The Animation Guild Oral Histories

In this second installment of "Film Editing TV Cartoons", Robert Birchard describes Disney Television Animation's rapid growth and growing corporate structure. ... TAG Interview with Bob Birchard Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Mr Birchard tells of meetings that didn't start until company executives had entered the conference room in the right pecking order, and a bureaucracy that became steadily larger as the division gained more success. Note: You'll find the complete interview on video (above). The audio version is divided in half: Part One ran on October 16th; Part Two runs here today. Robert Birchard, besides being a crackerjack editor, is a writer and film historian of the first rank. For instance ... Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood ... Drawing extensively on DeMille's personal archives and other primary sources, Robert S. Birchard offers a revealing portrait of DeMille the filmmaker that goes behind studio gates and beyond DeMille's legendary persona. In his forty-five-year career DeMille's box-office record was unsurpassed, and his swaggering style established the public image for movie directors. DeMille had a profound impact on the way movies tell stories and brought greater attention to the elements of decor, lighting, and cinematography. Best remembered today for screen spectacles such as The Ten Commandments and Samson and Delilah, DeMille also created Westerns, realistic “chamber dramas,” and a series of daring and highly influential social comedies. He set the standard for Hollywood filmmakers and demanded absolute devotion to his creative vision from his writers, artists, actors, and technicians. ... "Far and away the best film book published so far this year. . . . He [Birchard] had full access to DeMille's papers and records, and draws on this archival material like a true cinematic archaeologist." -- National Board of Review

Robert Birchard, speaking at Cinecon. TAG Interview with Bob BirchardFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Roberts S. Birchard has been an editor of television cartoons for almost forty years. In the early eighties, he broke into the animation business at a studio called Hanna-Barbera, and soon moved on to DIC Animation (where he found the hectic schedules and tight deadlines to be an interesting challenge). Bob was the supervisor of DIC's editorial department, but seven-day workweeks eventually wore him down a bit, and he jumped to a small, embryonic outfit named Walt Disney Television Animation. ... In its early days (which would be the middle of the 1980s) Disney TVA was a small, tight-knit organization getting its feet wet with The Gummi Bears and Duck Tales as it navigated a new world of television syndication. As Mr. Birchard describes it, small-screen cartoons were a product that the Disney Company wanted to get right, and a lot of time and money was spent delivering a quality product.

Kelly Ward knows better than many the need to reinvent yourself ... TAG Interview with Kelly WardFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Mr. Ward, you see, was a professional actor at a young age. He worked on stage, he worked in television, he worked in movies. And he was successful at it. But then he had the bad luck to grow older, and miss out on roles he earlier snagged with regularity. He relates that a casting director told him, "We don't need to hire you for the teenager's part. We can just hire a real teenager.") So Kelly changed the direction of his career arc. In the mid-80s he was collaborating on scripts with animation veteran Jeff Segal, and soon after he was hired as an assistant story editor on Hanna-Barbera';s Go Bots. For awhile, he continued acting. But the animation work was steadier. In the span of three decades he has written numerous script, served as a story editor, produced, and directed voice actors. (He's also done some voice acting himself.) Today Kelly is directing voice talen on Jake and the Neverland Pirates, also collaborating with animation veterans Cliff MacGillivray and Phil Mendez on The Note Hunter: The Case of the Haunted Swamp. Why is Kelly now writing books? After so many years in animation. It's that "constantly reinventing yourself" thing.

TAG Interview with Nick RanieriFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link As the 21st century dawned, and Disney hand-drawn animation gave way to its CG cousin, Nik found himself in a quandary. Should he stick with pencil and paper? Or move on to the land of computers and pixels? ... In this final installment of Mr. Ranieri's TAG interview, Nik talks about animating on Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons, then returning to hand-drawn animation with Princess and the Frog. On later CG features, Nick created hand-drawn test animation like the example below. (Note: The video above the fold is only half of the entire interview, the first half. The damn camera ran out of memory, a problem which has now been rectified with a larger memory card.)

