

How the Father of Claymation Lost His Company - benjaminfox
http://priceonomics.com/how-the-father-of-claymation-lost-his-company/

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doctorpangloss
I expected the story to end with, "And then the billionaire's son ran the
company into the ground," but it didn't.

Still, I'm skeptical to credit Travis Knight with "saving" the studio. The
money and nepotism definitely rescued the studio as a profit-making
enterprise.

But if the same artists had worked on the same Coraline with someone else's
capital, would the outcome have been any different? Probably not. Did it
matter if the money was branded Knight or someone else's?

The wrongest takeaway would be to credit Laika's new management with being
anything more than turnaround artists (as opposed to film artists). Vinton was
a creative visionary and always will be, money in the bank or not.

Vinton should have known what he was getting into when he took Knight's money.
Of course the objective was to acquire (or in this case, inherit) Vinton's
creative vision and make it Travis Knight's.

It is remarkable that Travis, through nothing more than the luck of being born
who he is, manages to obtain these intangibles: Vinton's identity as an artist
composed of his studio and his work.

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toyg
_> The wrongest takeaway would be to credit Laika's new management with being
anything more than turnaround artists (as opposed to film artists). Vinton was
a creative visionary and always will be, money in the bank or not._

To be fair, from the article it reads like the studio was basically gutted to
the core and rebuilt from scratch. They took a struggling but quirky visionary
company, razed it (after it had already shrunk to less than 20% of what it had
been at its peak), and turned it into what is basically a traditional Disney-
style Hollywood-oriented animation studio (big movies, big budgets, big
merchandise). They even dropped the original name. One has to wonder: what did
Travis Knight actually keep from Vinton's old enterprise?

For the record, a huge factor in _Coraline_ 's success was its origin as a
celebrated, prize-winning book from a celebrated, prize-winning literary and
pop-culture demigod (Neil Gaiman) arguably at the peak of his career. Sure,
adaptation and animation were good, but it wasn't exactly the hardest
assignment to begin with.

 _> It is remarkable that Travis, through nothing more than the luck of being
born who he is, manages to obtain these intangibles_

Yeah, but social classes don't exist in America, right? Eh.

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SeoxyS
Which brings up the question: what's the point of keeping the original
company? You're unlikely to have as much equity in a company with so much
history as opposed to if you were to found a new company.

This reminds me somewhat of Warren Buffet's biggest mistake, which was that he
had made a lousy investment into a Textile-manufacturing company called
Berkshire Hathaway. Having a disagreement with its CEO; he acquired a majority
stake of the company, and fired its CEO out of spite. But he couldn't get all
the stock; and when he completely reshaped the company into what it is today,
half of the value he created ended up going to the company's original
stockholders, instead of himself as it would have, had he started from scratch
with his own company.

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femto
The original company has a known brand (Vinton), and that opens doors.

~~~
SeoxyS
Nike, arguably, is a bigger and more door-opening brand than Vinton.

~~~
chinpokomon
In the world of Claymation, what does an athletic shoe company know?

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JamesArgo
Travis Knight is interesting. He's been spoiled all his life, yet he became a
highly-competent animator relatively quickly – and this can be verified from
other articles. He’s likely highly-intelligent but not extraordinarily so.
Some species of smart people pretend to be stupid, though not often this
stupid:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU9jq990b-w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU9jq990b-w)
/ I’ve been watching videos of him for that last few minutes, I wonder if he's
something of a Zelig-like figure. Strange specimen, I’d be interested in
meeting him.

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facepalm
He doesn't sound so stupid to me, especially relative to his age. How smart
and wise were you as a teenager? (Not sure how old he is in that video, but he
looks something like 18)?

~~~
JamesArgo
I don't think he's stupid, but he was subconsciously pretending to be. I think
maybe wealth can interfere with identity formation. When you can purchase an
identity as a kid, you become something of a cypher for awhile. Maybe he was a
nerd that tried to purchase cool. I don't know, but it's interesting how
someone so smart can lack self awareness (even as a teenager) to the degree
displayed in the video.

I've got a lot of respect for the guy. He was the director of animation on two
excellent, Pixar-level films. He's obviously super talented.

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webwielder
Everything happens for a raisin.

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bluesjr
Excellent read. I usually don't have the patience to read longer pieces, but
this was a great story.

