PeaceTime - Episode 3: A Whale

My meditation videos are now a trilogy.  Presenting my brand new short "A Whale".  It's an undersea guided meditation for guppies of all ages.  

 

The team from the first two shorts is back, with Jess Lakin's gentle voice leading the journey.  Jess actually sat in the Easy Pose yoga position while recording.   After a few slow, deep breaths,  she began extemporizing on the journey of a whale traveling through the sea.  There was no script.  I gave no direction.  She just went with the flow, pun intended.   

My job was then to provide visuals to the audio.  I designed it for simplicity, knowing I would be animating it completely on my own, and not wanting to spent ten years doing so.  It was all done in Adobe Animate.  I don't build rigs, just approach it like old school limited animation.  The biggest challenge for me was in design and color, which I don't get involved with too much in my studio work.  This was largely improvised as well.  

Composer Ian Rees squeezed me in between feature films he was scoring.   As with Jess, I let him surprise me.  The only rule we've had with these shorts was that sound effects must be done musically.  No foley.   He used instruments ranging from a cello to a Brazilian cuica drum.  He created a musical undersea world that completely elevated my visuals.  The results left me grinning ear to ear.

In nearly 42 years in animation, it's still a thrill when all the elements come together and a film becomes a thing of its own.  Like a cartoon Dr Frankenstein - it's alive!  IT'S ALIVE!!!

Enjoy and please share.  Namaste!  NAMASTE!!!

-Steve 

 
 I brushed off this spooky story from the 2008 e-zine version of FLiP.   Enjoy!   -Steve

Always after me. Always after me. Always. After me. Always after me, Lucky Charms. I am a leprechaun. A well famous leprechaun in the flake trade. On the run because, as I said, they’re after me. Always after me. After me.

They’re watching me. Always watching. Watching. Were they not watching, I’d surely vanish. Leprechauns can do that. We can vanish. But nae with a-body watching. Like a dog having a shite, nae with a-body watching. Once they fixed an eye on me, I was bloody well fooked.

So I run. I run. Always after me. I run. Always in the light. Always where they can’t make their move. Who are they? Who the fook are they?

I am the pitchman for a breakfast cereal that bears me name. For nigh sixty years, me job has been to entice children to eat rubbish that tastes like the box it came in. I’ve sold billions of boxes of this shite, making me richer than Bill Gates and the Pope sewn together and dipped in gold. I may be an animated blaggard, but I’ve nae reason to lie when I tell you that they’re after me. Always after me.

T’was nigh a week ago. Shooting commercial number two-thousand or so. Pointing to a gigantic bowl of cereal, saying me tag line, “Always after me Lucky Charms, they’re magically delicious!” as I had done two-thousand or so times before. But this young, wanker director wants get all method with it. Meisner shite. So I dick around with the line, twisting every read until me bloody head hurt.

“Always after me Lucky Charms, they’re magically delicious!”

“Always, after me Lucky Charms they’re; magically delicious.”

“Always after? Me: Lucky. Charms? They’re magically, delicious.”

I even gave the Shatner method a go. “Always! After! Me Lucky! Charms! They’re magicallydelicious.”

After two hours of this, I was losing me will to live. After five hours, I was losing me will for the director to live. Alas, I sais, “Always after ME - Lucky Charms! THEY’RE Magically Delicious.”

Mr. DeMille shouts, “PERFECT! CUT! PRINT! WRAP!”

“Well!” I thought to meself aloud, “What a fine piece of shite that’s going to be! Always after me, they are - like there’s a fookin’ price on me head! You turned it all arseways, you stupid git.”

I nae more than spit those words when a flood light crashed at me lucky feet. Massive beast of metal and glass, big as yours truly, lay in a steaming heap before me. Words “Magically Delicious” scrawled on its crinkled side. From the distant soundstage door, I hears the director chuckle, “Careful, little fella. Kelloggs would sue me if you got hurt.”

I chucked me shillelagh at the smug shite. “I dunna work for Kelloggs, ya stupid twat!”

Animatic Theater presents "The Dutch Green"

 Wow, it's been a year since I posted something here.   So what have I been up to? 

Something I call "Animatic Theater".  

 

About 15 years ago, I had an idea for a series based on my life in South Jersey - an odd place full of quirky, blue collar Americans.  I put together a pitch, tweaking it in subsequent years when I had time.  A few years ago, I decided to make an animatic as a proof of concept piece.  It's a  simple set up: the main character, "Old Dude", goes into his favorite deli to order the usual, but now the place has become automated.  It's one more piece of his comfortable world leaving him behind and at the mercy of an apathetic young "Deli Gal", who would rather text her boyfriend than help some geezer.  

