Burn-out can occur in any job — just ask John Pomeroy. Along with fellow artists Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, Pomeroy left Disney in 1979 during production of The Fox and the Hound to help Bluth launch his own animation studio. Twelve years later, in the middle of making Thumbelina, Pomeroy was, by his own admission, "reaching major burn-out. I wasn't able to create and do what I love doing best — draw." Wearing the "producer hat" for so long proved his undoing, he believes. "I was very caught up in managing people."
Two years later, Pomeroy gave notice, sold his stock in the company and switched his focus to painting. Though they parted on less than ideal terms, his association with Bluth, which began with The Secret of NIMH and lasted 13 years, was, he says, "a terrific experience. I've got a lot of good memories and I've matured as a person, as well as an artist."
It was about that time that Pomeroy received a luncheon invitation from his friend Don Hahn, Bluth's assistant director on Pete's Dragon and by then a very successful producer of animated features at Walt Disney Pictures. "One thing led to another, and suddenly [the studio] was approaching me about being [supervising animator for] Captain John Smith in Pocahontas" Pomeroy recalls.
As a man with an "obsession" with military history, the subject was right up Pomeroy's alley. "It was like a fresh start," he says. Returning to Disney in 1992 was "a new path for me. When I went back, I didn't see the old Disney that we had left in 1979 that was atrophied and crumbling and not doing anything new and innovative. I saw a brand new studio thriving and populated with wonderful, talented people. It was like a re-creation of the Golden Age of animation — that's what I walked into."
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