The Legend of Bill Moore

Bill Moore, 1981.                 Photo by Chris Wahl

Thursdays at CalArts were brutal.  Getting to class early to pin our assignments on the long crit wall, we'd wait to be slaughtered by the old man.   Upon his arrival, the room would go silent.  He would casually stroll along the wall, surveying our assignments in his sport shirt and slacks  (or Jordache jeans!), cigarette propped in a bent back wrist, like Tim Gunn and Humphrey Bogart's love child.   Welcome to Bill Moore's design class.  

You could hear a pin drop as we held our breaths, each hoping the Angel of Death would pass over their assignment.  At last he'd pause at someone's piece and say, "Who belongs to this?"  The owner of said piece would then have to stand and "qualify" their work - that is,  explain what they did and why it works while he challenged everything they said.  This went on for three excruciating hours until each of us had our turn hemming and hawing in defense of our work.    

I came to CalArts right out of high school - a Catholic, art-hating prep school at that.  I had ZERO knowledge of color and design theory.  So on a weekly basis, in front of the class, Bill murdered me.  Gleefully.   He gleefully murdered me so much so, he took to calling me "Zombie".

But 40 years on, Zombie lives, as does Bill's voice when I work on any creative endeavor.  I hear him reciting his design mantras, "Repetition with variation....contour continuity....".  And I hear his cold, judgmental prodding, "Is that the best you can do?"  Of all my CalArts teachers - men who had worked with Walt Disney personally -  I would have never bet the most influential would be a guy who never worked a day in animation, and in fact, held a general contempt for it.   
              
Bill's profound influence is almost universally shared among my industry peers, as is their fear and love of him.  Anecdotes have been shared and re-shared to great laughter over the years from those fortunate enough to have been there.  But his life outside of school has been a mystery, beyond stories he'd share for shock value or laughs.  So I did some research and interviewed many former students then cobbled together this piece.  It's not so much a biography as it is the story of a legend.  

Bill would hate it. 

                                                                                                                       photo by Chris Wahl

Godspeed, Allen Stovall

May 8th marked the latest premature loss to our hunched and goofy community with the death of Allen Stovall at the age of 69.  He was a veteran visual effects animator on features such as "Cats Don't Dance" and "Hercules". He always carried a gentle, mellow vibe, with a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile on his face.   

We first met in 1987 while doing 7-Up commercials at Duck Soup Produckions (yes, Produckions) a small commercial house in Santa Monica.   I recall going with Allen and a few others after hours to a sleepy little bar down the block called Father's Office.  Over beers, we started talking about strange dreams.  I shared a flying dream, where I floated up to a cloud which opened up to reveal a hilly, verdant village inside.  On the threshold of entering I panicked and backed off, waking myself up.

"You were Astral Travelling."  Allen said.

"What?"  I laughed.  I thought he was joking.  He wasn't.  

And so I was introduced to the concept of Astral Projection.  From what I could wrap my head around, you could travel to the after-life while still tethered to your earthly body by a silver umbilical cord.  But break that cord and you're dead!  Allen explained it with more nuance. 

The conversation somehow segued to the time he lived in Nicaragua during the counter-revolution. 

 "What?"  I laughed.  I thought he was joking.  He wasn't. 

Backstory: In 1979,  the Nicaraguan government was overthrown by the leftist, USSR backed Sandinistas, freaking out the US government.  In 1981 the right wing Contras (counter-revolutionaries) formed to overthrow the overthrowers with US backing under President Reagan.  It was quite a mess.  

Allen was very much bothered by Reagan's Contra policy and got involved - really involved.  He saved as much money as he could, working extra hours at his Filmation job.  In 1985,  he took his "She-Ra: Princess of Power" savings and joined a group of like minded Americans called "Architects and Planners in Support of Nicaragua" doing humanitarian work from the capital city of Managua.  He tasked himself with creating a comic book to teach impoverished locals, many illiterate, how to build their own homes complete with hiding places from the Contras.

Sample pages from Allen's "Manual Grafico"

This endeavor was not without risk.  One member of the American group, Ben Linder, was killed by Contras in 1987 while working on a small hydroelectric dam project.  Among the pall-bearers at his funeral were Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and....Allen Stovall.   