This was based on real events.

I wrote a script, redesigned the characters, then reached out to voice actress Sirena Irwin, whom I had met while working at Nickelodeon.  I didn't know her personally, and thought it was a long shot getting her to do it, as she is THE REAL DEAL.   But after a Zoom call, she agreed to play the part of the Deli Gal.  I would play the Old Dude (typecasting).

I booked time at Outloud Audio in Burbank, having the room set up so we could record our lines together.  I can't fully articulate how much fun it was working with Sirena.  After a couple of takes, she wandered off-script, improvising.  I followed her lead the best I could without cracking up (we both failed terribly at this, giggling like an SNL cast).   Her quick wit and whimsicality worked perfectly for this piece.   We would go down some crazy rabbit holes and somehow wind our way back to the script.  It was a wild ride and I had an absolute blast.  A lot of our banter made it into the final cut - the lines where we're talking over each other is the giveaway.  I love how natural it feels.  I credit Sirena for making that happen.  She's also a voice director, and guided me through some of my lines.

Now came the big task - story boarding it.  This happened in fits and starts, between gigs, over a period of about 18 months using Storyboard Pro software.   When I finished and cut it all together, I wanted a few music cues.  I was originally going with needle drops from the 1970 rock classic "Mississippi Queen" by the band Mountain.  But getting the rights was much more involved and much less gratifying than getting something original from my favorite composer Ian Rees.  I sent him the animatic on a Sunday.  On Tuesday, he returned it with something perfectly "Mountain-esque".   Seriously, he is a genius.  

I really wanted to animate the short, but after a computer disaster deleted the original SB Pro file, I was left with just an animatic.  Not wanting to start over, I leaned into the limitation and created "Animatic Theater", a place where I can present short ideas without spending five years or more making them.  And at age 62, time has become a factor.  There will be more animatic shorts to come!

I hope you enjoy "The Dutch Green".  There's some salty language in it, so not something to watch around the wee little ones.  HR might not approve either - you've been warned! 

-Steve

Starting with a Bang

Caricatured here, a 1984 version of Steve Moore, Dan Jeup, Mike Genz, and Fred Cline

 

40 years ago this month, I was winding up my junior year at CalArts.  Eschewing the usual summer job, I made a grab for the brass ring - my first animation gig.  

A tip from Darrell Rooney got me in the door at David Stipes Productions, a small effects house off of Sherman Way in North Hollywood.   David is a master matte painter, Emmy winning effects supervisor, and super nice man.  His studio was a shabby 1940's California ranch house in a neighborhood swallowed up by industrial buildings.  At that time, they were doing special effects for the mini-series "V the Visitor", with a motion control camera set up in what had once been someone's living room.  

But that's not what I was doing.

Winding through the old house and out the back door, there was small yard strewn with props and film gear.  The yard was closed in on three sides by neighboring cinder block buildings, making it feel like a stage in itself.   Upstage right was a one-car garage from which, along with  Dan Jeup, Fred Cline, and Mike Genz, I animated on David's indie short about dreams and their meanings, working from vocal tracks by legends June Foray and Hal Smith.

When I say we worked in a garage,  I mean garage.  It was unfinished; dewy cold in the morning and by mid-afternoon, an oven.  When it rained, the tin roof roared louder than my Walkman could compensate.  We worked from animation discs set up on fold-out tables.  It wasn't Disney, but I was a working animator - a dream fulfilled at 21.  That I was in a garage making $5 an hour did not diminish this achievement in my eyes. Heck, that's where Walt started!

I was quick to learn three harsh realities of the professional world: 

1. I was expected to animate 8 hours a day - every day - whether I felt like it or not.

2. Working on someone else's film can be a drag. 

3. Lunch was expensive.  

About six weeks in, David let us all go after funds dried up.  To my knowledge, the film was never completed.  It's not listed on the IMDB, and only a dozen or so people even knew about it until this post.  I took no photos, have no artwork nor footage.  Like a Bigfoot sighting, you'll just have to take my word for it.  Or not. 

Aside from being my very first animation job, my experience at David Stipes Productions was unremarkable except for one very notable event.  A few weeks into it we were in our grooves, animating away, when a very large "KA-BOoOoM!" shook the garage and everything in it.  We were certain it was an earthquake.  We ran outside as David and his crew rushed from the main building.  The yard was a cloud of dust.  

"Dildos!" Dan exclaimed.  

