L.A. Animation Tour

July 31, 2004

Ever wanted to know where the Hanna-Barbera stu­dios are located? How about the Klasky-Csupo Com­plex, also known as the stu­dio behind the car­toon series Duckman?

Many of these stu­dios in Los Ange­les County are tucked away in areas that might not be acces­si­ble to the gen­eral pub­lic. In fact, only a hand­ful offer stu­dio tours and for most you’ll need a pri­vate invi­ta­tion to enter. For instance, Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios located in Bur­bank Cal­i­for­nia does not offer tours of the com­plex due in part to the level of access that is required because of the pro­duc­tion that incurs on the grounds.

The lot con­sists of sev­eral tele­vi­sion stu­dios (one of which was used exclu­sively for Home Improve­ment), a sound stu­dio for foley effects and sound­tracks for live-action and ani­mated pro­duc­tions. The com­plex also includes a school of art, employee restau­rant, office build­ings (includ­ing Roy Dis­ney) and the infa­mous ani­ma­tion build­ings which served as pro­duc­tion areas for Beauty and the Beast, Sleep­ing Beauty and a vari­ety of other Dis­ney movies.

For those of us who are not for­tu­nate enough to receive a pri­vate invi­ta­tion to these stu­dios there exists a behind-the-scenes web­site (cour­tesy of the Ani­ma­tion World Net­work) which includes infor­ma­tion on these landmarks. 

3 comments

For more infor­ma­tion on the Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios, I would rec­om­mend find­ing a copy of the two DVD set called Walt Dis­ney Trea­sures — Behind the Scenes at the Walt Dis­ney Stu­dio. It’s a great in depth look at the stu­dios history.

by Mike on August 1, 2004 at 6:13 pm. Reply #

Thanks for the rec­om­men­da­tion, Mike. I’ve actu­ally vis­ited the Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios twice (received work-related invites) and both times had dif­fer­ent experiences.

They have a Dis­ney store on site, smaller than those you see in malls around the world. I also noticed that the mer­chan­dise was more rea­son­ably priced and if you were an employee I believe you received a 20–25% dis­count. On both occas­sions they (the employ­ees) would always assume I worked there.

In the cen­ter of the cam­pus were the main offices. At the time I passed by the office of Jerry Bruck­heimer and remem­ber think­ing, “Hey, it’s the guy who did The Rock and Bev­erly Hills Cop.”

Sur­round­ing the main offices were the pro­duc­tion houses. You could see employ­ees in there edit­ing film and just about every one of these small offices had char­ac­ters from past films (in toy and poster form) lin­ing the windows.

Towards the back of the com­plex there were memo­r­ial plaques (plas­tered in cement) for sev­eral Dis­ney ani­ma­tors, com­posers, employ­ees, etc. who had passed on. I believe Marc Davis was still alive at the time, which would have been 1999 or 2000, but he has since passed on and I would imag­ine he has a plaque there as well.

To sum it all up, it was a once (or in my case, twice) in a life­time expe­ri­ence, of which I’ll always remember.

by kartooner on August 2, 2004 at 8:48 am. Reply #

i am look­ing for a car­toon stu­dio tour for my 6 year old son. please guide me in the right direction.

by olivia jimenez on July 6, 2005 at 10:37 pm. Reply #

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