When 70 artists were assigned to an animation showcase at Orlando's Disney-MGM Studios in 1989, they were more tourist attraction than working studio.
Animators were considered so expendable that there had been talk of staffing the 14,000-foot pavilion with audio-animatronic artists _ the kind visitors gawk at in Magic Kingdom's Hall of Presidents.
Though that idea was shelved, the Florida group has long felt like an underdog to its established counterpart in Burbank, Calif., which turned out such critically acclaimed animated features as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King _ not to mention such classics as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and 101 Dalmatians.
Now known as Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida, the department has been content with contributing small portions (10 to 25 minutes) to each Disney animated feature since 1990's The Rescuers Down Under. Its biggest claim to fame was the Roger Rabbit animated short Roller Coaster Rabbit, a 6-minute production released in 1990 with Dick Tracy.
Until now.
Mulan, Disney's 36th full-length animated feature, which opened Friday, is the first to be produced primarily in Florida. For that matter, it's the first Disney animated feature made anywhere outside of Burbank. (The company also has an animation studio in Paris.)
"This is our Snow White," said Tom Bancroft, supervising animator for Mushu, Mulan's frenetic dragon character voiced by Eddie Murphy. "It sounds corny, but I think we're as proud of this thing as [Snow White animators) probably were."
"We're not inventing the wheel like they did, but to us this is just so personal."
Five years in the making, Mulan is based on the Chinese legend about the free-spirited title character (voiced by The Joy Luck Club's Ming-Na Wen) who disguises herself as a man to secretly take her father's place in the Imperial Army battling the Huns. Along the way, she tries to earn her father's respect.
Disney demonstrated its respect for the movie through a painstaking emphasis on authenticity. Producer Pam Coats, directors Tony Bancroft (twin brother of Tom) and Barry Cook and a cadre of artists and designers spent weeks in China taking thousands of photos of trees, architecture, people and historic landmarks. In keeping with traditional Chinese art, animators made Mulan's visual texture darker and more minimalist.
The Florida crew was a mixture of seasoned veterans and ambitious young animators. Many were working on their first feature film, while others were tackling more responsible roles.
Mulan's Tom Bancroft, who started as an intern and has worked at the Florida studio since it started, served as a supervising animator for the first time.
Another long-timer at the Florida studio, Mark Henn, is a veteran Disney animator and former apprentice to the famed "Nine Old Men" who worked under Walt Disney. Henn's work includes supervising the drawing of Ariel in The Little Mermaid, Jasmine in Aladdin and young Simba in The Lion King.
Tony Bancroft and Cook, the film's co-directors, also are among the original Florida crew. A 17-year Disney veteran, Cook's directing credits include the Disney shorts Off His Rockers and Trail Mix-Up, featuring Roger Rabbit. That experience put him next in line to direct an animated feature. His Central Florida address put Disney-MGM Studios in the picture too.
"With Barry Cook living down here and wanting to direct a movie and having directed a short, he was the right person to push to be the director of this movie," said Peter Schneider, president of Walt Disney Feature Animation.
"For us, the Florida studio has come of age over the last eight years. The natural progression of any artistic endeavor is to get bigger, to try to do more work and to be more influential."
Although specifics have yet to be announced, Schneider said more animated features will come from Disney-MGM, which now employs about 400 artists in a new 200,000-square foot, four-story animation building.
Disney plans to release five more animated films before 2000 _ A Bug's Life in late 1998, Tarzan in summer 1999, a yet-to-be-titled dinosaur feature and Toy Story 2 in fall 1999 and a Fantasia sequel on New Year's Eve 1999.
Whatever is next for the Florida studio, the animators generally agree that topping the excitement of doing Mulan will be a tall order.
"On every film, whether it's here or in California, there's a little bit of one-upmanship," Henn said. "They did this on the last film, so we have to come up with something even better.
"On Mulan, that was coupled with the notion that if this is going to be our first film we have to make it really good so people sit up and take notice. We all realize that this moment won't be duplicated again _ that Mulan has kind of opened the door for a whole new chapter for Florida."
Part of that chapter included developing new techniques for computer-generated animation, which appears in nearly 250 shots in the film. Among the most recognizable are sequences in which 2,000 Hun soldiers cascade through a mountain pass and a final crowd scene involving 30,000 lantern-toting revelers.
In other scenes, the technology creates effects as subtle as falling rain and flickering candles.
The final crowd scene is something "that really wasn't possible if you looked at it on paper," Mulan producer Pam Coats said. It was developed by computer animation supervisor Eric Guaglione, who created the new software for the effect while his crew was between assignments.
"When you're doing something that's considered a first, I think it exaggerates and elevates the level of passion and excitement and energy," Coats said. "People took ownership of this movie in a really great way."
Combined with a budget that Variety has reported at around $90 million, such enthusiasm made working in Central Florida like "working at a mom-and-pop grocery store filled with the money of Bloomingdale's," Coats said.
With five years' work on Mulan, Disney Feature Animation Florida is ready to show that it has the goods.