Despite appearances,  Dan had not been stricken with Tourette Syndrome.  The dust cleared to reveal dildos - hundreds of them - strewn across the yard amidst broken bits of cinder block.  Who hath wrought yon plague of rubber dicks?

One of the crew yelled, "The dildo factory exploded!"

The dildo factory?

We looked to each other in disbelief, then fell over laughing until tears streamed.  

The wall of the neighboring building - said dildo factory - had a gaping hole in it.  Inside, through cinder dust, we could see a forklift operator looking quite embarrassed.  It was like peering through a portal into an alternate universe.  While we were toiling away at cartoons, they were toiling away at dildos.  We were at the seam where the Real World and Bizarro World met.  

Welcome to Hollywood, kid!  North Hollywood, anyway.

 -Steve 

My Peeps

I went to kindergarten with a girl named Lisa.  I would sometimes go to her house after school while my mom was off running errands.  I had never hung out with a girl up 'til then, and approached this new terrain with caution - lest I catch cooties.  

We'd have milk and cookies on their formica top table in the kitchen, then head to the den where there was a color TV in a wooden console.  We'd watch syndicated shows on UHF.  I liked "Ultraman", she liked "Kimba", and we both liked "Speed Racer".   We'd draw and color - she had a pristine Crayola 64 set with a sharpener in back - so lush, compared my bucket of broken crayons at home.  We'd also watch "Winky Dink" - the first interactive cartoon where you would draw on the TV screen with crayons.  Per Winky's instruction, we drew a life saving parachute for him, unaware that you were supposed to place a special sheet of acetate over the screen first.  After her dad saw what we had done to his gorgeous Zenith,  we never saved Winky again.  

As it turned out, Lisa didn't really have cooties and I actually had fun with her - until her girl cousins would come over and want to play house.  

Late one afternoon, as Easter rolled around,  Mom called me to come downstairs.  

"You've got a visitor!"  she said.  

There, in the vestibule, stood Lisa and her mom.  

Mom sang, "Lisa's got a present for you!"

I stood cautiously, like this was some sort of trap.  Lisa shyly held out a small box of marshmallow Peeps, which I accepted as one would a ticking time bomb.  I backed away slowly, saying "Thank you." after Mom's prodding.   The two moms were fit to burst over the cuteness of this scene, their cloying grins driving the awkardness off the charts.  At last, Lisa and her mom said good-bye and mercifully left.

"What was all that?" Dad asked from the TV room.

Mom gushed, "Stevie's got a girlfriend!"  

Thus began a relentless barrage of teasing from Mom, Dad, and two merciless older brothers, that would stretch on through Mother's Day.  Mom told that story to friends, relatives, and any stranger who stood still long enough.  She reveled in laying down this golden yarn while I'd turn beet red with embarrassment.  Sure, our country was about to put men on the Moon, but in our town, the big story was "STEVIE'S GOT A GIRLFRIEND!!".

Mom would have laughed to see that, 55 years later,  I'M the one telling the story, sharing my bright yellow marshmallow shame with the World Wide Web.  

As for Lisa, that was never going to work.  I'm just not a Peeps guy.   

-Steve

The Twelve Pack

I recently had a freelance job designing labels for Forgotten Boardwalk Brewing Company of Cherry Hill, New Jersey.  When they opened in 2014, I soon became a Thursday regular, getting to know owners Jamie Queli and Seth Dolled, and bartenders Ryan, Kai, and Marysia - who challenged me to spell her name (It took months to figure out).  They were always so kind and welcoming, often topping-off my drink. They eventually had me drawing Minions on their large chalkboard menu behind the bar.   By 2016 they were talking mural, but I moved back to California instead and that was that.  

During the summer of 2022,  Forgotten Boardwalk did an Instagram call-out, looking for artists to create labels for upcoming brews.  I messaged them.  They remembered me.  Boom - I'm a label designer.  Over the next 16 months, I would create 12 such designs that I share with you here, lucky reader.

1. Tightrope Walker

Jamie would send a pdf document providing the beer's name and other pertinent information. She'd give me a character, like Pierre the Tightrope Walker seen here, as well as inspirational images - photos or illustrations, usually from the 1920's and '30's.  She'd even write a little backstory, often based on true events in New Jersey history.  Jamie wanted the characters to be villains to appeal to her main demographic - 25 to 40 year old males.  The edgier the better.  My stuff skews more whimsical than edgy, but I tried!  Pierre is my first attempt at 'edgy'. 