Some Ranieri animation from "Beauty and the Beast". (Ignore the irritating commercial.) TAG Interview with Nick RanieriFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link When Mr. Ranieri made his way to Burbank after finishing work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, he had to prove himself as an animator all over again. Which in a short time he did. ... Nik here discusses the challenges working on the Disney blockbusters of the nineties, and how it took awhile to gain the confidence of different directors as he moved from one animated feature to another. (Working his way to Supervising Animator was not always a smooth journey.)

TAG Interview with Nick RanieriFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Nik Ranieri has had a long, fruitful career as a top-flight animator on hit cartoon features that reach back twenty-five years .... Nik developed an interest in drawing at a tender age. His older brother liked to draw, and Nik liked to emulate his older brother. Although his sibling moved on to other pursuits, Nike stayed with the drawing thing, which led him to Sheridan College's animation program, and then to Canadian production houses. From there, it was on to employment with animator Richard Williams on a film entitled Who Framed Roger Rabbit? ... This is the first of a three-part interview with Mr. Ranieri. The first section goes up today, the next two will be heard (and seen) Friday and Monday. (We'll be skipping over the low-traffic weekend.) A fine Ranieri interview from the Animation Podcast, recorded in 2005, can be found here.

TAG Interview with Mychal SymkaFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this linkMychal Simka resides in a somewhat different space than many animation creators. He rewrites and reconfigures animated features, turning them into different movies ... Mychal was raised in Anaheim, and his mother worked at Disneyland for a lot of years. (Mr. Simka went to the park a lot as a kid, and continues to visit regularly.) With that background, you might expect he would have ended up animating at Disney Feature animation ... or maybe storyboarding. Nope. Instead, he became a casting director, and then found his way into animated features as a writer and voice director. He talks about both those things, plus the world marketplace for lower budget CG features in this TAG pocast.

TAG Interview with Joanna RomersaFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Joanna Romersa has clear memories of working on the Disney lot in the first weeks of her animation career. She was training to be an inker, and the studio had Lady and the Tramp in production. But Disney's had more than its first Cinemascope cartoon feature going on back then. ... Jack Webb's Dragnet was shooting on one of the newly-built sound stages and a mockup for "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" for some new amusement park down in Anaheim was laid out on yet another stage. Joanna recalls the Disney studio of the mid-fifties as "enchanting," but it was only the beginning of an animation career spanning decades. Ms. Romersa is one of the few female animator/directors who has worked in almost every facet of the cartoon business. From inking on Lady and the Tramp and Sleeping Beauty, Joanna moved on to assistant work in the '60s and '70s (ultimately supervising a department of assistants at Hanna-Barbera) to animating in the '70s and '80s. She's been an animation director for three decades, and has worked on almost every kind of cartoon product, from theatrical features to direct-to-video features, from episodic series to commercials. (There aren't many Hanna-Barbera characters with which Joanna hasn't been involved.) She today works as an animation director on Disney's upcoming The 7D. We spoke at the Animation Guild on March 28th.

TAG Interview with Randy MyersFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link After Randy left Warner Bros. Feature Animation (and Randy sort of had to, since the studio shut down), he moved to a new studio called Cartoon Network, where Genndy Tartakovsky, a Cal Arts classmate, was creating and directing Dester's Lab and the Power Puff Girls. And Mr. Myers, his animator's background standing him in good stead, quickly became a director of television cartoons. ... Since then, Randy has directed hundreds of cartoon episodes for most of the major studios in Los Angeles. He is of the opinion that, beyond working diligently, it's useful to know what's going on in the industry and to network, network, network.

TAG Interview with Randy MyersFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Director and animator Randy Myers is nothing if not persistent. When he got turned down by Cal Arts for a spot in their animation program, he applied a second time. When the school declined to accept him a second time, Mr. Myers started taking art classes in earnest, redid his portfolio, and finally found success ... But Randy Myers was a young man in a hurry. "It was the early nineties," he says, "and there was a demand for animation artists. And I had loans of pay off, so after two years I left and went to work full time in animation. ..." It was a heady time. Disney Feature Animation was on a roll with a string of hits, and every major entertainment company wanted to be in the animated feature business. Randy went to work for Turner Feature Animation, where he worked his way up to animator on Cats Don't Dance, then moved over to the Warner Bros. feature studio where he animated on Quest For Camelot and Brad Bird's Iron Giant in rapid succession. Randy speaks of these things and more in the first of a two-part TAG interview.

