Nancy Beiman: "No Longer Proud" To Be An Academy Member

Photo: Gary Krueger.

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. 

Nancy Beiman Reviews Shaun The Sheep

"Shaun The Sheep" is a lightweight little movie with gorgeous production design and some very nice animation; a slight plot with the main conflict based on Laurel and Hardy's A CHUMP AT OXFORD; chase scenes and crazy machines reminiscent of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd films, and a finale that is straight out of Chaplin's THE GOLD RUSH.

This possibly explains the otherwise inexplicable omission of dialogue on the human characters (even gibbberish would have worked, but the odd grunts and squeaks somehow seemed affected.) But I applaud their use of silent comedy influences as well as The Terminator." 

 -- Nancy

KAHLIL GIBRAN’S THE PROPHET

KAHLIL GIBRAN’S THE PROPHET played at Tiff on Friday night at the gorgeous Winter Garden Theatre. This film, which was produced by Salma Hayek and directed by Roger Allers, has no distribution at present. I hope that this is rectified since it certainly should be seen by larger audiences. It uses a FANTASIA like construction with animated sequences illustrating Gibran’s poetry in a wide variety of styles. 

Nancy Beiman explains why animators ought to study Charlie Chaplin

The Little Tramp. Photo: Wikipedia

Why should animators watch Charlie Chaplin films? Nancy Beiman, former supervising animator at Disney Feature Animation and now one of the key professors at Sheridan College in Toronto (and contributor to FLiP), has the answer. It's because good animators are pantomime artists, and Chaplin was "the greatest pantomimer of them all". At the 2014 SAS (Society of Animation Studies) conference in Toronto, Nancy explained how animation and silent film comedy developed together, inspiring one another to perfect the art of physical comedy.

Nancy Beiman Talks to NPR

FLiP's own Nancy Beiman has now had two major interviews in one month.  First, as part of the Vanity Fair story on the early days of the CalArts Character Animation program, and now a follow up interview on NPR's Weekend Edition, where she dishes a bit on life in A-113….

http://www.npr.org/2014/02/16/277882145/disneys-first-crop-of-trained-animators-profiled

Looking Backward

I'm writing this as a bit of an addendum to the VANITY FAIR article on the early years of Cal Arts.

I'm pleased and honored to have been included in the list of interviewees, and think that the article is a good snapshot of that time. But like a snapshot, it only shows a few details, while others are fuzzy, and there may be distortions to the image. This post will attempt to bring one issue in particular back into focus.

One attitude that prevailed at that time was that if you weren't going to Disney you weren't going anywhere. After all, the Cal Arts program had been set up to retrain artists for the Disney studio as the older artists retired. We ate, breathed and learned from Disney films (This monolithic attitude began to crack in our second year, thanks to my classmate Darrell van Citters, who arranged visits after hours from artists Michael Maltese, Mike Lah, Maurice Noble and Ed Love as a hint of what else was out there.) Cal Arts sponsored a talk by Chuck Jones and another by Richard Williams.

The Hunched and Goofy in Vanity Fair

The latest issue of Vanity Fair has a fantastic article on the genesis of the CalArts Character Animation program and the Hollywood heavyweights who got their start there.  Among them is FLiP's own Nancy Beiman, who is extensively quoted in the piece.  Congrats, Nancy!

Nancy Beiman Joins FLIP!

As we begin our third year a blog, Alex and I are pleased to announced the addition of Nancy Beiman as a FLIP writer.  Nancy was the first person interviewed in the old format FLIP, and has, over the years, been a regular source for quotes and insights.  Having her as a partner on the team is a natural fit.

Those Unrealized Influences

Every creative person can cite some other creative person whose work had a major influence on them.    For me, it's Chuck Jones' cartoons.   But was he really as influential as I thought?  I don't draw or time my animation like him.  I don't steal art direction from  Maurice Noble nor animate like Ben Washam.  So really, they influenced my desire to get into the business, and I am certainly a fan, but my artistic influences came from other people, people I had not always recognized.

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.

What is an Ideal Work Space?

On today's CBS Sunday Morning, Richard Schlesinger did a segment on the Herman Miller Company, where the office cubicle was created decades ago. Today, they're at it again, with a new design for the workspace; a large open space with no division among the ranks.

This may be a swell idea in certain companies, where constant communication among workers is more productive.  But what about in, say, an animation studio, a place where films are made one frame at a time by a crew of artists while another crew of non-artists concurrently keeps track of schedules, budgets, and work flow? How does that big open space work there?  FLIP asked some veteran animation folks about their ideal work environment.

Leticia Lichtwardt's work space.  Some TCM for the thick and thin.

Oy Canada! Nancy Beiman goes Metric!

Animator, teacher, and purebred New Yorker Nancy Beiman becomes a Canadian citizen today.  FLIP demanded an explanation.....

Nancy Beiman and her students.

FLIP: Why do you hate America?
NB: You never stop being American, and I don't plan to start (stopping). I am still allowed to eat New York Bagels, though I am required to have the Montreal style ones at least once a month. And a moose image must be present in my house at all times. And I can now have a passport for both of my split personalities.

The Rocking Horse and the End of the World

As the Mayan doomsday approaches, I thought I would dust off this true story, one of my favorites from the old-format FLIP , from 2007. -Steve

by Nancy Beiman

NEWARK, NEW JERSEY. OCTOBER, 1962.

We were living in a 1900 house that had splendid quartersawn oak floors with the planks laid in a herringbone pattern whose texture I can still feel. I loved to run my hands along the colorful shadow cast on the living room floor by the small stained glass window in the sun room.

There wasn't much of anything else to play with since my father's salary as a music teacher in the local high school was just enough to get us into an apartment in this once-elegant neighbourhood (Dad told me later that "I knew it was going downhill since I could afford to live there.") The elegance did not extend to the heat - there wasn't any. The twisted radiators produced nothing but noise, vibrations, and the rumor of monsters in the basement. We had frost inside the windows. So, at age five, I was an expert at getting dressed under the heavy blankets in the bedroom I shared with my three year old sister, Paula.

Imagine, then, the sensation when Dad brought home a rocking horse - a magnificent creature, molded in finest plastic, mounted on springs that attached to a cruciform metal frame. It had a wild eye and a beautifully sculpted head. The springs made a crinking sound when you rode it. A glorious horse, and purchased amonth before Chanukah! But my sister and I were too small to question why.