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Animators on Little Nemo in Slumberland

Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland
1989. Movie
DIR: Masami Hata, William Hurtz
SCR: Chris Columbus, Richard Outten,, Bruce Shaefer
DES: Jean Giraud, Brian Froud, Paul Julian, Kazuhide Tominaga
ANI: Yasuo Otsuka, Kazuaki Yoshinaga, Nobuo Tominaga
MUS: Richard Sherman, Robert Sherman
PRD: Tokyo Movie Shinsa
85 minutes

[insert description of the story and rather scathing "review" and rumors/gossip about production]

The production features a large number of famous names, including voice actors Mickey Rooney (Flip the Clown) and Rene Auberjonois (Professor Genius). Disney's Frank Thomas, Roger Allers, and Ollie Johnson (sic) were among the animators, the songs were written by the Sherman brothers (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), while Jean "Moebius" Giraud provided "conceptual design." However, many of the crew are "ghost" credits symptomatic of a long and troubled production--Ray Bradbury is credited with the "screen concept" but seems to have left the production early on, while the press notes carelessly trumpet the involvement of Chinatown scenarist Robert Towne as a "story consultant," a likely sign that Towne had been called in to rescue a failing premise. Both Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata split from the production at an early stage due to "creative differences," while Yoshifumi Kondo stayed to work on the first (1984) pilot. A second (1987) pilot, credited to Osamu Dezaki, also exists, and both are included as bonus items on the Laser Disc release.

While TAE does have some accurate info, I'd say that if Pandadice has access to the actual movie credits, we scrap the entries sourced to TAE and replace them with the ones from the movie credits. It's too hard to sort through what's correct and what's not in that.

The Anime Encyclopedia is a book that was published in the early to mid 00s

It lists Minekura's Saiyuki under the same entry as Goku's Great Adventure, as well as a few other series that are based on the "Journey to the West" story, implying that all of them are either sequels or updates or whatever and related to each other.

Johnson looks like a typo for Ollie Johnston.

Yasuo Otsuka's book Little Nemo no Yabō [The Prospect of Little Nemo].
Tokyo: Studio Ghibli, 2004, might throw some light on it.

Actually, I have now checked in my office, and the two sources for
that article were:

1. The Animage Anime Pocket Data 2000* (ISBN 4-19-720114-1) and
2. something listed on my spreadsheet as "Beck", which I presume to be
an article by Jerry Beck, although I can't find it in my database.

I have the first source here, and it contains no details on the
foreign staff, so the truth is, I can't actually remember what my
source was for the information.

However, I wonder if everyone is talking at cross-pruposes, since the
Japanese title "doga kantoku", sometimes mistranslated as "animation
director", more usually means "key animator". The Anime Encyclopedia
lists lead animators -- including keys -- but does not include key
animators as "directors".
Meanwhile, "story" in Western animation often includes contributions
*from* animators, which has led to several spats with writers over who
gets actual credit. My source on the activities of Roger Allers was
either Beck or Fred Patten -- the latter being a hlepful correspondent
on the first edition, and very likely to have sent me any work by the
former, and Patten himself discusses Allers' involvement in Little
Nemo in his book Watching Anime, Reading Manga.

If Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston are not credited as "animators" on
the finished film, then I'll certainly be removing them from the
credit list in the AE3.