Reid Scott (Veep, My Boys) is voicing the lead for Turbo F.A.S.T., which debuts on NetFlix December 24th. We had the opportunity to ask him about his voice-work for the show, and so grabbed it. ... TAG Interview with Reid ScottFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link We talk about how Mr. Scott came to the project, how he and the other actors work, and what kind of input they have as the lead thespians. We cover a goodly amount of ground in twelve minutes.

A few days ago we sat down with veteran animator Frans Vischer for a discussion about the book business ... TAG Interview with Frans VischerFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Mr. Visher talked to us two years ago (here and here), about life in the cartoon industry. This go-round, we wanted to spend more time talking about the printed page, and how a veteran animator goes about building a second career with his own characters inside lavishly illustrated childrens' books. Tomorrow, the video version of the interview.

TAG Interview with Don LuskFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Here in Part III, Don Lusk and I wrap up the first interview and unspool a second, recorded a week later. (I did a wee bit of research after #1, and wanted to find out more about his work at Disney, in particular his animation on Fantasia) ... Mr. Lusk was not happy with the color work on the whirling, pirouetting fish of "The Nutcracker Suite" (you can listen to what he says about it, I won't spoil it for you here, but allow me to state that Mr. Lusk wanted to "crawl under the theater seat" when he saw the finalized sequence at the premiere.) Don also discusses his long tenure at Hanna-Barbera, from animation to direction, and what some of his favorite pieces of work are in a sixty-year career.

TAG Interview with Don LuskFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link After leaving Walt Disney Productions at the start of the 60s, Don worked for Walter Lantz and then Hanna-Barbera. And at H-B he found a long-term professional home, and remained there for thirty-plus years. ... I asked him whether he preferred Disney or Hanna-Barbera; he told me that he had a much happier time at Joe and Bill's place, because he was better respected and made to feel like "one of the family." Though he worked on some iconic features at Disney, Don felt he was underpaid and not particularly appreciated. And as he relates, Walt held grudges against many of the employees who went out during the 1941 strike ...which likely explains why Don's post-war Disney career never took off. As Mr. Lusk says, he was "relieved" when finally let go, and the relief turned out to be well-founded: he had decades of productive work still ahead of him.

TAG Interview with Don LuskFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Happy 100th! Cartoon veteran Don Lusk (animator, story man, and director .. from Disney on Hyperion to Hanna-Barbera on Cahuenga) turns turns ten decades old today. To celebrate, we present you with the Don Lusk 100th birthday interview, which covers his career from Disney in 1933, to Hanna-Barbera in 1993. (Sixty years of work seems to be sufficient, wouldn't you say?) ... I spoke to Don on the big office speaker-phone in mid-October. He talked about his early days at Walt Disney Productions, his work on "Snow White" and "Pinocchio," about how he walked out with other Disney strikers in 1941, carrying a picket sign until his feet and bank account gave out and he was forced to find other work for eating money. He has no regrets about hitting the bricks, though it put a good-sized nick in his career at the Mouse House. (He'll be circling back on talking about his work on "Fantasia" and at Hanna-Barbera in Part III of the Interview.)

Here's the second half of Mr. Hickner's audio podcast, and most of the interview in the video version (new camera equipment was a tad glitchy; new processes to learn): TAG Interview with Steve HicknerFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Steve arrived at Disney Feature Animation while The Black Cauldron was in work, and plunged into work on the production. After that came The Great Mouse Detective, in the middle of which Michael Eisner, Frank Wells and Jeffrey Katzenberg arrived to remake the studio, top to bottom. Peter Schneider was installed as head of Disney Feature Animation. During the production of live-action/animation hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Steve asked Mr. Schneider for two minutes of his time, which Peter granted. (Who can turn down a couple of minutes, right?) Mr. Hickner told Peter he had heard a second animation unit for Roger Rabbit was opening, and he wanted to be part of it. Mr. Schneider made Steve no promises (he didn't even admit the unit was being formed), but a short while later Steve was an early assignee into Who Framed Roger Rsabbit's new-formed animation unit. Which demonstrates that it pays not to be shy when there are new worlds to conquer.