I would submit a sketchbook rough for feedback, then create the final art in Photoshop. I often added little side gags, "Easter eggs", or what Will Elder called "chicken fat".   The final comp would be done in Adobe Illustrator, adding their official logo, Surgeon General's warning, and assorted text. 

Sample of Jamie's pdf briefs with specs and inspiration.

"I'm Marty."

Meeting Marty at Nickelodeon.

 

In January of 2017,  Nickelodeon had just finished construction on a brand new, shiny building at the corner of Olive and Lake in Burbank.  To celebrate this massive undertaking, they threw a huge wing ding, with Big Wigs from New York and celebrities I'd never heard of. 

Amidst the VIP's, I hob-nobbed with fellow common artists, enjoying the amazing spread of food and drinks.  In the courtyard, a stage was set up where the Big Wigs spoke and people clapped.   There was a hunched over old man mingling about. He was exceptionally old.  So old, he stood out in the crowd.

"Who's that old man?"  someone asked.

"Is that Sumner Redstone?"  another asked.  Sumner was the owner of Viacom, which owned Nick.  Quite ancient, he was nonetheless still alive then, so it wasn't totally inconceivable that he could be in attendance. 

Things suddenly got very loud as the rap artist Pitbull took the courtyard stage.  Being Nickelodeon, I had assumed Pitbull would be a guy in a dog costume.  Not even close. 

After a few Pitty minutes,  I went inside the shiny new building to escape the noise.  There's an old rock and roll adage: "If it's too loud, you're too old."  To that point, there was another guy in the lobby - 'Sumner Redstone'.  As I sat alone at one of the swanky new lobby seats,  he came over and sat on a matching swanky new  couch angled perpendicular to me.  He tapped me on the knee and said very quietly, "Do you work for Nickelodeon?"

"Yes."  I nodded.

"So do I." he said.  

I looked at him incredulously.  "Really? What do you do?"

"I have a couple of shows here."  he said.  He spoke so quietly, I found myself leaning toward him to hear.   He asked, "Have you ever heard of Sid and Marty Krofft?" 

"Sure." I said. 

"I'm Marty." 

The Basement at Gimbel's

Gimbel's department store, Philadelphia, 1905.

When the calendar turns to August, my mind always goes to the back-to-school days of childhood -  to days when summer boredom mixed with creeping anxiety about the impending school year.  On the plus side, there would new Saturday morning cartoons.  On the minus side, another year of to St. Mary Magdalen School, sadistic nuns, and Fr. McGarvey, who molested altar boys (no lie!). 

Come mid-August, we'd pile into Mom's Chevy Nova for an hour-long trek from our tiny backwater town in South Jersey to the City of Brotherly Love to get new school clothes.  It was a long, boring ride through miles and miles of farmland and woods, finally opening up to crazy fast traffic on roads that split off every which-way.  At this point, Mom would turn off the AM radio and make us shut up so she could think.  Get in the wrong lane, and we'd never be heard from again.

Crossing the Walt Whitman Bridge, I was amazed by its size and length, and terrified by its height and the traffic racing past our car on both sides.  We were entering a world I only knew from TV.  Where our town center was two blocks of boarded up buildings,  Philly was packed with old colonial brick structures to modern glass towers and grey brutalist eyesores.  Turn a corner, more buildings, turn another corner, even more buildings, all swarming with people.  And parking garages!  I had never seen a parking garage before, but here we were heading up and up and up a steep spiral driveway just to find a parking spot.  

It all seemed so fast and dangerous and loud.  And it smelled like hot pretzels and vomit. 

Mom hit the big department stores: Strawbridge & Clothier, and Gimbel's.  They weren't just stores, they were multi-level shopping mansions, complete with restaurants.  The scale, the displays...they even had moving stairs!  This was not our local Woolworth's, or even Two Guys.  This was downright fancy. 

We did a lot of hanging around while Mom browsed floor after floor of clothes. We'd amuse ourselves by hiding in the racks or making faces in the mirrors, as if there was some universal pamphlet from which every kid in America learned these shenanigans.

The last stop was the bargain basement at Gimbel's.  It was a step down in every sense of the word.  No escalator, just plain stairs to a windowless room with harsh florescent lights and generic tables with piles of clothes dumped on them.   Mom would rummage through the school uniforms for our requisite white sport shirts and blue pants - enough for a week.  Loaded with bags, we'd say bye to Philly for another year.  I don't recall Mom ever buying anything for herself.

Today would have been Mom's 94th birthday.  Sadly, she long gone, as are Strawbridge & Clothier, Gimbel's and St. Mary's.  Fr. McGarvey is in Hell now.  But Philly's still there, smelling of hot pretzels and vomit - the bittersweet scent of nostalgia.  

