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[[File:don_bluth_8170.jpg|frame|Don't let that smile fool you--he's the animation world's [[The Woobie|woobie]].]]
 
'''Don Bluth''' (born 1937-) is a former Disney animator to whom many a 1980s (and to a lesser extent 1990s) child owes much of their childhood.
 
Much as current CG animated movies tend to exist in the public mind as "either [[Pixar]] or [[Dreamworks Animation]]", his works were considered one of the two the main forces in animation alongside [[Disney Animated Canon]]. Bluth films are well-known for gorgeous character and effects animation and for a strong sense of fairy tale storytelling -- andstorytelling—and [[Grimmification|all that entails]]. His films tend to be darker (thematically and literally) than the standard Disney fare. They also overall tend to be much, much ''stranger''. Even his not-so-good movies have a cult audience, thanks to their crazy fever-dream logic and the fact that the animation is still ''really'' pretty.
 
Before he started directing, his first animation contribution was as an assistant on ''[[Sleeping Beauty (Disney film)|Sleeping Beauty]]''. He would also assist on ''[[The Sword in the Stone]]'', and would take a brief foray into TV projects (on such fare as [[Filmation]]'s ''Will the Real [[Jerry Lewis]] Please Sit Down?'' and ''[[Sabrina and The Groovie Goolies]]'' (!)) before returning to Disney for ''[[Robin Hood (Disney film)|Robin Hood]]'' in 1973. He also animated sequences in ''The Many Adventures of [[Winnie the Pooh]]'' (most notably, the scene where Rabbit is lost in the woods). But after working on things like ''Pete's Dragon'', he became disillusioned with the direction in which Disney seemed to be going without Walt. He and a few animator friends struck out on their own to form their own independent studio.
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Their goal was to remind Disney, and people in general, [[Doing It for the Art|what painstakingly attentive hand-drawn animation could do]]. For a considerable amount of time, film-goers liked his films better than the movies Disney was putting out in the '80s. Miffed by the competition, Disney started treating their own animated films more seriously. In other words, Bluth himself is largely responsible for the [[The Renaissance Age of Animation|Western Animation Renaissance]]!
 
Though, sadly, [[Bittersweet Ending|he couldn't really enjoy it]]. His films couldn't compete with Disney's juggernaut hits, and were lost in the overcrowded "all the animation that isn't by Disney" market. For a while in the '90s, it looked like he was ready for a comeback -- andcomeback—and then [[Pixar|a little studio in Emeryville, California]], soon to also be known for gorgeous animation and offbeat but heartwarming stories, came along and changed the playing field forever...
 
You can read his full biography (up to the early '90s) [http://www.cataroo.com/DBconts.html here]. Reviews of his movies in chronological order can be read [http://babbletrish.blogspot.com/2010/09/don-bluth-month-full-index-of-reviews.html here.]
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* ''[[The Pebble and the Penguin]]'': A film that was disowned by [[Alan Smithee|Bluth himself]], because it suffered from abysmal animation and lots of [[Executive Meddling]] during production.
* ''[[Anastasia (Animation)|Anastasia]]'': Intended to be his big comeback and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka2GMsbW4Jo was marketed as such]. To date, his last big hit.
* ''[[Bartok the Magnificent]]'': Direct-to-DVD, continuity-free sequel to the above and --thisand—this is important-- theimportant—the '''only''' sequel to one of his films he was ever actually involved with.
* ''[[Titan A.E.]]'': Failed at the box office but has since become a cult favorite.
* An animated music video loosely retelling the story of Rapunzel, set to "Mary" by ''the [[Scissor Sisters]]''.
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* [[Gray Rain of Depression]]: First appears in ''[[Banjo the Woodpile Cat]]'', and the scene of a little lost animal crying in the rain is replicated almost identically in ''[[An American Tail]]''.
* [[Happily Ever After]]
* [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters]]: The scientists at the eponymous institute in ''[[The Secret of NIMH]]''. It doesn't really crop up much elsewhere, most humans are usually just ignorant in his other movies with animal protagonists.
* [[Instant Index, Just Add Water]]: Water and related tropes are featured extremely prominently in his five first movies; in each of these there is at least one rain sequence, one under water sequence (there is even a specific under water ''musical theme'' in [[The Land Before Time]]), scenery where water is featured profusely (a watermill, a rusting cargo, sewers, docks…), several dramatic sequences and/or a climax involving water more or less directly…
* [[Lighter and Softer]]: "Rock-a-Doodle", "Thumbelina", "A Troll In Central Park", and "The Pebble and the Penguin" compared to the last 4 movies before them.
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* [[Rotoscoping]]: Bluth likes to do this a lot, but he usually sticks with using it to animate difficult vehicles and such. The effect is very appropriate, as the giant rotoscoped machines in ''NIMH'' and ''American Tail'' look ''terrifying''. In more recent movies, this effect was largely replaced by [[Conspicuous CGI]] and the impact is... less good. Human background characters in ''[[The Secret of NIMH]]'' and ''[[An American Tail]]'' were also rotoscoped, though non-rotoscoped humans appear in later movies.
* [[Rule of Symbolism]]: Another common motif is characters unwillingly sliding, tumbling down or being washed away by water or wind. This is never played for the comedic effect; these sequences are always dramatic, as they emphasize the loss of control of the characters.
* [[Scenery Porn]]: Often inverted -- Bluthinverted—Bluth's backgrounds can seem watery and washed-out to non-fans.
* [[Shown Their Work]]: The youtube user [http://www.youtube.com/user/OriginalGagBonkerss OriginalGagBonkerss] made a video that [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVYo3OpqsbU talks about the works of Bluth].
* [[Small Annoying Creature]]: A stock character that shows up in his works to lighten the mood. Examples include Digit in ''[[An American Tail]]'', Petrie in ''[[The Land Before Time]]'', Hunch from ''[[Rock-a-Doodle]]'' and Bartok from ''[[Anastasia (Animation)|Anastasia]]''.
* [[Start My Own]]: Bluth's animation studios after he left Disney but before he joined Fox Animation.
* [[What Could Have Been]]:
** In the late Eighties, Bluth was working on a project which, from [http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v518/Tannhaeuser/DonBluth-BeautyandtheBeast.jpg surviving] [http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v518/Tannhaeuser/DonBluth-BeautyandtheBeast02.jpg stills], would have been heavily influenced by Jean Cocteau's 1946 ''[[Beauty and the Beast (1946 film)|La belle et la bête]]'' -- an—an [[Animated Adaptation]] of ''[[Beauty and The Beast]]''. When he learned that the [[Beauty and the Beast|Disney version]] was already being produced, he abandoned the project, wishing to avoid [[Dueling Movies]]. <ref> Depends on how one defines "heavily influenced" the very few story and character tidbits Bluth revealed about this treatment included a clairvoyant dog, a bird detective, an escape-artist lizard, the "King of the Bats", the "wee beasties", and "Queen Livia, herself"...most elements seem to have been of his own invention.</ref>
** When 20th Century Fox hired Don Bluth to direct an animated movie for them, they gave him a choice between an [[Animated Adaptation]] of ''[[My Fair Lady]]'', or Marcelle Maurette's ''Anastasia''. Bluth picked the latter.
** After the success of ''[[The Secret of NIMH]]'', Bluth's second film was originally supposed to have been an adaptation of the fairy tale "[[East of the Sun and West of the Moon]]", but it never came to fruition because financial resources were drawn back. After teaming up with [[Steven Spielberg]], Bluth's second film instead turned out to be ''[[An American Tail]]''.
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