Last week, Walt Disney Studios shut down one of it’s animation branches behind the likes of Ice Age and Rio… seems like no sector is escaping the pandemic (regardless of how much money a company have).
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I saw this when they announced it about a month ago or so. So sad. I read some of the artists were given the opportunity to fold into some other teams like Disney Animation, which is good to hear.
Honestly, the Disney/Fox acquisition always seemed a little odd to me. Sure, they got a boatload of new IP, but they also added a 3rd big animation studio (Blue Sky) to their roster, with a third completely custom render engine in addition to Pixar’s Renderman and Disney’s Hyperion. It just seemed like a lot of unnecessary diversification where they didn’t really need it. I had a feeling, COVID or not, that Blue Sky’s days were numbered. Still sad to see it go - I had some friends from college spend some time there over the years.
EDIT: Fun little factoid about Blue Sky that I learned when they gave a presentation at my college - their lighting artists didn’t work in a GUI until 2010 or something insane like that. Because it was a completely custom render engine they only added features as-needed for production, and the lighters had to code their scenes by hand long after most of us had GUI tools to do the same thing. Can you even imagine?!
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Ouch, that’s like trying to eat Yogurt with chopsticks…
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The next couple of phases from MCU will be gigantic. Fantastic Four and X-Men. They will make back like half of the money from movies alone easily. If Avengers can get billions at the box office just imagine what could happen with X-Men. It’s going to be massive.
Just a difference of view, but X-Men and FF have already been done to death, and badly, respectively.
Avengers were successful from the start due to the stellar writing, casting, act ing, and ultimately something no one has seen before or since.
X-Men is a dead end. Deadpool on the other hand is wide open. And other lesser known collections outside of the comic cult of the globe can become as successful as X-Men.
Well… there are so many reason why BlueSky is dead in your post.
This was very sad to see and I really hope for the best outcome for everyone directly involved. What is even more sad is that they always seemed very ahead of the curve and on top of things in the way they very early on saw the importance of forging a clear identity and their own original IP’s. But it’s very difficult times for just about everyone right now.
And it all started with dancing roaches and swimming Aliens. I remember seeing and amazing detailed Blue Sky book years ago from the early days on sale in a movie book shop in London and so regret not buying it then. I never saw it since. It had images of the CG Aliens broken down into individual NURBS patches showing the wire frames and construction. Images of rigs from Ice Age and the earlier particle cards based hair system. Stuff you didn’t normally get to see.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Personally, I’m pretty burnt out on X-men at this point. But I still love Deadpool, and I’m hesitantly hopeful about the MCU moving forward - I’d love to see it succeed, but a part of me is worried their best years are behind them. I just don’t see a release that I’m super excited about right now outside of the Disney+ shows.
I never thought that Blue Sky would last for long – because Disney didn’t need it. They’ve already got well-established methods for manufacturing their product. “COVID-19” is these days a popular excuse, but I really don’t think that it ever had anything to do with it.
I’m going to strongly disagree with you because I’m totally stoked for MCU X-Men and FF because they have been done poorly overall. I don’t doubt that Disney will oversaturate with X-Men and while i’m definitely not excited for yet another Dark Phoenix Saga there really is a lot they can explore which falls out of the general Magneto stuff. Wolverine comics alone have tons of excellent stories. X-Men in general has a breadth which would suit Disney+ quite well. Plus it’s not just X/Men and FF but the idea that there are many new villains and threats they can explore in the mainline movies.
A Pixar animated series with the 90s fox theme music would delight the hell out of me.
It’s unfortunate for Blue Sky but Disney made a great purchase.
I knew Blue Sky made the Ice Age movies but I didn’t realize they also made the X Men and Fantastic Four movies too. 
When Disney bought Fox, one of the consequences was that Marvel now has access to many of their A-list superheroes (as the company had the rights to them).
To use them in the MCU would only succeed if people are not yet tired of superhero movies. Besides that, the story arc is currently 15 years into continually raising the stakes. Since they ended with making Thanos godlike more or less with the infinity stones, they need to find a way to restart the process while still making money (as there’s not much room to raise such stakes even higher without being completely ridiculous).
Hey ! , I know that 
It’s just very sad to see the loss of a major creative studio like this.
Is there not more to that particular studios creative legacy than , are people bored with X Men movies yet ?
Anyway. All the best to everyone. Keep safe and well.
In addition to Wayland, "Bunny’ was one of the first shorts that used GI (iirc) & using their own renderer, and won a Award for it.
But it’s sad to see another studio go…
rob
The celestials, the eternals…Galactus…
They have even begun to harvest their source material
Now that Blue Sky Studios was shut down on April 10, 2021, 20th Century Animation, animation division of 20th Century Studios was a successor and will have animation outsourcing with Titmouse in Los Angeles and Vancouver and Tonic DNA in Quebec for 2D animation and DNEG Animation in Vancouver and Quebec and Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) in Vancouver for 3D computer animation.
“Every now and then,” a business enterprise “shuts down,” basically to settle its affairs with its creditors at the time. However, the creative work often continues.
That is basically why (!) we have “bankruptcy codes.” Not every business enterprise is successful, even when "the idea" is good. Creditors are therefore provided with a formal mechanism, and a formal “time and place,” to settle their “losing bets.” Both parties are then allowed to walk away.
While creative business sometimes continues on.
For example, “Walt Disney Studios” came perilously close to being shut down by Bank of America – which had every legal right to do so at the time. Until a senior officer at the bank caught Walt’s vision and wisely chose(!) not to do so. And: “the rest is history.™” (Despite the “ups and downs” which subsequently followed … “BofA” made lots of money on some, and lost money on others.)