Here's some animation drawings from a project I was developing that was inspired by Blake Edwards Classic Comedy 'The Great Race'. I went as far as animating a couple of scenes to some funny dialogue based off of Jack Lemmon's Comic creation from the movie. I was proud of the way it turned out and it came across as funny when completed. Unfortunately, it didn't go anywhere beyond these two scenes; mainly because Hanna/Barbera had already created a show that was inspired by this movie in the 60's called 'The Wacky Races' and the other wide spread belief that these characters weren't considered marketable/relatable to the small fry in the audience (which seems to be a necessary element in today's market). Now don't get me wrong, when I was a kid I loved The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy and many other things that in today's world aren't considered kid relatable. Well, when I was watching these things, I was looking for the sheer fun and entertainment value! It never bothered me that these characters were adults because they acted kid-like and did funny and goofy things! It didn't seem to concern other youngsters either. The fact is that many other kids loved this stuff too!
When I finally landed a job in the animation industry, I ended up meeting and working with a lot of people who had created animated cartoons that I had grown up on. While not household names, they were very familiar to me from seeing their credits on various cartoon shorts or shows over the years. I ran into some of these people at Warner Bros Animation. People like Gerald Baldwin, who had worked on UPA and Jay Ward productions product and had created a sequence that I truly enjoyed from Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. Art Leonardi, who worked as an animator on late 50's/Early 60's Warner Bros.Cartoons and became a jack of all trades with Friz Freleng on Pink Panther and Ant & The Aardvark cartoons. Tom Ray, a veteran animator from MGM and Warner Bros cartoons, would later work for Chuck Jones 'How The Grinch Stole Christmas' and 'Horton Hears A Who!'. Of course, there were many others, some of which I was surprised were still alive and actively working in the animation industry.
People like Alex Lovy, a longtime Lantz Director, who later worked on Hanna Barbera cartoons, Norm McCabe, an animator and Director of Looney Tunes from the late 30's thru early 40's,
and Charlie Downs, who started at Disney and worked on many of Ward Kimball's projects at the studio.
When I was working for Don Bluth on The Troll In Central Park in the early 90's. The studio was going through a difficult time with Goldcrest, the movie company that was funding the Troll movie. Apparently, Goldcrest had a new management team and they weren't pleased with the Bluth product (more on that in a future post).
Fortunately, the Bluth unit in Burbank had a special projects division that had just completed the character animation for a ride at Universal Studios called The Fantastic World Of Hanna Barbera and was now embarking on a new project for a theme park attraction in Japan.
One day, I had noticed an older gentleman in a corner of the studio who was toiling away on color keys for the new project. I went to introduce myself and he told me his name was Walt Peregoy.
Peregoy, a superior talent, had painted backgrounds for Disney's Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmations, Sword In The Stone and had designed the backgrounds for Hanna Barbera's late 60's/Early 70's product.
He eventually returned to Disney to work on projects for EPCOT center.
It was pretty much known in the business, even back then, that Peregoy was a volatile individual and wasn't afraid to voice his opinion about things. I didn't care much about that; I was in awe of being in his company. Every other day I would drop by talk to him a bit and would salivate at his beautiful paintings. He was 64 years old at the time. I developed a friendship with Peregoy while working at Bluth studios and got to hear plenty about Walt Disney (not all good things either from Peregoy's perspective!).
It still strikes me as a surreal experience that I got to work side by side with people who made the cartoon films that I grew up on.
Above, is a film that was featured on the old Disney TV show called Four Artists Paint A Tree. Walt Disney introduces four of his artists; Walt Peregoy, Marc Davis, Eyvine Earle and Josh Meador. Years before I met Peregoy, I actually saw this film in High School. It's good stuff! Enjoy!
As some of you know, I took off a couple of years from blogging to focus on other projects.
The time was well spent as I was/am working on a traditionally animated cartoon project that I was trying to get off the ground for a number of years. I finally have a handle on it and have been animating it the old fashioned way; with pencil on paper. I'm happy to say that rough animation is completed and I'm heading toward finishing it up by the Holidays. I will start revealing bits and pieces as it gets closer to completion. Expect to see making of materials right here on the blog in the near future!
Going forward, this blog is going to change directions a bit. What that means is that the focus is going to be directed more toward my personal experiences in the animation field, the challenges involved in creating a storyboard, animating a scene, designing a character or the headaches and triumphs of putting a whole film together.
