The Leonardo Interview

Every year close to Halloween, when the veil between the living and the dead is quite thin, I take advantage of this by contact a well known person in the past of Animation.

This year, I contacted the Leonardo Da Vinci who I contacted through the OUIJAZooM app. Enjoy the interview below.

I have contacted other people which you can find on the Animateducated YouTube channel.

Happy Halloween!

My Animateducated tour of the UK

It has only been two weeks since we landed in Dublin, Ireland to begin our trip to the UK. I dragged my laptop and small video/still camera and a lot of cords, plugs and a hand held mini tripod to see if I could make this a working vacation.

I had contacted 3 people throughout our visit, starting with Cartoon Saloon in Kilkenny. I was planning to meet Tomm Moore, however as the trip drew near, he had to cancel the meeting, but I could talk to Fabian Erlinghauser, a director who created "Dorg Van Dango" for Nickelodeon.

After Ireland, we would fly up to Edinbough, Scotland to experience the Fringe as well as meet with Iain Gardner, the creator of a new 2d film called," A Bear named Wojtek. To my surprise, I was able to make two more future episodes featuring some Fringe work which I will share later.

Then we would fly to London to meet Comic book artist Alison Sampson, who has some of her work at the Heroes exhibit at the Cartoon Museum in London. I was hopping to be able to interview her in person and see the museum's archives. It turned out, I was shown a small storage room full of boxes, but they didn't show me what was inside them.

While in London, I found a few more things to make future Animateducated episodes, including this one featuring the BFI's Stop Motion series. A month long celebration on Stop Motion films and filmmakers. I have just finished this posting of a Q&A of the directors of ParaNorman, Chris Butler and Sam Fell. Enjoy...

If you enjoyed this blog and the above episode, please share it with a friend or leave a comment or like on the Animateducated YouTube channel. As I said, I have one more week of traveling England to see if I can find some more interesting people or places to share with you.

The Crime Story incident Part 1

In May of 1986, I graduated from Columbia College in Chicago and during my first Summer out of school I was looking for freelance and full time work of any kind. I was also working on finishing an animated film I had started during my final year at Columbia.

I was looking for both animation and live action work and began finding short gigs on various small projects. I remember working as a PA on a music video where a large group of extras gathered in a dark bar. While this was all happening, a make up person was putting the last bits of details on several Zombie characters to be shot after the Bar scene.

A new NBC TV series began shooting in Chicago and my roommate, Mike had managed to get a job as a PA. "Crime Story" was a new TV show produced by Michael Mann, set in Chicago during the early sixties, about a group of Chicago cops and the bad guys they were trying to catch. It only ran for 2 seasons and featured actor Dennis Farina, who served 18 years in the Chicago Police Department (1967 to 1985), during which he advanced from patrolman to detective, now in his first starring role on a TV series.

At one point of the production, my roommate got me a job as a PA and my first taste of TV series production work had begun. Some of these events are a little blurry since I wasn't on the show for very long and most of the work hours were long night shoots.

My first day on the job was to help get the craft services table set up for the shoot. Mike had more experience then I did and so he showed me what to do. While we were buying snacks and drinks for the crew, the crew was shooting at a location not too far away. Mike thought it would best to meet the crew at the next location and have the snacks set up there.

Mike had a car and we drove to the next location, got everything set up and waited for the crew to show up. As things turned out, we should have went to the first location to set up the tables because the film shoot took longer than expected.

The next thing I know, a bunch of angry looking crew members are walking towards us and somehow they all know my name. A few start yelling and asking why we didn't show up at the location. Mike was trying to calm them down and keep them from ripping my head off. The term "Hangry" had not been invented yet.

All I know, is that my first day on the job had not turned out to be a pleasent experience. Over the next few days and mostly nights, I would have to work harder to be seen as being more dependable. I also learned all about Union rules throughout my time on the job.

