Kent Melton, Animation Sculptor

Kent Melton was a character sculptor and maquette builder who worked on some of the most famous animated films -- someone had to sculpt the genie from Aladdin!

Puppetmaker Maria Andreotti was lucky enough to work as Kent's assistant on her first film, Boxtrolls, and was soon fangirling about the amazing sculptures and maquettes he had created at Disney, Laika, Dreamworks and Pixar for such movies as The Incredibles, Paranorman, Prince of Egypt, Treasure Planet, Tarzan, Hercules, Mulan and more.

Kent eventually became Maria's good friend and mentor and when he was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, Maria was inspired to make a documentary about him.  She created a Kickstarter campaign and has so far raised over $100,000 (and counting) to finish the film.

If you would like to make a donation to Maria's documentary, here's a link:  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mariaandreotti/untitled-kent-melton-documentary Also check out Maria's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mariathemuppet/

Enjoyed this interview? Please leave a comment or check out more past Animateducated interviews on the YouTube channel. 

And Thanks for Reading!

Nightmare Before Christmas

Here's a great article about The Nightmare Before Christmas from Cinefantastique, Dec 1993. Enjoy...

If you want to learn even more about the making of this classic Stop Motion film, check out the podcast called "The We Know Jack Show". Here's a link to it!

Thank You!

Mosleying Along

Back in the 90's, Kirby Atkins was a High School teacher who applied to Will Vinton Studios in Portland and was hired into the world of animation. Soon he was getting paid to learn more about CG animation while working as a CG Animator on various M&M commercials the studio was producing at the time. 

When the studio had downtime in between commercials, Kirby developed his own animated short called "Mutt", about a Dog comedian telling dog jokes to other dogs, in which he wrote the dialogue, animated, modeled, lit and even did the main character's voice. The film went on to win several awards at film festivals, including the Hollywood Film Festival.

Atkins also began a very personal short film called "Beast of Burden" about an intelligent creature which was used to pull a plow even though he could talk and tried to reason with his owner. It was a very dark and epic like idea which Kirby kept working on and developing after he left Vinton and began working for other animation studios.

Kirby develop the story into an animatic and recorded himself performing the voice of Mosley and his 7 year old daughter playing Mosley's small daughter Rue. 

20 years in the making, "Mosley" was released in New Zealand in 2019 and is only now finally making its way around the world to US. Recently the film was shown at the Annecy animation festival in France in July and is on its way to the Ottawa animation film festival and the Burbank International Film Festival in September. 

Take a look and listen to this very informative interview!

Upcoming Interviews with Ron Husband, Raft Animation and Ron Clements and John Musker! 

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Thank You!

Lee Crowe Interview

Back in the early 1980s, Women were just beginning to enter the animation industry and Lee Crowe was one of them. She graduated with a BA in Art from a college near her home in Georgia, before moving to Canada to be enrolled into the Sheridan College Animation program.

After graduating, moved to Los Angeles, where she job her first job in animation at a smaller animation studio called Carter Mendez. She met Floyd Norman and worked there on several animation projects before it was discovered that the studio was a front for a money laundering scheme.

Take a look at the interview below and learn about more animation stories that Lee Crowe experienced during the early part of her career in animation. 

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YouTube channel and help me make more interviews like this one!

Lou Bunin, Puppet Master

Before the internet was around, I started collecting articles about animation and animators, everything I could learn more about the art form. Recently I am going through the many boxes I have packed over the years and converting them to digital files and chucking the originals. 

Here's a very interesting article by John Canemaker about stop motion pioneer, puppeteer and artist, Lou Bunin.

Enjoy!

 

Hope that was worth saving all these years for you to discover. If it was, leave a comment below to let me know if I should post more rare findings like this one.

Here's another thing I found in that same box you might enjoy.

Thanks,

Jim

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