-Steve

One for the Ageism

There comes a day when, sitting for a haircut, we get a long look in the mirror and see one of our parents looking back at us.  Horrified, we look away.  But forced to sit in there, we steal glances;  that little eyelid sag, the onset of a jowl/turkey neck combo.  We're aging.  Like farting in an elevator, we can't escape it and hope to God no one else notices.    

So what's this have to do with animation, old man?

I'm fast approaching 40 years of working in the business.  I often meet with show runners and recruiters who weren't even born when I started out.  I don't have a problem with that, but I've noticed a pattern in these meetings.  After some chit-chat about their new project, they'll say, "So. You worked on A Goofy Movie?" surprised to see that I'm not only still alive, but working.   They gush about the film as a precious piece of their childhood.  I give them a couple of anecdotes, and the meetings end on smiles and laughter.  

Then I never hear from them again.   

As I said, this happens over and over, leaving me to only speculate.  Even though I'm a better artist than back then, it seems I've been designated as Ye Olde Guarde.

After actress Angela Landsbury died, there was an article floating around social media about how, on Murder She Wrote, she hired veteran actors who could no longer find work.  "Aged out" was the term  it used.  But unlike athletes who actually do age out, these actors could still act.  They hadn't aged out, they were shut out by the industry because they had aged.  The article, and those who commented on it, missed this point entirely.  They praised Ms Landsbury for doing what they saw as charity, oblivious to their own ageism.   

Yes, I worked in the 20th century, on paper, with pencils.  But when seemingly overnight the entire industry computerized,  I made the leap, as did most of my peers.  And we keep on leaping with each new software advance.  It's like a Squid Game challenge - miss a leap and die.   

Of all the prejudicial "-isms" out there, ageism is the one bias that everyone will experience if they live long enough.  Yet it is the most accepted - not only in the animation industry, but in society at large.  We dismiss our elders, perhaps to dismiss our own mortality.  

I would warn young readers that their day of sitting at the barber's mirror will come.  But who reads blogs anymore?

-Steve

Bob the Dragon

The 1983-84 school year at Cal Arts was my favorite, and my student film that year, "Bob the Dragon" is a reflection of that. 

I was a junior that year when Hal Ambro came to teach animation.  Hal was a top notch animator, his work dating back to "Snow White".  Here he was, the man who animated the owl in "Bambi", at our disposal. Thank you, animation gods!  I would take my scenes to him (all on paper back then, kids) and Hal would sit at his animation desk and flip through the entire scene, going over my drawings, one by one, while explaining the importance of silhouette for clarity, or using the hands for expression, or giving the characters an implied weight.  Every visit to Hal turned light bulbs on for me and his mentoring was evident in my film that year, a huge leap from my sophomore effort.

T. Hee was another favorite of my teachers, a kindred spirit when it came to a love of whimsy.  I pitched my film in storyboard form and he not only loved it, but added the gag where the dragon encounters a goat.  Dan Jeup would voice the goat, using the goofy sarcastic laugh noise he would do when someone told a bad joke.  "Mmmahaha!".   The only other vocal was the dragon sniffing, done by the late, great Rusty Mills as only he could.  

I got to push my boundaries with the film, defying gravity, logic, and reality, with no one saying "You can't do that.".   All sound effects were interpretive, like the ricochet sound when Bob hiccups.   There's no arc of character or story whatsoever, it just ends.  I wasn't aiming to be a story guy in those days.  

Like all the Character Animation films back then, the finished product was a pencil test.  We shot our films on 16mm film using a massive old Oxberry camera from the 1920's.  Some day, I'll do a post on the dramas that unfolded around that camera as students got desperate for time.

The music is a piece called "Morning" from jazz artist Billy Taylor's LP  "I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to Be Free".  Billy Taylor plays piano, Ben Tucker on Bass, and Grady Tate on drums.    After spending hours listening to random records in the CalArts library,  I heard "Morning" and knew I had my score.  It matched my animatic incredibly, just by chance.   I should have given credit.  I correct that now. 

I did, however, credit "The Small World".  What he hell is that?  In the A-113 suite, there was the big room, and the small room that I shared with Kenny Thompkins, Mark Rouse, Tim Hauser, Kirk Wise, Kevin Lima, Fred Cline, Carlos Baeza, and the late Ray "Supreme" Johnson.  Gary Conrad (of the big room) dubbed us "The Small World".   I was thanking them for their input and support, as well as Bob McCrea, who ran the department.

Some truly worthless trivia for you, but its my blog, dammit!