When the Assistant Director (AD) asks you to tell the driver of the large truck to move slightly forward, the driver will not listen to you. You must then find his boss, the head teamster on the crew. Then the boss tells the driver and he does the task.

Also, when it came time for lunch or dinner, the crew would be watching the clock, any sign of delay and the crew could call a penality if they were not fed at the right time. Also the crew would eat first before the talent or extras. These were the laws of the jungle I was learning about on the job.

I remember I was given a walkie talkie and told to block off the street so no modern day cars would drive through the background of the shot. I did and had to turn a few drivers around until another PA ran up and needed to take my walkie talkie away to do something else. Now, I was just some weirdo who tried to stop traffic without any proof of authority or a walkie talkie.

And so, this was my week of learning about being a PA, from blocking areas from traffic to picking up a pack of cigarettes for the director to finally deciding that I didn't want to do this for a living. That was on Friday, Sept 5th 1988 when the accident occured.

BTW, I recent found out that I had worked Six  12 hour days back in September 1986 on Crime Story. 1) 12 hour day = $69.07!!!!  Was it worth it? What was the big event that changed my mind from working in live action and working in animation production? Find out soon in Part 2.

Walking on Clouds

A lot of the time I find someone who I would like to interview and spend a good amount of time researching what they have done and contact them through email. This recent interview with Paul Demeyer was the result of a good friend of ours who recommended us to met each other through email.

And so, I contacted Paul and we discovered that we had a lot in common. For one, we both had won a Student Film Awards when we were in College. Paul has been working on his illustrated book about his life called "Walking on Clouds" and he includes a few pages about winning the award in 1977.

Then 10 years later, I won my Student Film Award for my animated film called "Cat & Rat" back in 1988 and I remember getting to see a screening with the crew of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". I had a long week and cannot recall how I got a ticket to the screening, I only remember I was in a seat on the first row looking straight up at the screen. I was one of the first people at Columbia College to see the film, but the worse viewing although I was so excited I didn't care.

So I contacted Paul and we can up with this interview which took me a while to edit together since we taked about so much. Anyway, here's the interview which I hope was worth the wait.

This year was the 50th anniversary of the Student Film Awards which I took Paul with me to see it in person. We had a great time and were amazed that most of the winners had a small crew which shared the award. We remember how awkward we had felt getting up on stage alone to accept our awards. We were impressed by how these new winners were all very confident and professionals at accepting their awards as well.

If you enjoyed this posting, please leave a comment below or go watch more Animateducated videos on YouTube! 

Robot Dreams arrives in US Theaters

I first became aware of Sara Varon's graphic novel when my son was in High School and brought it home from the library. I remember see that there was no dialogue throughout the entire book and liking the simple cartoon illustrations.

Years later, my son is now in college and I discovered that "Robot Dreams" has become a new 2d animated feature film by Pablo Berger. I saw the film at as a screener for the 51st Annie Awards through ASIFA Hollywood which I am a member.

"Robot Dreams" won for best independent animated feature at the Annies and was later nominated for an Oscar for best animated feature. Heron,(which won the Oscar). However, all this time the film had not been released in US theatres, until now.

Please enjoy these 3 interviews I have done beginning with Sara Varon, the artist/author of "Robot Dreams".

Here's an interview with Benoit Feroumont, who was the animation director of "Robot Dreams" and who helped get Pablo Berger's storyboards turned into the final animation.

And finally, here are two interviews with live action director Pablo Berger. The first one was part of a Q/A which was shown after a screening at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, talking about his first animated film, "Robot Dreams". 

And the last interview, I only had 10 minutes to interview Pablo Berger.  I asked him about several of his past films and a few questions about "Robot Dreams".

Well, I hope you enjoy the interviews above. Robot Dreams is a nice 2D feature which might be more touching for adults where as kids will see it on other levels. It is definitely a nice break from the Summer superhero or killer robot stories. 

