<P> While Oliver & Company and the next feature The Little Mermaid were in production, Disney collaborated with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and master animator Richard Williams to produce Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a groundbreaking live - action / animation hybrid directed by Robert Zemeckis, which featured licensed animated characters from other animation studios . Disney set up a new animation studio under Williams' supervision in London to create the cartoon characters for Roger Rabbit, with many of the artists from the California studio traveling to England to work on the film . A significant critical and commercial success, Roger Rabbit won three Academy Awards for technical achievements . and was key in renewing mainstream interest in American animation . Other than the film itself, the studio also produced three Roger Rabbit shorts during the late 1980s and early 1990s . </P> <P> A second satellite studio, Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida, opened in 1989 with 40 employees . Its offices were located within the Disney - MGM Studios theme park at Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida, and visitors were allowed to tour the studio and observe animators at work . That same year, the studio released The Little Mermaid, which became a keystone achievement in Disney's history as its largest critical and commercial success in decades . Directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, who'd been co-directors on The Great Mouse Detective, The Little Mermaid earned $84 million at the North American box office, a record for the studio . The film was built around a score from Broadway songwriters Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, who was also a co-producer and story consultant on the film . Mermaid won two Academy Awards, for Best Original Song and for Best Original Score . </P> <P> The Little Mermaid vigorously relaunched a profound new interest in the animation and musical film genres . The film was also the first to feature the use of Disney's Computer Animation Production System (CAPS). Developed for Disney by Pixar, which had grown into a commercial computer animation and technology development company, CAPS would become significant in allowing future Disney films to more seamlessly integrate computer - generated imagery and achieve higher production values with digital ink and paint and compositing techniques . The Little Mermaid was the first of a series of blockbusters that would be released over the next decade by Walt Disney Feature Animation, a period later designated by the term Disney Renaissance . </P> <P> Accompanied in theaters by the Mickey Mouse featurette The Prince and the Pauper, The Rescuers Down Under (1990) was Disney's first animated feature sequel and the studio's first film to be fully colored and composited via computer using the CAPS system . However, the film did not duplicate the success of The Little Mermaid . The next Disney animated feature, Beauty and the Beast, had begun production in London but was moved back to Burbank after Disney decided to shutter the London satellite office and retool the film into a musical - comedy format similar to The Little Mermaid . Alan Menken and Howard Ashman were retained to write the song score, though Ashman died before production was completed . </P>

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