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spooner-the-trinity · 6 months

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Ni Hao a Aloha Mai - Chapter 5

July 31st 2005

“Lookin’ good, Dan.” You smiled into the mirror as you donned the ascot of your current outfit. Today was one of those days when you were between guides so a member of the team had to fill in, and this time it was you who pulled the shortest straw this time around.

So you sucked it up and put on a happy face as you greeted the next swarm of guests. "Hello, friends. My name is Danny and I am one of the many talented artists (talented artisi, yeah, right.) in these hallowed halls that polished up A Few Good Ghosts to be the first fully computer animated film from Walt Disney Feature Animation. You know, that movie that's spent its second weekend getting a payback spanking from a certain candyman after bumping it to number three at the box office." A few good laughs were had at its expense as expected from a patchwork like this. Still, Kirk and Gary did their best and it certainly showed, perhaps it could find a cult following like Black Cauldron's been gaining of late. "But this experience it's cast of characters are having today of going head to head with Wonka's grand return to the silver screen is unique amongst our backlog of well over a thousand familiar faces."

His secretary Tamara pressed a button on the control panel to activate the first clip. A looping animation of all the films they've made and/or distributed rolled on the main screen as you continued. "And the purpose of our tour is to show you how we do what we do here both through our new computer overlords and our native pen and paper. But to do that, we must start at the very beginning and to do that, we turn the mic to our roving reporter!"

Tamara then pressed another button to activate another clip on the screen. One that saw an amphibious green creature with a microphone stand behind a wall of photographs depicting the life and legacy of Walt and Roy Disney as a pair of janitors cleaned up the place in the background. "Hi-ho, Kermit the Frog here at the Disney Archives to give you the inside scoop on how to create one of its world class characters. From the constant struggles for financial solvency to the opening days of Disneyland to the planning of his sacred Florida project, Walt Disney never could take no for an answer. Just listen to that sheer will to innovate evident in his voice."

Archival footage of Walt Disney started rolling as the cleaner drew nearer to the wall "Well, a project like this is so vast in scope that no company alone may make it a reality. But if we could bring together the technical know-how of American industry and the creative imagination of the Disney Organization."

Bump! Ink starts oozing onto the wall from a jar that fell over from this familiar looking janitor. "I believe we can build a community that more people can talk about and come to look at than any other area in the world." You watched as the Ink drew closer and noted the celebrities portraying the custodians responsible. It had been decided that this would be an ongoing tradition of bringing in big-name celebrities to turn into new animated characters as a demonstration of the power of Animation. You clearly recognized Matthew Perry, but the blonde was admittedly less of a friend but with how many roles she was getting, Tara Strong was Family. "Speaking for myself and the entire Disney Organization, we're ready to go right now."

As he spoke that last line, the Ink washed over the image and turned it into original animation. It gave you chills when you heard Alex Trebek's voice out of the newly illustrated mouth of Walt, so many years of being Archival footage of a performance the man himself came to loathe over time and now he was being portrayed by a man who channeled that same persona before Roy, who genuinely referred to the man as Uncle Walt.

(D23=16)

And while it still sounded much like Alex, there was enough of Walt in there to impress him and earn his respect. With that, he was in the recording booth and probing Kermit about what was going on as the two undercover stars apologized for the mess.

"How about we show you how we create our famous characters." You addressed the screen in the blank beat made for the guide. "You sure?" Asked Alex/Walt "Cause I'd like to get back to work on EPCOT."

'EPCOT's dead!' Yelled a heckler as Kermit reassured them that they would take him back once they were done. "Now where do you wanna go, little lady?"

Tara blushed and giggled as she gave her response. "God, what I wouldn't give to be a fairy princess in Sleeping Beauty."

"Well, follow me and we'll see what we can do."

Walt began to walk out of the painted photograph before Kermit rushed in front of the man "Hey, not to dissuade you or nothing but a lot has changed while you were away."

"Kermit's right, maybe I should get Mickey." You interjected onto the screen.

"Nonsense, I know the studio like the back of my…" Walt would look in awe of the catalog of cartoon creations that were made following his 'exit', taking in the radically different environment that no such technology in the 60s could create. He even spotted a few films made via CGI like Toy Story and Finding Nemo, needless to say, he was lost. "You know, I might need a little help."

"I figured as such." I shrugged. "Don't worry, we created a few of them here in Florida that can help you to Aurora."

"Florida?" Walt felt his spirits lift in response. "So the project came to term, eh?"

"Well, we built what we could." You spoke in half-truth. "Including this place where we made a movie featuring a warrior 'princess' and a red lizard."