For all his bold adventures, Allen was no raconteur, no Commander McBragg.  He seemed to prefer listening.  So when he'd break out one of these stories, they always landed as jaw-droppers.  Allen was a very smart, unique, and most humble guy.   I last saw him about six years ago, at the Union Christmas party in the Gene Autry Museum.  He'd been fighting throat cancer with great courage for many years, and was doing pretty well at the time.   But last Monday he broke his silver tether,  joining that Nicaraguan village in the big cloud.   

Adios, Amigo!  And my sincere condolences to his wife, Jennifer.

And gratias, Al Holter, for your invaluable input with this post.

-Steve

Animation Brat

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 Films in 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.

The End of Blockbuster

As Blockbuster Video closes its last store, I am reminded of its beginnings back in the '80's.  I was working for Duck Soup, a commercial studio in Santa Monica (now called DUCK), and Bob Seeley was directing a commercial for a new chain of video stores called Blockbuster.  Bob explained that this company was opening a new store every day for a year.  

Chief, Your Butt's on Fire

Trailer for "Chief, Your Butt's on Fire" from Steve Moore on Vimeo.

I am pleased to announce the completion of my brand new short, Chief, Your Butt's on Fire.  I decided to make it the old fashioned way, fully animating the whole thing myself, by hand, like in my student days.  The only concession to technology would be scanning the drawings, and painting and compositing digitally.  It took 13 years to do.

Dreaming of Joe Ranft

It was eight years ago today that Joe Ranft died in a car accident.  He left a huge void in the animation world, not only for his creativity, but also for his humanity.  Shortly after Joe's death, animator Al Holter told me about a dream he had about him.  He shares it today with FLIP.....

Joe Ranft with Al Holter puppet, CalArts, 1981.

I want to tell you about this dream I had.

First, it seems to me, that telling people your dreams is about as appreciated as sharing your new diet or latest medical procedure. Some will seem to be attentive but mostly because of their fingernail digging deep into their palm.

However, I had this particular dream two days after Joe Ranft died and he made a revealing appearance.

The Orthodox Sweatbox Paradox

In the early days of Disney Studios, the cramped room where Walt critiqued his crew's pencil tests was aptly dubbed "The Sweatbox" by the animators under scrutiny.  While the industry has changed radically since Walt's day, the Sweatbox survives; if not as a noun - a designated room, then as a verb - the act of critiquing.  Every animator's got sweatbox stories to share at industry parties.  I've been on both sides of that Moviola, as animator and director, the sweat-ee and sweat-or.

FLIP Artiste du Mois: Elmer Plummer

After posting about Elmer Plummer's life drawing class last week, I wanted to do a piece on his watercolors, and while I'm at it, bring back a feature from the old format FLIP - the monthly featured artist.  So many of our industry friends and colleagues have created personal art - that is to say, artwork not generated for an animation studio, which, unless the artist has a website or has you over for dinner, is work you probably will never see. 

 Enter FLIP!

In the case of the late great Elmer Plummer (1910-86), his work is available to the public, but you have to search around a bit. Some of his watercolor paintings are in the National Gallery in Washington, DC.  Elmer worked at Disney Studios during the Walt years as a designer and story man.  He was drinking buddies with Lee and Mary Blair. But like a lot of the Disney talent of that time, he was a fine artist first and foremost.

Elmer Man

Elmer Plummer was a brilliant artist.  His watercolors are in the National Gallery in Washington, DC. He designed the roustabouts sequence in Dumbo and the mushroom dance sequence in Fantasia among other films during his 30 plus years at Disney Studios. But to certain artists in the industry today, Elmer Plummer was known as their life drawing instructor.  

Elmer Plummer caricatured as one of his Elmer Men.  He was not amused.      
Photo courtesy of  Gary Conrad

Elmer taught life drawing to the Character Animation Department at CalArts from 1977 to 1983. He developed a system of learning the proportions of the human anatomy known by students as "The Elmer Man".  At the start of every class, he would stand before a chalkboard and create a boxy figure while lecturing on relative proportions of the body.  We  drew along.  Then he would introduce a live model to draw, applying this box-man system.  There was nothing sexy about this system.  Advanced students found it dull and repetitive.  For novices like me, it was educational and repetitive.  

Effects animator Al Holter kept his notes from Elmer's class, and shared them with FLIP (and you!):