THE ANIMATION graveyard is littered with the remains of recent features that barely got out of the gate before dying a quick box-office death. For every huge Disney hit, from "The Little Mermaid" to "Beauty and the Beast" to "Aladdin," there have been quite a number of non-Disney flops - including five just from last year, "Happily Ever After," "Once Upon a Forest," "Tom and Jerry: The Movie," "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story" and "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm."
"I think it's because the people making them really don't know what they're doing," says Don Bluth - who does seem to know what he's doing. His animated hits include "An American Tail," "The Land Before Time" and "All Dogs Go to Heaven." His latest, "Hans Christian Andersen's Thumb- elina," opened in theaters across the country on Wednesday. (See review on C2.)"It takes a little bit of schooling," Bluth explained during a telephone interview from his production company's offices in Dublin, Ireland. "Even when you're making a live-action movie, you have to get your feet wet. If you just jump in and throw money at it, that won't do it."
Bluth's prolific output of full-length cartoons since 1982 is second only to Disney's during the same time period. "Hans Christian Andersen's Thumbelina" is his sixth animated film. And his seventh, "A Troll in Central Park," will be in theaters this summer.
Bluth, a Brigham Young University graduate who spent much of his youth in Utah (he still has family here), is often cited as the driving force behind the mid-'80s revival of fluid, fully detailed animation, which had begun to wane at Disney when Bluth labored there as an animator during the 1970s.
Among Bluth's Disney credits are "Robin Hood," "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too," "The Rescuers," "The Fox and the Hound," "Pete's Dragon" and "The Small One." But the studio's emphasis was shifting away from animation during those years, and in 1979 Bluth and 15 other animators left to form Don Bluth Productions.
Bluth's first effort was the gorgeously animated "Secret of NIMH," released in 1982. The film did not fare well at U.S. box offices, but it did serve to bring his talent to the attention of Steven Spielberg, who produced Bluth's next two films, "An American Tail" and "The Land Before Time," both of which became solid hits. Then came another success, "All Dogs Go to Heaven," followed a couple of years ago by the less-successsful live-action/animation combination, "Rock-A-Doodle."
After filing bankruptcy in 1992, Bluth's company was bailed out by Media Assets of Hong Kong and is now back in full swing, with a contract to release "Thumbelina" and "Troll" through Warner Bros.
"The deal was made after the pictures were finishth explained, "and it was decided to reverse the order - `Troll' was going to be first, then `Thumbelina.' We haven't had a picture out in two years - and now we have two. It really is feast or famine."
Sizing up the other animated features that have come out in the past few years, Bluth suggests some have been too message-oriented - particularly the environmentally correct "FernGully" and "Once Upon a Forest."
" `FernGully' was basically a good picture but the script was a little bit weak. The audience felt preached to."
As for "We're Back!" Spielberg's other dinosaur movie last year, Bluth says, "Steven's trying to long-finger that sort of thing, he's just not being hands-on enough. But what turned the whole animation thing around is his belief that he could."
Bluth credits Spielberg with using his enormous Hollywood clout to almost single-handedly bring back animation as a viable box-office commodity. "It was `An American Tail,' `The Land Before Time' and Steven's involvement with `Who Framed Roger Rabbit' - along with Disney's `Oliver & Company.' Those four pictures turned it around, because prior to that, the box office was plummeting. Then, four in a row that suddenly made money, and animated features were fashionable again. And since that time, of course, Disney has had `The Little Mermaid,' `Beauty and the Beast' and `Aladdin.' "
Bluth acknowledges that the market for animated features is still a bit tenuous unless the Disney name is attached but feels confident that his own name is gaining a reputation for quality. "It hasn't had any effect on us," he says, adding with a touch of incredulity, "We're selling the name `Don Bluth,' and what's happened is that people actually know who we are!"
As for "Thumbelina," Bluth says he chose the fairy tale primarily for the story's themes. "The little girl who is 2 inches tall and who faces a world that's too big. She has to solve the problems thrown into her path and if she learns how to follow her heart and listens to the voice inside of her, she can be happy.
"I feel those things but not just because of the movie industry. Our problems today, with ecology, wars and hunger and all of these things - in this industrial or electronic age, what can one little person do? We used to ask that question when we were making `The Rescuers' at Disney - what can a little mouse do? And oftentimes people don't realize just how much they can do."
The songs in "Thumbelina" were written by Barry Manilow, with lyricists Jack Feldman and Bruce Sussman, and Bluth says Manilow came aboard when they were introduced by a mutual friend. "This friend said, `Look, Don, you tell me you want to do musical-comedy. Well, meet Barry - he would love to do an animated film.'
"By the time we got together for our first formal meeting, Barry had already written the first demo tune, `Let Me Be Your Wings.' And I could see it visually. It was very inspiring.
"Now we're good friends. In fact, we're doing another film together, a picture in '95 called `The Pebble and the Penguin.' "
Meanwhile, among the non-Disney, non-Bluth animated movies coming up is a sequel to "All Dogs Go to Heaven," to be produced by MGM's new animation department. (Spielberg also produced an unsuccessful sequel to "An American Tail," "Fievel Goes West.")
"I'm not too big on sequels," Bluth says. "A sequel usually doesn't work. I mean, I hope that it (`All Dogs 2') does, of course - I don't want any animation to fail. I felt bad that `American Tail 2' didn't do better. But they decided to make a sequel, and then they just did the same story all over again.
"What happens is that this one makes money, so they say, `Let's make another one.' What they should be saying is, `Let's do something good again.' "