It's Official - Art Story is the First Animated Feature Film to be Funded at Kickstarter....

Art Story, the independent animated film directed by Aaron Blaise and Produced by Chuck Williams. is officially the first animated feature film to be funded at Kickstarter.

Chuck and Aaron have raised $365,000, enough to start work on their film - a hugely impressive start. Their goal was $350,000 and they have comfortably exceeeded that sum.

Chuck and Aaron launch $350,000 Kickstarter campaign for "Art Story"

My old Florida animation kumrads, Aaron Blaise and Chuck Williams, have just launched a $350,000 Kickstarter campaign to produce a new animated film - Art Story

Aaron and Chuck are veterans of the Florida Disney studio, and produced and co-directed the Academy Award-nominated film 'Brother Bear.'

Chuck and Aaron fight to save "The Legend of Tembo"

Chuck Williams and Aaron Blaise, fresh from the recent closure of Digital Domain, are fighting to save the feature film "The Legend of Tembo" which they spent two years developing. According to yesterday's Wall Street Journal, they still have a fighting chance to save their picture.

The Beijing company Galloping Horse has bought out the remains of Digital Domain for $32m at a bankruptcy auction. Chuck and Aaron are now hoping that the Chinese investors will also have the stomach to finish "Tembo", the story of an African elephant taken from his home and forced to go to war.

All power to Chuck and Aaron - and what a triumph if they can pull it off.

---Alex

Digital Domain in Florida closes its doors after 3 years

Digital Domain at Port St. Lucie in Florida, founded in 2009, has closed its doors after a three year effort to produce a 3D animated film to compete with the likes of Disney and DreamWorks.

Here is the text from today's Facebook post by Chuck Williams, who was co-directing, and who I worked with many years ago on "RollerCoaster Rabbit" at Disney-MGM Studios, another Florida Studio which would eventually be closed down, despite many great successes and a wealthy sponsor.

Chuck wrote as follows:

"Digital Domain - Florida, my employer, shut down today. Ran out of money. Aaron [Blaise] and I knew this start up was a risk, but we has such great momentum -- a big, emotional, funny story, appealing characters, a really unique world and mind blowing, beautiful artwork. And maybe best of all -- a super-talented crew 110% committed to bring it on screening. We were on our 3rd screening, 1 month from production. This closure was a total shot in gut, complete surprise. 

To over 300 employees, 120 on our film. I thank you all for the great effort. I hope we can work together in the future. Lots of dreams were dashed today. Lets all find new ones."

I can well imagine how they must be feeling, having poured their hearts into the project for so long. It is little consolation to know that this sort of thing is almost commonplace in our business, where the stakes are so high and the price of failure so huge.

---- Alex