Talk:Walt Disney Animation Studios/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Zanimum (talk · contribs) 21:24, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

It looks pretty solid, I'll review. -- Zanimum (talk) 21:24, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

1920s: Foundation and early years

• Encyclopedia of Walt Disney's animated characters, the only resource I have at hand as I review this page, seems to be very clear that Walt must have bought out Newman Laugh-O-gram.
  • "was laziness of the part of the Laugh-O-gram company (and later the Disney company)"
  • "required Disney to hire back some of th staff he had had to make redundant from his Laugh-O-gram company"
  • "Still, Walt's company was nearing bankruptcy"
• I'm not sure if this was the same corporation, legally, as Disney Brothers, or if this was separate, but it certainly is worth noting that Walt didn't just become a studio owner out of no where, he took over a studio he worked at, ran it into the ground, and then rebooted with a more long-term company.
• The last sentence of the first paragraph is a run-on sentence.
• "made only mild impressions": source? It's true, but it's an opinion.

Productions

Appropriately brief, as to not repeat things. I'm glad that the technological innovation element is referenced.

Parks and resorts

• Are there any earlier examples? I think Fantasmic is the oldest one you have here. Circle of Life: An Environmental Fable and Back to Neverland were outsourced, but was Cranium Command? Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros?

Video games

• Sprites makes me think of either Fido Dido or Cool Spot (oh wait, those are 7UP) or that this has some connection to The Black Cauldron. This really isn't a common enough term to use.
• Do you have a reference to prove that WDAS or its predecessors' staff actually worked on these video games? I recently watched a Timon and Pumbaa safety video animated by "Duck Studios", so feature characters are often animated elsewhere, if the top talent isn't needed. In early PC video games, animation isn't "wow".
• "reference material" for Disney Infinity, does that just mean that the studio's films were inspiration? Or that the Interactive folks dropped by the Disney archives? That's hardly a collaboration, and the Epic Mickey and Kingdom Hearts are just as much related as Infinity.

There's a start. -- Zanimum (talk) 19:03, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Michael Barrier takes up four entries in the references for his 1999 book. One copy was published in Oxford, one in New York, and one in the United Kingdom. Did three different editors cite three unique editions of this book?

1930s

• Why is ChWDC not simply a normal reference, as opposed to be subdivided to its own area? You can combine multiple sources into one entry, without sending it off to another location.
• Reference that Flowers and Trees was first colour animation? Was successful?
• Reference all subsequent Silly Symphonies were colour?
• Reference to success of Three Little Pigs?
• Ref derision from most of film industry?
• Ref of great expansion of studio?
• Second ref that Graham spurred the creation or formalizaton of practices, it's fully possible, it's just that I've never heard that mentioned before.
• It seems silly to mention how much a film cost, and that it was the highest grossing film of all time, without mentioning the actual gross.
• Walt Disney Specials? I've never heard that term used. Was it on-screen? Source, please.

1940s

• WDP's IPO is rarely mentioned, so a reference would be great here.
• Pinocchio has a negative cost? They actually profitted through the process of making it? By George, Roy Disney should have won the Nobel Prize for Economics for that feat! Either that, or been charged as anti-American for not lending the technique to the war effort.
• The RKO distribution note should be moved out of the sentence.
• limited-searing sounds dangerous
• "each" roadshow had receipts of $325K? Seven roadshows would reach $2 million. I know that there was a great loss on the film, but this whole statement just confuses.

1950s

• "(though not final approvals)" em dashes, please

1960s

• There should be some mention of the fact that the company continued to produce other projects, lest it look like the overall corporation was dead.
• "rentals of" may be accurate, and it may keep wording fresh for readers, but it'll also inevitably make 99% of readers think you're referring to Blockbuster.
• Ref CalArts as de facto alma mater, while well known, non-Disney fans won't know this.
• Rentals, again.

-- Zanimum (talk) 17:28, 13 May 2014 (UTC) Thanks for these. Please hold on, I'll start fixing at the weekend.Forbidden User (talk) 16:00, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

For 1920s: Foundation and early years, I cannot find a reliable source to link Newman Laugh-O-gram with Walt Disney Studio (and Walt Disney Animation Studios). The said opinion has been removed. Forbidden User (talk) 14:07, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

• The books are the same. I don't have the books, but they are not different in content.
• For video games, by providing it means the studio gives permissions on use of images in the films, and sometimes lending staff to help (which is never public). Anyway, the use of the word collaborate is warrented. Reference material is information like story plot, characters' personality, etc. Collaboration is needed so that the game creators don't write conflicting plots for Disney characters, assert irrelevant power-ups ( like Elsa having fire powers ), etc.

These are my interpretations after reading Disney's description on the games. More opinions welcomed!Forbidden User (talk) 15:07, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I've cleaned up the article according to you review. Please check if any more improvements are needed before it could pass. Good luck editing!Forbidden User (talk) 17:59, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

It's a week now. Please do continue your review, Zanimum. Thanks!Forbidden User (talk) 16:50, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

• Note: I'm a significant contributor to this article, so I cannot review it, but I should point out that I never got around to writing the content covering 1995 to 2000, which one will note is sparse and mentions but skims over six major film releases. I can't really depend on free time to help at the moment, but the book DisneyWar is a good reference for this period. Also, not sure where i'd find a reference for it (Barrier seems a probable source), but Walt Disney Specials was a title used onscreen for the post-1939 non-series Disney shorts. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 12:18, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

• Zanimum when will you finish this review? SNUGGUMS (talk · contribs) 16:48, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

I think there are more for him to review, if he has time to do so.Forbidden User (talk) 16:54, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

I'll wrap up the review since Zanimum's clearly moved on. I'll do what's left of the prose, but there are some bare URLs in the refs that I want to see fleshed out first. Wizardman 04:11, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you!Forbidden User (talk) 15:28, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Aside from the bare URLs, the only other issue I found was that in the corporate issues section, we have two consecutive paragraphs starting with "In [date],". Change one to make it a bit more dynamic. Once that stuff is fixed I'll pass this. Wizardman 02:31, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Everything checks out now, so I'll pass this article as a GA. Wizardman 02:36, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks!Forbidden User (talk) 08:44, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Why was this passed as a GA?

1. Zanimum: "Why is ChWDC not simply a normal reference, as opposed to be subdivided to its own area? You can combine multiple sources into one entry, without sending it off to another location."

The reason was that the ChWDC website author check those sources out, not me. Now it has been disconnected and was left hanging. Just like a reference like "Barrier 1999, p. 229." While two others like this (Gabler 2006 & Stewart, James (2005)) do connect down to "Furture reading", It doesn't give the reader all the information in one place, as now you have to go up and get the page referenced. This would logically and common sense method of using ref groups. There are 19 primary sources (Hyperion Press books, Disney Museum, direct TWDC links) and other references that don't even match up to the linked inform (for example: A113 Animation isn't Big Screen Animation and isn't the original source of the A113 article Blue Sky Disney is. Blue Sky Disney & A113 are both avoid fan sites.

All reference and links to its other units, WFA-FL, WFA-AU, were dropped from history, what the hell? And dropped into locations with no context and no links. Spshu (talk) 00:18, 7 February 2015 (UTC)