On March 16th, the studio where I work announced that we would all be working from home until the COVID-19 pandemic was under control. The IT department had worked through the weekend on the logistics of this large, sudden shift in production. Now this computer-tech luddite was tasked with applying their plans to my computer at home.
The overwhelming majority of Americans can agree that the return of Gary Larsen's "The Far Side" comics is great news. I read about this yesterday on CNN's website though it was not headline news for some reason. In the CNN article, Larsen explains that he decided to make an official Far Side site because so much of his work was posted online without his permission - fan sites, but more irritatingly, sites exploiting his work to promote their own products or services. His new site will feature the old strips, but promises some new stuff to come.
While Santa Claus gets the glory for pulling off Christmas every year, it is common knowledge that he has 'helpers'. A team of little elves - the Merry-Makers - work tirelessly behind the scenes to bring joy to the world. But did you know there's a second rank of helpers, an off-shoot of the Merry-Makers? These are the Havoc-Makers, Santa's Dipshits.
Years of brushing my teeth too hard had caused my gums to recede to the point where I needed oral surgery. And so I found myself reclined in a dentists' chair, having just had four shots of novocaine injected into the roof of my mouth. Yes, it hurt.
While the oral surgeon left me to numb up, a woman with a clipboard asked me some questions. One of them was "Occupation?"
I answered, "Animation."
"Animation?"
I elaborated, "I work on cartoons."
"Oh, interesting." she said. "Anything I would know?"
"How old are you?" I asked.
"Thirty two." she said.
I did some quick math, then said, "How about 'The Brave Little Toaster'?"
She squealed. Like a girl. She squealed so loud the dental assistants rushed in to see if she was alright. She turned to them and said, "He did 'The Brave Little Toaster'!"
Then they squealed. Right before me, four professional women morphed into cooing little girls, talking over each other how they had loved that movie growing up.
The one with the clipboard broke through the cacophony. "Oh my god! There's a scary clown in that movie that scared the crap out of me!" She was referring to Toaster's nightmare sequence.
I laughed. "I animated that sequence."
"Really?" she said.
I nodded.
There's a new animation expo in town - LightBox -and yesterday, I went. The last such event I attended was the World Animation Celebration in 1998, at the same location - the Pasadena Convention Center (newer building). My aversion to crowds keeps me away from such events, but every once in a while I nudge myself to get out there and network. Still, I dreaded the thought of it.
I convinced myself Friday would be less crowded than the weekend. 20 minutes before opening, there was a line of cars around the block for parking. I found an alternate lot a few blocks away and walked in the stinking September heat to the expo. To clarify, this was not specifically an animation expo. The LightBox site describes it as, "Over 250 of the best artists from the animation, live-action, illustration, and gaming industries coming together for the ultimate celebration of art." Being the first such mish-mash event I had ever attended, it was, by default, the "ultimate".
In the process of updating my personal website, I came across storyboards that never made it for three Illumination films: "The Grinch", "Minions", and "Despicable Me 2". I worked for months and months on versions of these films that were later abandoned. Nothing I boarded for "The Grinch" made it onscreen, but here is a clip (without sound) showing the Grinch's "Aha!" moment - the plot to steal Christmas...
Who knew animators could cook? Tom Sito, USC animation professor, co-director of Osmosis Jones and Emeritus President of the Animation Guild, has written a cookbook celebrating the recipes of animation artists.
You might think animators can't cook, but you'd be wrong. "Eat Drink Animate" is where you can learn the secrets of Walt Disney's chilli and and Tissa David's Hungarian Goulash.
I should declare an interest here - the book includes one of favourite recipes, Poisson a la BAFTA, which was reverse-engineered a few years ago from a dish I liked so much while dining at BAFTA Piccadilly that I decided to try and make it myself. I wrote it in French to make it sound posh.
Tom is a prodigious author, with many books on animation and animation history to his name.
Six years later, Ross's book "Pulling a Rabbit from a Hat" has finally hit the bookshelves; he was signing copies at this year's Annecy film festival.
Ross's book aims to be the definitive history of the making of the film. It is well researched and very detailed, and appears to very accurate down to the smallest details,
I've been looking forward to buying my copy for years. Among the highlights are Tom Sito's hilarious sketches and scribbles that documented the roller coaster ride that was the making of the film.
Kathleen Bell was a 20th Century illustrator whose work is now almost completely forgotten. She was also my grandmother and, if she is remembered at all, it is as the mother of, and major influence on, my father, the animator Richard Williams.
Kathleen "Kay" Bell was born on 19th May 1909, and lived in Toronto, Canada, where she worked as commercial illustrator. Of her vast body of work for newspapers and magazines, almost nothing survives.