-Steve 

From My Project Graveyard: The Owl & the Pussycat

 

In 2001, producer and dear friend Leslie Hough called about developing a feature pitch for "The Quite Remarkable Adventures of the Owl and the Pussy-Cat", a children's book by Monty Python's Eric Idle, based on the poem by Edward Lear.   The audiobook version  includes original songs Idle wrote with his "Spamalot" collaborator John DuPrez.  There was a whimsicality about it that I liked, so I agreed to help out.

We met John DuPrez at Leslie's house in Laurel Canyon and talked about how we might adapt the story for a feature length film.   He offered up a brief history of the project - seems we weren't the first to take a crack at it, or even the second.   It's latest stop had been at DreamWorks, where it languished for some time before being killed, leaving Eric a bad taste for animation studios (at least the big ones).  Eric and John gave Leslie their blessing to pitch it, but were not going to get involved beyond that.

PeaceTime for the Ukraine

Over the past year, I have submitted my children's meditation short "PeaceTime: A Royal Frog" to dozens of film festivals all over the world.  In early April, a festival in Moscow accepted it, and wanted me to send a screening copy.   Given how things have gone out there in the last few months, I opted to blow it off.  

While doing yard work a short time later,  it struck me - "I should dub PeaceTime to Ukrainian."

Gardening came to a sudden stop. 

Yes.  

I must do this.  

How do I do this? 

I paced around a bit, as if to coax the details out of hiding.  How do I find a Ukrainian actress?   

I starting texting industry friends - most had no leads.  But good ol' Trace Konerko, who left the industry 15 years ago, connected me with her friend - casting agent Jon Beauregard.  We talked.  Jon loved PeaceTime, totally got what I was trying to do, and offered to put out a casting call - no charge! 

Diversion con Rinones!

In my last post, Fun with Kidneys!, you heard about the new informational short I produced for the non-profit Renal Support Network, featuring the animated Kidneys Neff and Nuff.   Pleased with the results, Lori Hartwell at RSN asked to have it dubbed into Spanish. 

Actor and comedian Sandra Valls was brought in to translate the script and to do the voice of Neff.  She, in turn, brought her friend - actor and one-time Mr. Colombia (no lie!) Andres Mejia to voice Nuff.  

I booked time at Outloud Audio in Burbank for last Thursday.  Because of COVID protocols, only one actor at a time was allowed inside.  The closest I could get was a bench in their parking lot, where I set up my laptop to Zoom into the session.  The Outloud folks were super helpful in getting me set up, even scrounging up a power cord when the session went overtime and my battery was running out. 

The session itself consisted of a line-by-line recording to picture with timecode.  Engineer Kyle provided a three beep lead-in cue to each line.  Through Zoom, I could see both the footage and the actor, and we could speak to each other.  Sometimes there was a bit of a delay in playback because of wi-fi connection, but it was never a major problem. 

Before the session, Sandra wanted to go over the scripts, because some of the lines ran much longer in Spanish.  She brainstormed with Andres about shorter translations.  It was fun watching them hash out the differences between his Colombian Spanish with her Mexican variety.  There was a comical chemistry between them, Sandra being quite hilarious.  For my part, I sat nodding my head, understanding none of it.   Needless to say, I could not have done this session without their collective input. 

Gratias Sandra and Andres!

-Steve

Fun with Kidneys!

How does one make the subject of kidney disease entertaining?  That was the challenge when Lori Hartwell approached me about making a short educational film for her non-profit Renal Support Network (RSN), an organization she founded in 1993 to help those with kidney disease manage their care. 

Lori wanted to make an animated version of their illustrated booklet "Share Your Spare", where two kidneys, Neff and Nuff,  explain how they function, etc.   Using the booklet and Suzette Maffi's main character designs as a springboard,  I altered the relationship between Neff and Nuff to be comically tempestuous, then added cutaway segments to illustrate some of the informational bits.  

The cutaway segments were influenced by a Bell and Howell educational film I saw in Mr. Carll's 6th grade science class when I was 12, called Hemo the Magnificent.  Produced by Frank Capra in 1957,  it features live action Richard Carlson (Creature from the Black Lagoon) and briefly,  Sterling Holloway (Winnie the Pooh!).  The animated segments, directed by Bill Hurtz and animated by Seamus Culhane, are a funny and charming precursor to Osmosis Jones and Inside Out.

The Freshman

 

 

CalArts I.D., 1981

40 years ago this week, my journey in character animation began.  I've been thinking about it recently, like looking through a dusty box of memories in the attic.  

