A little over two years later Don returned. He did some work on Disney's "The Sword in the Stone", but his main interest now was theatre. He opened the "Bluth Brother's Theatre" with his brother Fred in and old supermarket in Culver City. After around three years Don returned to college to get his English Literature Degree.
In 1967 Don Bluth worked at Filmation, working on Saturday-morning type cartoons, but didn't really like what was being produced there. In his free time ran a band called "The New Generation".
In 1971 , after the death of Walt Disney, Don left Filmation and went back to Disney. He worked on "Robin Hood" (1973), "Winnie the Pooh, and Tigger Too" (1974), then as directing animator on "The Rescures" (1977), animation director on "Pete's Dragon" (1977) and producer / director of "The Small One" (1978). He also worked on "The Fox and the Hound" (1979), but left Disney during the film's production, feeling that the artistic quality of animated films at Disney had declined. The next day eleven other animators left to join him, they and Don having requested that their names be removed from "The Fox and the Hound"'s credits, and embarked on their quest to create an animation company run by artists.
The group's first major feature "The Secret of NIMH" was released in 1982 and is the second prodution by producers Don Bluth, John Pomeroy and Gary Goldman. The first prodution by the group was "Banjo the Woodpile Cat", completed while the group still worked at Disney, released in the US in 1979. The first prodution was to have been "The Piper" based on the Pied Piper story, but the project was judged to be too large for the resources available. Banjo the Woodpile Cat was used by the team of artists as a teaching exercise to learn the entire process of animated film-making, not just the animated side.
Don Bluth and a small team also animated a scene for the film
Xanadu while work still continued on NIMH, then a year after the release of NIMH the group went on to create the Laserdisc arcade games Dragon's Lair and Space Ace and later Dragons Lair II - Time Warp, although the release of Dragon's Lair II was delayed until the group's financial condition allowed it.After the video games were abandoned he teamed up with Steven Spielberg and made An American Tail and The Land Before Time. I'm not a great fan of "Land.." but An American Tail is classic Don Bluth, and the group has reminded everyone who made it ever since! After these films the Bluth group made All Dogs go to Heaven, Rock-a-doodle, Thumbelina, A Troll in Central Park, The Pebble and the Penguin, and the newest film, made through Fox Animation - Anastasia (with the voice of Moe the bartender from The Simpsons, Hank Azaria, appearing as Rasputin's bat!).