TAG Interview with Steve HicknerFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Director and story artist Steve Hickner has been in the animation business since Lou Scheimer headed up Filmation (where Steve got his first animation job) and Disney Feature Animation in the Time Before Jeffrey. Steve has worked at DreamWorks Animation since its founding. In a way, he was at DreamWorks Animation before it was DWA ... In the early days of his career, Mr. Hickner never allowed grass to grow under his feet. At Filmation, he worked his way up the corporate ladder to become board supervisor. At Disney, he lobbied for a spot on the animation crew of Who Framed Roger Rabbit ... and got it. Later, when he heard that director Steven Spielberg was forming an animation studio, he interviewed for a job in the new studio twice before landing the gig. Steve remained with Amblimation from its inception to its merger with DreamWorks' animation division several years later. During his time there, he found himself in management positions (something for which, by his own admission, he had minimal training). Later at DreamWorks, he was in the pilot's chair yet again when he co-directed Prince of Egypt, and later Bee Movie. The leadership roles left a strong impression on Mr. Hickner, which inspired him to write a book about them: A few of the things Steve has learned from his decades in the cartoon biz are: 1) Never stop learning, 2) Never dodge a challenge, and 3) Every job you have is one more opportunity to improve your skill set. Remember the drill around here: Today half the audio version of the interview; tomorrow the other half, plus the interview as video, which will (unfortunately) will be missing the last several minutes because of glitches with a newer camera.

TAG Interview with Tom Sito - 2Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link College prof, feature director, animator and board artist Tom Sito continues his history of CGI: ... Most of 1985 was spent trying to find a buyer for the Graphics Group [Pixar], ten months of meetings and entertaining offers from buyers as varied as Seimens, Hallmark, Japanese manga publishers Shogakukan, and the makers of Silly Putty. ... When talks with Steve Jobs commenced, on December 9, 1985, papers were filed that were approved in Fubruary of 1986 incorporating the Lucasfilm Graphics Group into a new company called Pixar Animation Studios. It was named for their signature retail product, the Pixar Imaging Computer. At first Jobs balked at Lucas's asking price of $15 million. After weeks of negotiation, getting the asking price down to just $5 million, with an additional $5 million in capital investment in the company, Jobs closed the deal on February 3, 1986. Doug Norby admitted later that had this deal not gone though, he had already decided to close Pixar down and fire all of its forty employees. ... -- Tom Sito, Moving Innovation, p. 243. (This concludes the Sito/CGI interviews. We apologize for the long gaps in the series, but the day job keeps getting in the way.)

TAG Interview with Tom Sito - 2Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Tom Sito guides us through CGI's halting start (and all the stumbles that occurred along the way) ... all the way up to its dynamic present. ... ... Cornell University established its Department of Computer Science in 1965. It trained many who would figure prominently in CG, like Michael Wahrman, Marc Levoy and RIchard Weinberg. In the lat 1980s Levoy and Weinberg did research into digital paint ... At Ohio State University Charles Csuri was an abstract expressionist painter who had been intrigued by computers since the mid-1950s. "I became confident that (CG) animation can become a new kind of art form," he recalled. He began to utilize the university's resources to create art on a computer in 1965. ... In 1967 Csuri created the groundbreaking film Hummingbird. The film is considered one of the landmarks of CG, because it is the first time someone attempted to move a living thing rather than geometric shapes. ... --Tom Sito, Moving Innovation, pp. 57-58. (This is Part I of the video version of Tom's CG talk, and Part II of the audio version. Confusing, isn't it?)