"Dragon, DRA-GON! I don’t do that tongue thing." You 'pause' the clip before the characters on the cel screen. "Now, with so many characters, it's easy to find a contrast between any given pair. Be it on the asthetic outside with a hand drawn talking mouse or a computerized cowboy doll, or on the mental inside like a snarky mythical drago-"

"Meega, Nala-Creesha!" Couldn’t wait to pounce on Woody, huh. Thank goodness Pixar could just use a texture-less ball for Stitch to be drawn over as he bounces around the CG backdrop of Andy's room. Ah, the Wonders of Computer Puppetry! I watched with the kids as Kermit was slammed into layout art of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan. It was here that another perk of the Pixar connection cake in, the kid who played Nemo as a familiar tabby cat-clad lad who walked in to find the best effect in the whole short.

A green sock rotoscoped into a ink-stained arm as Kermit staggered back up massaging his temples with his newly articulate fingers with a subtle “Sheesh.” Kermit is quick to notice the change in greenery. “Ah! Please tell me this washes off, Piggy’s gonna kill me if she sees me all stained like this.”

“Don’t worry, I can clean you up when we get back.” Matthew mused back only for Mushu to wisecrack back.

“And what makes you think you can mop away all this?” argued Mushu. “Is it the wetjet, laundry machine, or maybe that celebrity castin’.”

Couldn’t argue with that, Friends was wrapping up when we were crafting the short and he was readily available for the live shoot. The problem now was the scale. “Look, we can just get on with the whole creating a character thing?”

“Creating a Character?!” smiled the lost boy, Whim as the studio decided to call him. “In front of all these people like how I came along?”

“Say no more.” Walt smiled, pulling a piece of paper from a book he picked up in the background earlier in the short. “We’re going to bring out this little fella named: Redfeather?”

“Ah, sounds like someone for Pocahantas.” You chimed back.

"Yeah, and what about me?" Tara asked.

"Don't worry, madame." Whim leaned against Tara's shoulder. "They're the best in the biz, they won't leave you hanging."

"Especially since this is all prerecorded." You snarked.

“Okay, quick question.” Matthew asked. “How does it work?”

“Well, when a Mommy dragon and a Daddy dragon love each other very m-” Kermit was quick to squeeze Mushu’s big snout shut.

“Thank you, Kermit.” you spoke to the screen.

“Don’t mention it.”

“Now, not every character makes it to the screen, and you, sir, have pulled out a concept drawing of one such failure.” You pointed to Walt. “He was gonna be with Flit and Meeko, and they were even gonna talk.”

"Ey, go get im, ya little guy!" Meeko proceeded to make some face noises as the gears in the lad’s head started turning. "Haven't I seen your picture in the post office side view"

The boy’s eyes flared up with childish fury. “That’s my old voiceover!”

“Technically, it’s an unused outtake from his later character…” You couldn’t help but correct them “But hey. You do you.”

“Whatever ya said, I’m a hundred percent with ya.” Meeko was whapped.

“Can’t you do something?”

“Well, since two's company and three's a crowd,” You continued. “The team chose to drop poor Meeko.”

A rock crushes Meeko and out comes the voiceover (in the exact same form the disembodied voice took in Back to Neverland) “Gocha!”

“A hummingbird and a Turkey?!” Mushu complained as the lad proceeded to ingest the voice. “I don’t even see that working for a sitcom!”

“I would’ve done mouth to mouth but you ain’t that attractive.” He spoke in the archived outtakes voice only for Mushu’s tail to whip him in the head, causing him to spit out the voice right into the spiral shell Kermit picked up in the lair. (Mainly, it was the same shell Ursula used to house Ariel’s.) “Oh, come on!”

“We have a policy of using genuine child actors around these parts.” Walt asserted over the lost boy.

“Doesn’t mean I could still play with it, ya codfish.”

Walt halted in his tracks. “Codfish?”

“Oh, dear.” Kermit knew what was coming.

“Are you comparing me to old Captain Hook?”

“Nooo, sir. Why would I compare you to him?” Whim panicked. “You made this all possible and Hook? Well, he tried to feed me to the crocodile within the first few minutes of my life.”

“Of course he would…” Walt sighed, rubbing his temples. "But he's even more of a codfish compared to Maleficent."

"...Maleficent?" that name made Chandler freeze up.

"The mistress of all evil herself." Walt confirmed as a boom mic came close to Matthew.

"It's a good thing Redfeather was made to be a self-proclaimed ladies' man." Whim sneered as he pulled a reading table in. "Gonna take a smooth operator to sweet talk her into releasing the good little fairy she's holding captive."

Tara was boxed in by her mic and table as well as the mixing room with an operator in place. "Scene 19, take one."

"So that's what I gotta do, huh." Matthew inhaled deeply. "Ya like jazz? Oh, who am I kidding you're a dark opera kinda gal, maybe something about where you're horns are pointing because I'm thinking you're acute!"

