"18 months to do an animation isn't exactly "years". a studio would hafta be
nuts to spend years on a movie, as the idea would be dead, and the money
from the suits would be cut off, if there weren't results in 9 months or less."

Um, almost ALL movies take years to make, especially big blockbusters.

I believe the "Shreks" all took 3 years each to complete... Antz was released before Shrek by 3 years, which came out in 2001. They announced a sequel within weeks, and Shrek II came out in 2004. It's taken them 3 more years to complete Shrek 3, and for both sequels, that's with the majority of model creation and base animation sequences in place already, but they keep rasing the bar with fluid dynamics, fur rendering and things like moving grass and plants.

Granted, you can cut corners and crank out poorly animated junk in a year, but the end result speaks for itself.

Google shrek and animation world news.. they cover a lot of "buzz" in the industry.

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.