All I have of her published work is the illustrations for one book, so long out of print that it doesn't even show up anymore as a listing at Amazon.com. A few years ago I managed to buy what was most likely the last remaining copy available for sale, and since then the listing has been deleted.
In May of 2014, my wife Donna was a patient at Sloan Kettering Hospital in Manhattan, being treated for complications from the cancer she'd been fighting for 3 1/2 years. The doctors were treating her aggressively. They were the best in the country, so we were confident she would beat it. As she rested, I sat next to her bed with my Cintiq, doing storyboards for Illumination on "The Grinch".
From left: Charles Solomon, Bob Kurtz, Scott Johnson, Howard Green, Eric Goldberg, Tom Sito,
Alex Williams, Ruben Aquino and Ross Blucher. Photo copyright the nice waitress at "The Counter".
Animation historian and critic Charles Solomon organised a "Fossils" lunch today, a meeting of various former (and current) Disney and DreamWorks animators to talk about the olden days, and wonder what the heck happened to our industry. Little did I know that Eric Goldberg, master of 2D animation timing is still doing hand-drawn animation at Disney, working on special projects for the Parks. Bob Kurtz is still doing freelance jobs, James Baxter is still flying the flag for 2D animation, and animator-turned academic Tom Sito trains his students at USC in the correct use of exposure sheets. And I still use Ruben's model sheets from "Lion King" to teach quadruped locomotion to my students.
Welsh filmmaker (and friend of FLiP) Nathan Erasmus has teamed up with young psychedelic rockers KOYO to produce a new sci-fi inspired animated video for the band’s new single ‘Jettisoned’.
Last May, I was having lunch in the new courtyard at Nickelodeon (where I work) with writer Andrew Blanchette. There were some guys sandblasting cartoon characters into the concrete benches. Working in the midst of them was a model-pretty woman - not the type you would cast in a blue-collar role, unless it was a "Flashdance" remake. I told Andrew. "We need to go talk to her."
"We need to go talk to her."
And so we met Tara Tarrant, owner of LaJolla Stone Etching. She was
putting the finishing touches on a very impressive Ninja Turtles etching
that wrapped around a bench. So how does a gal like her find herself sandblasting for a living?
Tara gave FLiP the scoop:
"I
come from a long line of artistically gifted individuals, mainly on my
mothers side. My grandmother and mother are amazing oil painters and my
mother is a muralist as well. I believe I must have picked up any
artistic talent that I possess from these amazing and talented
women. I do not have any formal art schooling, but I have always loved art and being creative. It's in the blood!"
Last month, FLiP's very own Alex Williams won The Cartoon Art Trust Award for Strip Cartooning for his "Queen's Counsel", which has run in The Times of London for the past 25 years. This is a huge honor, the comics equivalent of a BAFTA Award. Alex is typically modest about it, saying, "Actually I felt a bit unworthy about the whole thing."
Xeth Feinberg, the mad genius behind "Bulbo" and "Papu" tells FLiP about a new venture with his old band, The Prefab Messiahs. It's a new song and animated video called "The Man Who Stole Reality". FLiP approves of this message.
FLiP: Who the heck are the Prefab Messiahs?
Xeth: I like to think of THE PREFAB MESSIAHS as an audio-visual collaborative art project. It seems more respectable and 'sensible' that way.
Immediately after the November election, I was contacted by Carolyn Bates, a long time friend and colleague. She wanted me to create a public service announcement for a grassroots organization called Our Next 4 Years (ON4Y). I wrote, designed, voiced, and animated a piece called "Make Cheese, Not Walls". Enjoy!
I asked Carolyn some questions about Our Next 4 Years.....
1.What is ON4Y and how did it come to be?
Our Next 4 Years is an all volunteer organization of almost 300 animation
professionals. We are partnering
with progressive organizations in order to create animated PSA’s that can counter
the regressive policies of the current administration. Our group’s members include Oscar,
Emmy, Annie and Humanitas award winners and nominees from studios big and
small.
Following
the election, producer / director, Mike Blum of Pipsqueak Films, reached out to
me and broached a grand idea. Mike was motivated to action after reading a
fervent Facebook post by his animation supervisor, Ramiro Olmos. Ramiro wanted to lend his animation
skills to help support progressive causes and create change. Mike has tremendous creative & organizational
skills and a good dose of chutzpah to make that happen.
I first met John when I was just 16, when I used to tag along with my sketchpad at the life drawing classes that he taught at my father's old animation studio in Soho Square, and later at "The Diorama" Arts Centre in Regent's Park.
John wouldn't just tell you how to improve your work - he would sit down and show you how to make it better. Anyone who attended his class took home his drawings - on the corner of the page, mocking your own unskilled efforts, and encouraging you to do better.
At the time I thought all art teachers did this. It was only later that I found out how few teachers have the confidence and ability to personally correct their students' work. John knew he was better than the rest of us put together, and he didn't hesitate to show you where you had gone wrong.