I think that this will be more informative than posting a you tube video of The Osmond Brothers at Disneyland. Stuff like this will be removed from the site and posted onto a sister web site for Theme Park related posts (more on that to be announced soon!) I just want to make this blog more about the Animated Cartoon.
I feel (whether people believe it or not) that pure Cartoon Animation is disappearing from movie and Television screens all over the world...and that's just plain sad. What's worse is that the people in control of the purse strings in the entertainment world are killing the medium, simply by omitting it from being seen.
A few people are stepping up to the plate to help give the Animated Cartoon world a good kick in the pants. Glen Keane's classy DUET recently made a big splash on giant video screens in Times Square, New York City (where I saw it first hand!) and animator James Lopez is working on his Steampunk Animated film Hullabaloo that easily surpasssed its' target funding goal on Indiegogo. Mr. Lopez asked for $ 80,000, but instead raised $ 470,000! How's that for interest in Traditional Animated Cartoons!? The trailer is very impressive and the line up of animation talent even more so. Let's all get behind this and support James' project.
I know some of you have been visiting the blog for a while and have not seen anything new. I apologize for this and promise that I will be updating on a regular basis.
Thanks for staying tooned!
I have a whole lot of sketches just lying around and every so often I go through them and start discarding; Frankly, If I didn't, my house would look like a trash heap and my wife would throw me out...or so I'm told. In this joyless process, I pull up the old trash can and begin to thumb through stacks of drawings, most of which are ok sketches but they're not spectacular enough to make me want to keep them. I'd say a good 99% find their way to the Shredder but every once in a while, I'll find a drawing that somehow stands out of the bunch. I posted a few examples above that were done in Ebony pencil. I don't think this was intentional, but the guy looks a little like Disney Animator Frank Thomas while the dog has a Hanna Barbera influence to him.
Someone emailed me the other day about my drawings and somehow they got the impression that I never do dirt ruff sketches. After looking at some of my posts over the last couple of years I can see how you might get that impression. Truth is, I will do a lot of exploration with thumbnails to help me get where I'm going. If I can't get with what I'm after with a certain pencil, I'll switch off to some other pencil, marker or even a plain ol bic ball point pen, which is what you see here. Some of these sketches were done looser than normal for me and took no longer than 30 seconds to make. Because you're not investing a ton of time into the sketch, it's easy to discard and move on to the next. Like most people, there are times that I'll hit a brick wall. In those moments, it's best to walk away for a couple of minutes and clear your head. Get some reference, live action video, photos or look at other drawings that are similar. Go back to the board and use the reference to help you get the result you need. Worst case scenario, get another artists opinion and see if they can help solve the problem. Sometimes the solution is very simple and you were complicating it.
It's not a bad idea to look at the drawings you had previously done before becoming frustrated. Sometimes there's a gem in there and you glossed over it because you were caught up in the heat of the moment. BTW, the drawing on the bottom, is also a thumbnail drawn in a bic pen, but sketched a little slower.
Well, I don't remember drawing this one but I do know that it was done with a Polychromos Blue pencil.
This is a drawing that I did while I was good and angry about something and vented my rage in a drawing. I happened to like it and it went into a drawer for a couple of years.
Looking at this drawing today, I would probably approach this pose a little bit differently...like changing the angle of the head and possibly having the arms clench in a downward direction. But this is the way my emotion took it and for some reason it works for me. As an animation artist, I use emotion to fuel my quick sketches because I believe you get something absolutely pure on the paper. Sometimes I'm surprised by the result because you're not thinking about technique or second guessing yourself on the pose. You're focused strictly on getting that emotion down in a sketch and you're letting your talent shine through.
Here's a drawing I did for some project years back. It was in my portfolio for a while and then I decided to remove it for some reason, probably because it wasn't representing any specific bird. I change out drawings in my portfolio quite often to keep it fresh. I still liked the drawing however and kept it in a pile since then.
Obviously it's some rag tag bird, likely something in the seagull family. However, once again it's cobbled together from my imagination without a heap of reference which sometimes can be a good thing! Most artists will look at their work years later and retire or destroy a good deal of their drawings as being 'not up to current standard'.
This one has survived multiple trash sessions. It has some fun shapes in it and that's why I like it. The media was either an ebony or prismacolor black pencil on animation bond paper.
Does anyone remember this incidental character from any show that they can remember?
