Happy Birthday Ken Harris, the Bugs Bunny animator "who could do it all"

Ken Harris was born on July 31st 1898. Were he still alive, today would be his 115th birthday.  I met him when I was just a kid, and he was already a very old man, but still doing some of the very best work of his career.  It was the mid-1970s, and Ken had come over from LA to London to work with my father at his Soho Square studio.

The Art of Holly Williams

City Street by Holly Williams

Holly Williams is a fine art painter and animation artist. She grew up in London and Los Angeles, studied at Otis in LA and later at San Francisco State. Today she lives in Highland Park in East LA, painting, raising a family, and working on commercial animation productions. In an interview with FLIP she talks about the challenges of balancing fine art, family and commercial work.

Drunken Animation

Getting drunk in the presence of an animator may be something you will regret.  Case in point: Adam Patch a San Francisco based animator who  recorded his wife telling a joke while she was drunk on wine.  He animated Two Chips to her vocal track, a very funny animated answer to Drunk History.

Dreaming of Deckchairs in London's Parks this summer

Deckchair Dreams 2013

This summer sees a revival of Deckchair Dreams, a charity fundraiser by The Royal Parks Foundation to raise cash for the maintenance of London's Royal Parks, that is to say Green Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Richmond Park - the green lungs of our city that make London liveable, much in the way that Central Park does for Manhattan.

Animation Training - Theory or Practice?

What price this piece of paper?

Yesterday's post by Steve generated a lot of thoughtful opinion on what exactly a degree in animation is worth. One of the problems that Universities face in teaching animation is what, precisely, they ought to be teaching. Should they focus on academic content, mostly of a theoretical nature, or should they teach practical, technical skills? No university likes being called a trade school, and "training" is something of a dirty word, as it sits uneasily with the academic aspirations of a Liberal Arts education. A BA is, or should be, a guarantee of reflective, critical analysis.

In practice though, what most students sign up for (or imagine they are signing up for) is proper training in the latest technical skills. Specifically, most students want training that, at the end of three years of study, will get them a job. 

So which is better? Theory or Practice? Animation professionals David Davis and Sterling Sheehy face off in the debate.

Degrees of Talent

On occasion, I get e-mails from young adults looking for entry positions in animation.  They see my company listed somewhere and, unaware that my studio is just me and my wife, they send resumes and links to their reels.  But I'm not hiring.  I don't plan to expand.  So if you're an art student or recent graduate - don't write.  I have no job for you.  

When I get these e-mails, I check them out as long as they don't seem like spam. Sometimes, their work is good.  Sometimes it is just dreadful.  I got one such e-mail just this week, from a young woman who wrote, "I am a recently graduated Animation major from the Maryland Institute Collage of the Arts".

Stop right there.  You may be an art major, but you really should know how to spell "college" by the time you graduate such.

From Pencils to Pixels - Alan Yentob tells the story of how animation went digital

Alan Yentob's "From Pixels to Pencils"

From Pencils to Pixels - In this admirable 2003 documentary, Producer Alan Yentob tells the story of how animation went digital. It's an excellent, thoughtful hour-long introduction to the medium by one of the BBC's most experienced Producer-directors.

Producer Carolyn Bates Talks Shop

Carolyn: "Here's a pic of me and BG painter, Cathy Patrick, 1973. on Emergency+4.
 Don Jurwich had taped a xerox of 'The Yellow Kid' over my desk - typical 70's un-PC.
The extreme right side pencil sharpener and phone are Walt Peregoy's."

FLIP: How did you get your start in animation?

Carolyn: Walt Peregoy hired me as an apprentice BG painter At Fred Calvert Productions on Emergency +4 the day I graduated high school. He regaled the BG team with expletive laced stories of his days at Disney and Hanna-Barbera. He admired creative passion and spoke ardently of the beauty in nature. I learned a ton and made friends with a number of folk, many of whom I'd get to work with later: Corny Cole, Libby Simon, Paul Shively, Freddie Hellmich and Amby Paliwoda.

Opening titles to Fred Calvert's Emergency +4, Carolyn's first gig.  

You can almost hear Walt Peregoy bitching.

Remembering Pres

Pres at DreamWorks. Photo: Tim Hodge

Pres Romanillos died three years ago today, on July 17th, 2010, after a long battle with Leukemia. He was an excellent animator, a supremely talented artist and a natural performer. His credits at the Disney Studio included Aladdin, Pocahontas, and Hunchback of Notre Dame. He was the lead animator on the villain Shan-Yu on Mulan. Later, at DreamWorks, he was responsible for the character of Little Creek on Spirit - Stallion of the Cimarron.

The SKaB or How I Got Involved in a Community Project

In the small town where I grew up, things haven't changed much.  It's a safe town to grow up, a place where you can still walk or ride your bike to school.  Being an economically depressed area, there are very few recreation programs, so kids have to entertain themselves.  They ride skateboards and bikes that go vertical as well as horizontal, but without a designated place to do this, otherwise good kids end up riding where they should not - on the handrails of church steps, on public benches, and even on the roof of the post office.  And when church ladies,  township officials, or the postman would yell at them, these little smart asses would say, "Build us a skate park."

