Tron Infighting

I watched Tron last night. My copy of the DVD was given to me in the form of a gift card from Donovan Cook, director of Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers, as a thank you for getting him into Comic Con at the last minute.

Last October at the AniMazing Spotlight Festival Bill Kroyer went step by step on the insane process of animating the CGI with no render feedback and how he wrote giant Exposure Sheets with tilt, pitch and yawl and background movement and then punched in every number for every scene.

The Sunday L.A. Times had a big article about Jeffrey, Michael and Roy and their infighting and how it saved and then destroyed Disney Animation.

So what does Tron have to do with infighting at Disney you ask? Don’t ask. The Old Guard hated and feared Tron and wanted it to fail. And they were not passive in their desire.

Saturday I was at the Afternoon Of Remembrance meeting and I talked with Martha Sigall about her good friend and my acquaintance Auril Thompson. Auril was Effects Ink and Paint Supervisor on Tron and the Disney Ink and Paint people of that time hated her with a seething passion.

I spent an afternoon talking to Auril about Tron about three years ago. What most people don’t know is that all of the live action scenes inside the computer was painted on cels printed from the live action footage. What Auril did not know was that Disney Ink and Paint had already reported the process impossible in an attempt to kill the project before Auril was hired.

Auril made one demand before she was hire and that was for a parking space right in front of the door. This also pissed off the Old Guard Ink and Paint who had already closed ranks against her; “no room, no room!”. The premium parking space did nothing to endear the new kid to the Old Guard. You can almost hear the backbiting. So the Ink and Paint for Tron was set up in a basement area well away from the Old Guard Ink and Paint.

Auril Thompson and her crew went about doing what the Disney Ink and Paint Department said was impossible much to the chagrin of the Old Guard. It wasn’t easy. Auril told me about one time towards the end of the film when they had to farm out scenes to a Korean Ink and Paint house. The Koreans shipped back a scene that had not been properly dried before it was packed and all the cels stuck together into one big block of paint and plastic.

Take these few statements about working conditions for the Tron Ink and Paint Crew and multiply it by a thousand and it is a miracle that the film was made at all. Of course it is a miracle that any animation film is finished. But Tron had an up hill steeper than most. Tron can be seen as the first step in the rebirth of Disney Animation and it was not an easy labor.