I went to CalArts right out of high school, sight-unseen, putting full faith in my decision to become an animator; a decision not exactly met with enthusiasm back home in southern New Jersey.  Back there, dreamers and artists are kooks, so I was a double-whammy.  My high school guidance counselor strongly advised against pursuing animation (yeah you, Fr. Nick).   But I had been dreaming and working toward this for years, and at last it had all fallen into place. 

On the long drive to the Philadelphia airport, I nearly chickened out.   The reality that I was about to leave everyone I knew, go to a place I'd never been and fend for myself, chilled me to the bone in the back seat of Mom's car.  I came very close to telling her to turn back, but I did not want to give the naysayers the satisfaction of being right (yeah you, Fr. Nick). 

I clearly recall the drive up the 5 freeway to Valencia and seeing the school for the first time.  Then the intense joy and nausea I felt as we turned off on McBean Parkway, turning right into the driveway just past a round concrete planter with "California Institute of the Arts" emblazoned across its front.  In the movie version, this scene will be in slow motion with very cool acoustical music.

We parked in the dorm lot, then wandered around until we found the office, where we met Liz McColl - a beautiful Scottish woman (think Stevie Nicks) who ran the office and truly loved the students.  There, we got the key to my room - 251, right off the main lobby.  It came with modular furniture from 1971.  The bed had groovy chrome pipes that supported a sheet of plywood with a mattress on top.  I remember the smell of the air,  a mix of sage and smog; dry air that gave me nose bleeds for the first couple of months.  

We dropped off my suitcases, then drove around town. Pre-Google, you may recall that the way to find things in a strange town was either through the yellow pages of a phone book or by just driving around.  Fortunately, in 1981 Valencia, there wasn't much town to be seen.  We found the K-Mart, where Mom filled a cart with the necessities; a pot, pan, knife, fork, spoon, plate, bowl, cup,  a small black and white TV, a pillow, sheets, a comforter, and, to top it off, a mini fridge.  

Shopped out - we looked for a place for lunch.   There were taco places around - but what was a taco?  I'd heard of them in Speedy Gonzales cartoons, but what were they?  Tacos were not a thing in South Jersey,  just like subs were not a thing in Southern California  (still aren't, really).  We settled on a small hot dog joint.  Looking out the window, the reality that Mom would be leaving me soon chilled my bones once again. 

After meeting with the financial aid office and taking a tour of the school, we returned to room 251, where I met my roommate, Dan Jeup.  Dan was from Michigan, and with his mid-western friendliness, we hit it off right away.  Dan invited me to tag along as he and a few other classmates went to open bank accounts at Security Pacific (remember them?). That was Mom's cue to leave, and we said goodbye - quickly, the South Jersey way.  Many years later, she told me she cried on the freeway back.  I had done the same when I had a moment alone.  Dan caught me, and I made up an excuse about my contacts bothering me. 

During the next four months I would learn as much about character animation from Dan as I did my teachers, many of whom had worked with Walt Disney personally.  Unfortunately, Dan was just as clueless as me when it came to nutrition.  We ate crap food; canned, frozen, plastic wrapped, processed garbage.  Just what was in those salisbury steaks?  Eating became a bit of a sport.  We would cruise the art shows around campus, filling up on their hors d'oeuvres and Almaden wine. And when our bi-weekly work-study checks arrived (eighty buckaroos!), we'd treat ourselves to Shakey's all-you-can-eat buffet.  On my weekly calls to Mom from the pay phone in the dorm lobby, she'd always ask if I was homesick, and I always answered "No."  Being at CalArts was a dream come true.  I had found my people. 

Five years ago, I moved back to the area, where it all started. Mom's gone now, as is the K-Mart.  The hotdog joint is now, ironically, a taco joint.  The trees around CalArts have grown so you can no longer see it from the freeway.  Whenever I drive past the round planter out front, I think about that first time, with Mom, and get an urge to pull in.  I see Dan on occasion, and it's like old times - though I've learned how to cook real food since then.  And 40 years on, those CalArtians are still my people. 

-Steve

Introducing....PeaceTime

After two years of working in fits and starts, I am very pleased to present "PeaceTime: A Royal Frog". 

I got this idea a while back (2017-ish?) as an answer to the loud and obnoxious programming that is fed to kids, ad nauseum, through 24-hour cable and streaming video - yes, the stuff that pays my mortgage.  I wrote the idea down in a sketchbook and let it ferment.   