As he attempted to flirt with the dark fairy. The operator adjusted the volume and the bars on the speakers flowed from its LED display and into one of Whim's shells right in front of Tara Strong who reacted accordingly. "HELP! LEMMIE OUTTA HERE! I LIKE MY BODY THE WAY IT IS, I DON'T WANNA DO THIS ANYMORE! HEE-EEEEELP!!!"

Once more, the voiceover lights up the LED, turns pink and flows into a third shell. "Great voiceover, lady. Are you sure this is your first time?"

While most guides would just compliment her or ask what the big deal was, you responded to Whim with: "She voiced Bubbles on the Powerpuff Girls, of course it's not."

"See, the actor provides the voice and the Animators does the rest." Walt described.

"Kinda like acting on paper." Added Whim. "Turn 'em like a flipbook, and poof, you're alive."

"Of course, unlike Redfeather we need to design the character first and they tend to evolve in many different ways." Walt mentioned before asking: "Could we have these new computer graphics for our feathered friend."

"Don't have a choice. It's prerecorded. " You deadpanned. You wanted to get to the Caffeine Patch faster, so you pulled up the DVD remote. "You'll take Matt to Pixar and this guy'll design Tara."

"Hi, Mushu. Remember me?"

"THE ANCESTORS!" Mushu scrambled to hide as you took the chance to abscond for a moment. Leaving Chris Sanders to elaborate on the Character design process as he creates multiple good fairy designs for Tara to choose from. Bud Luckey sculpted the character model for Redfeather and explained the advantages of CGI over animation as you sipped your coffee and bit into a Reese's Stick. When you got back, you had found Tom Brancroft had flipbooked Fula and Freema into being.

"I couldn't decide which one to voice." Tara spoke as the maiden fairy Freema before bouncing to the toddler-sized Fula. "So I picked two for one!"

"Now that's a steal if I ever saw one!" Mushu complimented. "How about we take these two for a spin, eh?"

"Yep." Tom smiled. "If I can draw it, you can do it."

The second screen displayed Animators acting out the scenes Freema was doing, most of them were recycled from reference footage. "They have to get the moves just right if ya wanna see the character come to life." Explained Walt. "By moving around and acting it all out, they gain the reference needed to illustrate the personality scripted."

"Actors with pencils." Smiled Whim. "When it's all sketched up, it's time to scan it in." Cue stock footage of the Cel Process from Back to Neverland as he continued. "When I came along, I was painted on a plastic cel you copy the drawings onto. But these days, you just get a scanner and some painting software on a computer and presto, ready to color and plop onto any stage the layout artists can draw or in your case, recycle." The characters are layered into Maleficent's castle.

"Our software is christened the CAPS system." You explained with a snack in your mouth. "And thanks to this first gift from Pixar, the paint room is now a gift shop and the camera department that puts it all together was repurposed into an activity center to draw your own character."

"Okay!" Michael as Redfeather smiled. "Everyone's together again, in a dark gloomy castle…"

"Filled with monstrous minions." Freema spoke. "And lit with sinister green flames."

Kermit was getting nervous. "And the woman of the house…"

"...Is the Mistress of all Evil." Mushu and Fula spoke in unison. A silence fell broken by Mushu bluntly saying "Yeah, okay." before running to the screen in an attempt to escape. Only this time, there's a wall of glass blocking Mushu and Kermit. "Walt! C'mon, lemmie out!"

"Another wonder of computers." Whim smiled at Walt as he sat in a chair of an office we filmed. "A glass screen called a monitor for the interface, and you can just plop the music and sound effects recorded for this or whatever you can find in the archive that matches the mood. All that makes it reeeealy creepy, am I right?"

"Yeah." Redfeather piped as the mood truly set in. "Real creepy."

A strong bolt of green lighting strikes as the creatures turned around to see the fairies bottled up and Maleficent right behind them. "Pitiful, insignificant fools! You dare try to sneak into my domain?"

"Noo, I didn't mean to." Redfeather slowly backed away from the sorceress with Kermit and Mushu. "See, I bumped into this ink, brought Walt to life somehow and painted over Kermit the Frog here."

"Please don't rope me into this." Kermit whimpered.

"Then there were concept sketches, animators, and this lost boy that's just sitting there by a computer." The three were backed against a wall as Whim sipped his milkshake with a bucket of popcorn next to him. "Please leave me be, you've got such an elegant face that If ya just put me in their-"

"Now wait just a minute." And now Mushu was about to put his foot in his snout yet again. "If you think you can step all over a fierce dragon of China such as myself, then you've got another thing coming!"