Cheeky, yes.  But they were right.  They are the next generation of the town's citizens and this is what they do for recreation.  And while the township had parks with swings and ballfields, there was no skate park, at least not until a small group of citizens, including my wife Donna and I,  took up the cause.

Steve-O's Tiki Lounge

Two years ago, Donna and I bought a house, our dream house on a lake. It's built on a berm, making the basement rec room level with the lower end of the yard on the lake side - perfect for entertaining.  At first sight, Donna said, "We should make this a tiki room."

Months went by before this idea went from the wish list to the planning stages.  I started out by re-reading an old FLIP article about Alan Smart's tiki room.  He took a room much like mine, with white walls and grey carpet, and completely transformed the space.  I contacted Alan, who gave me a few links for places to go to for materials.  I also did a lot of Google image browsing on tiki rooms.

Christoffer Andersen reports from the front lines of Despicable Me 2

Christoffer Andersen studied animation at The Animation Workshop in Denmark. He recently landed an internship with Illumination Entertainment on Despicable Me 2, now in release in theatres worldwide. FLIP asked Christoffer to talk about how he engineered such a wonderful opportunity to kick-start his career in animation.

Seuss for Sale!

You can stumble onto the coolest things in New York City.  Like the Dr. Seuss art sale at Pop Gallery.   None of it is original artwork, but there are a lot of very cool prints.  Some prints are from his personal artwork, some are blown up book illustrations.  Some have roughs paired with final art.   And then there's the Seuss taxidermy animals, faithfully reproduced from the originals.  There's also a six foot tall, bronze Lorax (only $34K!).

Pedro Cabeleira on the challenges of forging a career in animation

Pedro Cabeleira is an animator and visual effects artist who learned his craft at Escape Studios in London, where he studied the dark arts of Maya back in 2011, tackling as his first project an ambitious, realistic digital sculpture of Bruce Willis. FLIP asked him to talk about the challenges of forging a career in what remains a very difficult job market for recent graduates.

Speaking of Public Art.....Who Needs It?

Public art, Las Vegas.  Can-oe believe it?  

I just returned from our annual family vacation, visiting Los Angeles, the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, and Las Vegas in a rented, fire engine red Dodge Caravan.  Throughout the trip, from the cities to the suburbs to the little isolated cowboy towns, we took note of the variety of public art.  It stands out to us because in Southern New Jersey, where we live, public art is seen as a frivolous luxury.

In a May 23rd article in The Press of Atlantic City, New Jersey State Senator Jim Whelan "took aim at the estimated $12 million behind the art initiatives during his opening remarks Wednesday at the East Coast Gaming Congress. Whelan, D-Atlantic , said he’s frustrated to see dollars being spent on the arts when financing to advance the city is becoming more scarce.

“The question is: Is anybody asking for art? I don’t think so,” Whelan said."

Gromit Unleashed - Giant painted cartoon dogs at large in Bristol

Giant cartoon dogs on the streets this summer

Giant cartoon dogs are coming to the streets of Bristol this summer. "Gromit Unleashed" is a charity fund-raiser from Aardman Animation, a public art exhibition in which giant sculptures of Gromit, decorated by specially invited artists and animators, have been unleashed on the streets of Bristol.

Universal Security and Why I Love Kristen Wiig

Donna at he DM2 premiere yellow carpet, under close scrutiny from security.  

I have worked for Illumination Entertainment from the get-go. When the first Despicable Me had its studio premiere, my wife, Donna, was in the throes of chemotherapy and we couldn't go.  On The Lorax, my Dad was ill and we couldn't go.  But on DM2, we made it.

Donna has heard my stories of Hollywood life, and was keen on experiencing a big time Hollywood movie premiere, walking the red carpet, meeting movie stars and being on the list to an exclusive event.  She was thrilled to get the official invitation in the mail.  

A month before the event, Donna said, "Do you think we'll meet Steve Carell?"

A week before the event, Donna said, "I hope we meet Steve Carell,"

The day before the event, Donna said, "We're going to meet Steve Carell!"

FLIP on FLIP - Steve reveals the secrets of Despicable Me 2

Steve Moore is not just the founder of FLIP, the web's finest animation blog (well, we think so), but also an Oscar-nominated director and a highly accomplished story board artist. Most recently he finished work on the just-released Despicable Me 2. In this exclusive interview, Steve reveals the secrets behind this most successful independent animated film franchise.

Margaret Williams, co-author of The Thief and The Cobbler, reviews Kevin Schreck's Persistence of Vision

Artwork from The Thief and the Cobbler by Errol Le Cain

Margaret Williams was the co-writer of the original screenplay of The Thief and The Cobbler, that is to say the version that existed before the film was radically altered by Miramax and Fred Calvert to become Arabian Knight. She recently went to a special screening of Kevin Schreck's documentary of The Thief, Persistence of Vision, and gave us her thoughts on the film.