The List of 1984

 

 

Here is my water-stained program from the 1984 Character Animation show, held in the tiny Bijou Theater at CalArts.  According to the math, 40 years have gone by.  Damned math!

 

Industry people and fans of animation may recognize some of these names. Many of these students went on to long, successful careers in animation.  Some are still at it (like me).   There are Oscar and Emmy winners - and a Pulitzer winner too!  Some went on to what the late, great Ray Johnson called  "Mystery Studios", where people drop off the map, never heard from again.  Some had great success in other artistic fields.  And some died way too young.   

 

We were kids, set loose in a world of 24/7 character animation.  They were glorious years that shaped us as artists and human beings.  But to say it was all good would be the whopper of all lies.  We were tight knit, but also awful and cruel to each other; creatively supportive and cutthroat competitive.  Like a cartoon Abraxis, it was simultaneously all good and all evil.  But looking back through a prism of sentiment, the shiny bits obscure the darkness, distilling the magic of that window of time.  How lucky I was to be in that mix.   

 

 The Way.....We......Werrrrrrrrrre........

 

-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