"Very well," Maleficent coldly sneered. "You now face with me…"

"Oh, yeah!" Mushu barked back, looking to breath fire all over. "Bring it on, tall, dark and horny!"

"And all the powers of HELL!"

A pillar of green flame and dark magic erupted on cue, and thus Mushu truly felt as small as he was against Maleficent's draconian form. Banter and fleeing ensued before Stitch decided to take action himself, wrestling the CGI dragon with Mushu providing colored commentary as Redfeather and Kermit released the two fairies who rewarded them with Pixie Dust. "Hey, kid! The Pixie Dust is kind of a Peter Pan thing, but the ladies did it anyway, you don't mind, do ya?"

"No sir." Whim smiled back, then proceeded to watch the three pull at Maleficent's wings before Stitch yeets her by the tail into the pit in which she perished. "I'm pretty sure you get the idea, right, Uncle Walt?"

Walt was not paying attention, instead he was looking at two movie posters, posters for films he had always wanted to see put to film. Further accentuated by Part of Your World's leitmotif playing in the background, Walt is feeling wistful and melancholy. "We had our stumbles, but in time we picked ourselves up and got back in the groove. Hey, we know a gut who'd love to meet ya!"

And words could not describe how warm you felt when you directed that scene, Alex came in, mustache and all, surprised Roy and Michael in how intricate the costume was, and Eric even animated a scene for Walt and Mickey's reunion (The mouse himself was playing a guessing game like in Michael and Mickey with the roles reversed when Mickey spots Walt entering his office.) before the face to face meeting between the living nephew and animated uncle.

"You sure you don't want to stick around?" Roy Edward Disney asked Walt as the instrumental music seamlessly flowed from Out There to Feed the Birds. "I'm sure Michael could use a pointer or two."

"Nah. I've got a city to get back to." Walt smiled. "Permanent work in progress, you know?"

"I understand." Roy sighed back. "But thank you."

"Just keep moving forward, Roy." Spoke Walt to his nephew as Once Upon a Dream kicked in. "It's what we Disneys do best. So long."

That meeting was filmed on the day Iger woke up from his coma, and the chills you felt as it was filmed spoke for themselves as the sheer happenstance of it all felt too fortunate, he would then get called up to restart Fox Kids, going as far as to gobble up a good chunk of Turner like its MGM library and even Cartoon Network. You and the crowd all watched as the animated characters flew off into the sunset, and the shorts completion prompted you to introduce the preview like it always did. "Okay, with all that, let's dig into our upcoming release Chicken Little. Yes, we put out our first two fully in-house CGI flicks within months of each other without a certain fella at both ends of the feature."

You pointed to a nearby Luxo Lamp. "Don't worry, Pixar's coming back next year to save our skins. Stars Larry the Cable Guy as a redneck truck, check it out!"

Box Office Results for A Few Good Ghosts

(D900=224)

$224 Million Dollar Gross

You went back to your apartment, exhausted from wasting a day of your life corralling a bunch of kids across the studio over and over when you find yourself watching Cartoon Network when you find a clock ticking at the bottom of the screen, you wonder what it means and within a half hour, you see it.

"We live our lives taking each second for granted."

"But what would you do if you knew how much time you had left."

That last voice.

"Unus Annus."

"One Year."

It was Alex.

"This space, like all of you, has a limited amount of time."

"And every day, we March ever closer to this institution's inevitable doom."

He and Pat Sajak were on screen, one in white, one in black.

"That's why every day will be a completely different schedule excepting this network's myriad blocks until the clock strikes zero."

"And then, it's game over."

"Bye, Bye."

"Finito."

"Finished."

"Curtains."

"Farvell."

"Kaputski."

"Night-Night."

"User Wins."

"Dead."

"Forever."

That doesn't sound good.

"Doubtless, you think they'll just stop with the new schedule, do you."

"That's what they said back when we hosted this at DuMont."

"And all that was left afterwards were mere memories of what could have been."

"For much like death, you can't take it with you."

They really were that stupid, were they?

"You remember DuMont, right?"

"No? Perfect."

Yep. They were.

And the best place for cartoons was about to die for it.

Film Opening=Kagemitsu's Origin (4 Votes)

Dororo's Intro=Flipping Stolen Goods (4 Votes)

Regained Sense=Hearing (5 Votes)

Smell Sense Monster=Centipede Mantis (4 Votes)

After a montage of demon slaying, the duos end up in a part of a settlement.

How are our heroes clued in on Ohagi's criminal enterprise?

Ohagi has his taste, how does she relinquish it?

After a calm moment where Yak speaketh, Someone has caught Mio on her route!

#Dororo #disney100 #ni hao a aloha mai #once upon a studio #walt disney animation studios #matthew perry #tara strong

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