Erin K and animation Producer Nathan Erasmus have just released their new video "Assholio", described as a "classic fairytale - classic as in 1600’s nightmarish and disturbing fairytale". And, of course, "who doesn’t want to see a unicorn pig?" The end result is "somewhere in between a super detailed animatic and a simplistic animation; kind of an "anti-mation".
Sarah Bates' 2007 FLiP article "Animation Brat" was reposted the other day as a precursor to this brand spanking new interview with her, where she talks about her latest online venture, Yay With Me. Sarah has been doing a self-help blog and podcast called Help Me Be Me that is so fantastic, it has prompted me out of my widower's funk and refueled my interest in old passions like FLiP. "Self Help for Animators" is a bit of a misnomer; her blog is not aimed at animators specifically. But it does touch on many emotional and psychological issues creatives wrestle with daily.
Sarah: Back in 2010 while I was writing commercial scripts and shooting spec spots, Zooey Deschanel asked me to contribute to Hello Giggles, a pop-culture site for women which she and two other savvy gals were about to launch. She’s my best friend since kindergarten, so I immediately said yes though I didn’t know what I was going to do about the content. My first thought was, “I’ll just be hilarious and Tina Fey will hire me on 30 Rock.” I thought my blog would be the perfect forum for promoting myself as a comedy writer – I pictured Tina Fey running across a shoot-out and immediately sending me a plane ticket. That is… until I started writing blogs.
In my opinion – there’s so much fluff out there that is of no value to the world and I didn’t want to make more of it – in other words, listicles are not my style. I started asking myself, first – what do I have to offer strangers that’s of unique value, which as it turned out – was the most important learning I’ve done for myself. Hence, the current content I create for Hello Giggles – a blog called Teaspoon of Happy.
Once I started thinking in terms of value, the blog became about translating the greatest learning I’ve done in my life – all of which came through hardship. That insight – I call it “the why,” - is what I try to give to audiences, because truly it’s the missing link to making change of any kind. You just have to be able to understand what caused the symptom and then you can figure out the solutions. More importantly, you can forgive yourself because you can finally see it’s not your fault, you’re not broken – the blocks you are hitting are the same ones I’d hit, if I lived your exact life experience. Success comes from having the right tools, and a lot of us haven’t been given the right ones from our own lives. Plus, a lot of the catalysts for stuck-ness are painful, complicated, and layered, so I take them apart and make them understandable – in my own words (A lot of them are cuss words). I do a lot of research, but I learned the majority of what I preach through personal experience – including years of therapy with an amazing psychologist that I can’t thank enough. If this were an Oscar ceremony I’d thank Dr. Sharon Flynn – she gave me a gift I can never repay. And if you’re in the LA area – she’s practicing! I highly recommend her to anyone who needs to do some self-work.
The following is a re-post of one of my favorite articles from the old format FLiP, from 2007. Enjoy! - Steve by Sarah May Bates advertising art director/copywriter/voice-over/commercial actress, and former “animation brat”.
When asked to write this, I have to admit I had no idea what the term “animation brat” meant. Animation and animators are really all I’ve ever known and are still a central inspiration and influence in my life. I grew up with “cool” parents, but when you’re a kid, you don’t know that kind of thing. It was just normal to me. For context, my mom is Carolyn Bates (former BG artist at Fred Calvert, Xerox checker at H&B, moved up from Duck Soup Ink & Paint to Disney producer), and my dad is Nick Bates (Vis FX supervisor at Pepper Filmsin Los Angeles)*. Everything cool about me stems from my parents, which in certain social spheres, I don’t necessarily cop to. My first exposure to Miyazaki, John K, Tim Burton, classic Sam Raimi - my parents. I was always inspired to draw, be weird, create.
I was honored recently to be interviewed for The Tiara Talk Show, a podcast series created by Tammy Tuckey. The show is about all things Disney, though it is not a Disney production. Since its premiere in August of 2013, Tammy has done 103 interviews, with the likes of Debbie Reynolds, Ed Asner, Don Hahn, Jerry Rees, Gary Trousdale, and now me. Slow news week, I guess.
Nancy Beiman, supervising animator at Disney, Professor at Sheridan, and friend of FLiP, has told the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that she is "No Longer Proud to Be a Member of This Organization".
Nancy announced her intention to resign her membership following the new rules which have been hastily introduced following accusations of racism in the current roster of Oscar nominees.
Animators are film-makers, and it's not unusual to find animators who bridge the gap between animation and live action. Been Garnish, animator and friedn of FLiP, who is responsible for much memorable character and creature animation on films like "Harry Potter", has made a short video titled Retrofit. It's a science-fiction fantasy, set in the near future, "when death is just a new beginning - for those who can afford it."
