VHS tape and the puppeteers joked inbetween takes. I recall Noel doing one dirty joke which I didn't understand at the time.

The hotline itself was various "radio play" style stories. My father was the main voice, probably the only voice. He played Sir Waldo Rhumba and Rex.

Two very brief clips of the characters were animated in Japan. My father was working with a man named Maseo Moriyama (or something like that) to bring the Tiny Dinos and other creations to Japan.

The books were distributed through Warner Bros., since my father was doing a lot of Looney Tunes and Tiny Toons books for them at the time, and were largely sold in Waldenbooks. The first book is credited to "Corey Nash," who I don't think existed. Toys were first created by LJN, and included two different attempts at plush huggable toys. The first were made out of parachute material. The second were smaller and more high-quality, like a Disney plush, and were made by Applause. Smaller toys "hatched" out of eggs and I recall them being quite good.

A Google image search for {"tiny dinos" toys} turns up plenty of examples on Ebay, mostly of the parachute-type characters. Curiously, there's also an example (from the UK) of a purple version of Plateo, which seems very small, poorly made and entirely the wrong color. A knockoff? Wouldn't be the first time.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-GUY-GILCH ... %26ps%3D50

Here's the Applause plush of Plateo:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Applause-9-Tiny ... 43b34b1bc7

An animated pilot was storyboarded, and my father also attempted a newspaper comic strip treatment of the characters later on. The characters were "aged up" out of diapers at some point.

My father also attempted to merchandise his "Mudpie" character(s), which predated and outlasted the Tiny Dinos.

[TheTimeWanderer]

I'm almost certain that I've got Chickens Are People Too in a box somewhere.