TAG Interview with Tom Sito - 2Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link TAG's President Emeritus Tom Sito (who is also an animator, director, storyboard artist and college professor) has written a fine book on the history of Computer Generated Imagery: Computer graphics (or CG) has changed the way we experience the art of moving images. Computer graphics is the difference between Steamboat Willie and Buzz Lightyear, between ping pong and PONG. It began in 1963 when an MIT graduate student named Ivan Sutherland created the first true computer animation program. Instead of presenting a series of numbers, Sutherland's Sketchpad program drew lines that created recognizable images. Sutherland noted: "Since motion can be put into Sketchpad drawings, it might be exciting to try making cartoons." This book, the first full-length history of CG, shows us how Sutherland's seemingly offhand idea grew into a multibillion dollar industry. ... And Tom takes us through that long-ago beginning to right now. ... This is Tom's second TAG podcast. The first covered his animation career, the second is centered on his just-released book and the history of CG. (This audio interview is broken into three parts of thirty minutes each. Starting tomorrow, the video/YouTube versions -- each 45 minutes in length -- will appear. So choose your format.)

At the May 28th General Membership Meeting, TAG presented a panel discussion on "Investing for Retirement" featuring Timothy C. Metcalf and Timothy P. Cronin from Wells Fargo Advisors. The talk covered a lot of ground, and there were some lively and provocative questions from Animation Guid Members ... which can be heard at the link below .... TAG Panel Discussion - Investing for RetirementFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Tim Cronin is a Senior Vice President with WFA, and Mr. Metcalf is a Managing Director. They presented strategies for investing, also their outlook on the world economy over the next several years. (Hulett's in the mix too, blathering about the Animation Guild 401(k) Plan and the Motion Picture Industry Health and Pension Plan.)

David Rich is an actor, comedian and filmmaker. TAG Interview with David RichFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link In 2010, Mr Rich began filming a non-fiction movie entitled Actor?, which explores the acting craft through the eyes of Ed Asner, Dee Wallace and numerous others. From the start, David Rich intended large sections of the non-fiction movie to have a complementary animated story weaving around the live-action ... Actor? is filled with entertaining interviews, but the animated sections make it considerably different from your garden-variety documentary. I asked Mr. Rich how the animated sequences were put together, and he informed me that a Michigan studio (where entertainment tax subsidies occur in abundance) performed the work. There were twenty animators, designers and technicians on the film from start to finish, and production took approximately a year. There's not a lot of long-form indie animated product out there, but Actor is one of them.

TAG Interview with David BlockFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link David Block was among the earlier applicants to Walt Disney productions feature animation training program, but he was far from a beginner. He had already broken in with Chuck Jones and Abe Lebitow, had already assisted Art Babbit on the Richard Williams feature Ragged Ann and Andy. Disney, however, turned out to be a career track that lasted decades ... Dave worked on Frank Thomas's and Ollie Johnston's last feature The Fox and the Hound, then went on to the featurette Mickey's Christmas Carol followed by The Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective. He was set to start on the next feature when a chance meeting with Disney Television Animation's Michael Webster sent him on a new career trajectory: supervising the production of television cartoons. Mr. Block spent over a decade producing, directing and otherwise superintending product inside Disney's newer animation division. He then returned to feature work in the 1990s, working on Tarzan, Emperor's New Groove, and Treasure Planet among others. Today, after directing and animation assignments at Nickelodeon and Warner Bros, Dave is again animating at Walt Disney Animation Studios.

TAG Interview with David BlockFind all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Animator, director and producer David Block never gave a thought to making a career in animation until he got to college. Then, during his freshman year he saw a re-issue of Disney's Fantasia, and knew that sitting at a desk making characters come to life would be his professional calling. ... But it didn't turn out to be easy. At the time, there were few animation programs happening at colleges, so Dave had to blaze his own trail, taking classes at University, then art schools, and finally moving to Hollywood where he worked for Chuck Jones and then animation veteran Abe Lebitow. Dave credits his time under the tutelage of Warner Bros. animator Ben Washam as the most useful and productive education in animation that he ever received. Mr. Block talks about those early days in the business (and more) here in Part I of the latest TAG Interview.