At some point, I talked about it with my old friend Winter Reign, a far-out progressive gal with two small kids and no TV.  She loved it, somewhat surprised it came from such a Three Stooges loving, blue collar guy.  She invited me to a Kundalini yoga class deep in the heart of Topanga Canyon.  It seemed like a dare, and so I went. 

And Now, A FLiP Editorial Cartoon

Since the election ended, I've had this idea rolling around in my head. Rolling, rolling, in perpetual motion. The only way to stop it was to let it out.  It has been a very long time since I've done caricatures, something I prided myself on back in my school days and early career.  Finding that place in my mind that interprets someone's looks into odd shapes was like finding a long lost favorite toy.  

Once I finished the cartoon, of course I had to find an audience, however small.  And so I post FLiP's first ever editorial cartoon. Hopefully it makes you laugh (unless you're part of the problem, then by all means gnash your teeth in ire). 

-Steve

Mr. Rees' Ukulele

 Last night there was a story on the local news about Harold Rees, a luthier (maker of stringed instruments) who was still at it at the age of 100.  For years, concert violinists have purchased his work, or entrusted him to repair and restore their precious instruments.  It was a really wonderful story made more wonderful by the fact that I know this man. 

Harold Rees is the father of my longtime friend and animation colleague Jerry Rees.  Over the past 35 years, I have seen Mr. Rees at Jerry's house on many occasions.  I've also seen many of his handmade instruments - violins, violas, banjos, and ukuleles.   After one such visit to Jerry's with my wife Donna,  she commented on the incredible craftsmanship in Mr Rees' work.  I confessed to her that I had always wanted to buy one of his ukuleles but was afraid to ask.

A Zoom Toast to Kelly

Top row: Kevin Lima, Steve Moore, Chris Bailey, Fred Cline.  Middle row: Kirk Wise, Dan Jeup, Rob Minkoff, Wendell Luebbe.  Bottom row: Tim Hauser, Butch Hartman.

Friday night I took part in a toast via Zoom - the pandemic's next best thing to being there.  We were toasting our friend, director Kelly Asbury, who had passed away a week earlier.   There are hundreds of industry people who would have turned up for this, but we kept it to a core group who hung out as CalArts character animation students in the early eighties: Chris Bailey, Fred Cline, Butch Hartman, Tim Hauser, Dan Jeup, Wendell Luebbe, Kevin Lima, Rob Minkoff, Kirk Wise and myself.  These guys are more than an animation who's who to me - they are my brothers. 

For the most part, the gang looked the same - a testament to living the animation life, I guess.  Most of us wore glasses now.  Kevin was rocking a new, bearded cue-ball look. And me with my COVID lockdown '70's hair  (cowbell band, anyone?).  The only real sign of age is that we were on Zoom for more than three hours and never talked shop once. 

Stories I either didn't know or had forgotten kept us laughing for hours - the crazy shit that makes us glad cell phones and social media did not exist back then.  These were not the flattering stories told at funerals, but hilariously human stories about Kelly.  Maybe you had to be there. I'm glad I was.   

"He was like the Sun." Kirk said.  "People just gravitated to him."

Cheers, Kelly!

-Steve

CalArts dorm, July 1984.  From left: Mark Rouse, Kirk Wise (white shirt), Butch Hartman, Steve Moore, and Kelly Asbury. Photo by Kevin Lima

Kelly Asbury Saved My Life

Kelly at the "Nightmare Before Christmas" wrap party.  To his right, Allison Abbate dances with Joe Ranft.

When I got the news of Kelly Asbury's death yesterday, I immediately thought of the night he saved my life.

In April of 1992, I started working on The Nightmare Before Christmas in San Francisco. The studio was set up in an old, two story industrial building with a sprawling floor plan and no air conditioning.  It looked like it was once an old factory, making ball-bearings or sausage.  For reasons I have forgotten, faded hand prints of Herve Villachaize were set in the sidewalk just outside the front door, which opened to 7th Street, several blocks south of Market. I worked in an open bullpen area doing storyboards with Mike Cachuela and Joe Ranft.  In an adjacent room, Kelly worked in the art department with Kendall Cronkhite and Deane Taylor.  

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, a trial of four cops who beat Rodney King senseless was wrapping up.  On April 29th, they were acquitted of using excessive force despite video footage to the contrary.  The streets of south central Los Angeles erupted in rage with violent protests.  

At the studio the next day, there was a general buzz of disbelief about the verdict.  The locals knew that San Francisco was not to be outdone when it comes to street rage, and kept an ear on their radios for local unrest.  Just after lunch, Kelly came around to the bullpen.  

"Hey Steve, do you pass Market Street going home?" he asked.