Please leave a comment below to let us know what you thought of the film.

Two films you should see this Summer

Here are a couple of new documentaries that you might not know about, but will enjoy watching.

Friends of mine made this documentary about Albert Ruddy, who was the producer of "The Godfather". Directors are usually more well known than Producers by the general public and the result of only two meetings, Smith and Bradley discovered they had enough footage to make "Tough Ain't Enough: Conversation with Albert S. Ruddy".

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2831378/

The film was released to the film festival circuit in 2013, however only recently has the film been distributed by Indie Rights. 

Tough Ain't Enough is a very inspiring and fun documentary told by Al Ruddy himself about his adventures in the film industry as a producer. 

And finally, everyone can see and hear his story which is now streaming on Amazon Prime and Youtube.

"Dear Ike: Lost Letters to a Teen Idol" is a personal documentary about young Dion Labriola's quest to contact with the young actor Ike Eisenmann through writing many letters to him to star in an animated science-fiction epic he was developing in middle school. 

After an exhaustive string of failed attempts, a magical turn of events points Dion directly toward his goal in the most unexpected of ways - 40 years later.

Here's the Animateducated interview with Dion Labriola and link to watch "Dear Ike" for free through PBS SoCal.

Hope you get a chance to see these films and leave a comment below if you watched them. 

Character Designing by Torsten Schrank

 

Torsten Schrank was learning to be an animator while in University, but eventually got more into character designing. Below is a recent interview of him explaining how he designs characters.

Here are some of his concept art and character designs.

Here are a collection of model sheets of caharacter designs from "Klaus".

 

Enjoyed this post and the interview? Subscribe to Animateducated on YouTube.

"I'm Hip" with John Musker

 I first found out about this film when I did an interview with John Musker and Ron Clements when Covid was on the rise. Here's the interview, feel free to watch the whole thing. 

I just realised the above video was labelled Part 1, in Part 2, John mentioned he was starting to work on his own animated short film and was trying to figure out how he was going to do it.

Four years later, "I'm Hip" premiered at Annecy, one of the most well known animation festivals in Europe and the film managed to make the Short List for this year's Oscars. Unfortunately, the film was not nominated.

I caught up with John Musker at an ASIFA screening of "I'm Hip" and here is the interview below along with some stills from the film.. Enjoy!

This is Dan Dinello and John's sister Mimi, Dan Dinello was my Film Tech 2 teacher at Columbia College in 1983-1984.

A movie theater of famous hip movie goers.

The beginning of the film so Musker and his wife walking under the Live Jazz sign...

Can you name these two Hip guys? Add your answer to the comments below.

That's Marlon West on drums and the head of effects at Disney, I went to school with him at Columbia College and he was hip even back then.

The guy snipping coffee is John's son.

"I'm Hip" will be coming to a theater near you as part of the 23rd Animation Show of Show. Contact www.animationshowofshows.com to find out when and where.

If you enjoyed this post, leave a comment below or on the YouTube channel Animateducated. 

Animating Stuff in 2024

This year I've started a Live Stream show called "Animating Stuff" on my YouTube channel, Animateducated. It's a live format where I will either bring in a topic to talk about or show and the audience can text their feedback or questions.

Well, that's the theory. So far I've been starting this on Wednesdays @ 7pm PST and am working on finding that sweet spot when an audience might turn up to watch. So far, the audience have been pretty small and often times, I feel like I'm just talking to myself, which I usually am.

So, please help me find the best time to do this live stream. Below is a recent live stream which I edited down to include the most interesting bits. You let me know if I'm right or not.

Any suggestions for topics or things to animated or solutions to problems, please  send an email at animateducated@gmail.com.

Character designs by Nikolas Ilic

Character Designs by Ben Tong

Artwork by Ronald Searle  

Watch it here: https://youtu.be/qfvt9p_EuPA?si=49A0gi3ouTMUstHb

Artwork by Arnold Roth

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