Paul Driessen, His Life in Cartoons

Paul Driessen's work has always interested me because it was fun to watch and his stories were told with a quirky bit of humor. I contacted him through his website recently to see if he would be interested in doing an interview via Zoom from his home in France. I was so surprised that he agreed and mentioned that he had published his biography called "My Life in Catoons". We made plans to meet online in a few weeks, just enough time for me to find and get his book. The book publisher did not ship to the US, so I had to get it through Amazon. The book finally arrived and I was able to find out what his life was like before getting into animation. 

Dreissen was in Holland and at an early age grew during World War ll and recalls a lot of memories during this time. He even winds up in Moscow with his family in the above photograph. And luckily, he and his entire family survives the war and eventually are included in this photo below in a happier time after moving back to Holland. 

The book is very well written, I only wished that some of the photos were larger on the page and I also would have liked to seen more color stills from some of his colorful films. 

I was amazed to learn that he discovered animation by getting an opportunity to work on the Beatles animated TV series and eventually followed it up by getting to animate of the Yellow Submarine feature film.

If you enjoy Driessen's or writing Biographies, you might enjoy this one to get a flavor of how life was like for this an independent animator who eventually worked on several films for the National Film Board of Canada and later, making his own personal films.

Please enjoy this recent interview with Paul Driessen.

If you enjoyed this blog or the above interview, please subscribe to the YouTube Animateducated channel or leave a comment below. I don't think anyone reads this blog, because most of the comments I get are from people who just want sell their animation services or spam ads.

So, let me know if you liked this or what your favorite Paul Driessen film is. And if you have never seen his work, hopefully this will spark your interests.

Thanks for Reading this.

Animating for Music Video

Once a very popular format getting your song or showcasing your band out to the masses, the music video. Here is a classic which still holds up today, "Take on Me" by A-Ha. I saved this article from HOW magazine back when it came out to understand how they made it. Here is a very dated article with lots of reference to ancient animation techniques used before CG animation was even around. Frame by frame using a 35mm animation stand, dealing with film and optical techniques that you can do on your phone these days.

Please enjoy this HOW article from the animation past!

Here is another A-Ha video using the same techinque, but the video was not as popular.

Can you believe how much work it took to make this animation back in the day? If you would like an easier version to read, send me an email to animateducated@gmail.com and I'll send you a pdf file. 

Thanks,

Jim

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.

The Inventor is here

How hard is it to make an animated feature film? A short film about Leonardo DaVinci that you have expanded into a feature. You have a successful Kickstarter campaign and a cast of well known actors, Stephen Fry, Daisy Ridley, Marion Cotillard, Gauthlier Barttoue and Matt Berry to do the voices.

Now add making an animated feature film during Covid, outside the US and when you finish the film, your voice actors can't promote it due to the current Actor/Writer strike that is going on.

Below is an interview with Jim Capobianco just before the Kickstarter campaign began.

A trailer came out in August promoting the release date as August 23, which was actually pushed back to September 15th. Unfortunately, new release date trailers were not available to send out to movie theatres nationwide.

Here's a trailer which was created to show investors what the animation would look like.

Een Man from Aerial Contrivance Workshop on Vimeo.

I recently contacted Capobianco to find out what happened during the making of the film and where we can see the film and when. BTW Bluefox Entertainment has this link to let you know where the film is playing near you. https://www.bluefoxentertainment.com/films/the-inventor

Here is the latest interview with Jim Capocianco promoting "The Inventor" and hoping audience support this independent animated feature film...which premieres Friday, September 15th!

SOCIAL MEDIA PAGES:

Website: https://www.TheInventorFilm.com 

Twitter: @TheInventorfilm @BlueFox_Ent 
Facebook: @TheInventorFilm @BlueFoxEnt
Instagram: @theinventorfilm @blue_fox_entertainment
YouTube: Blue Fox Entertainment

Well here's another fine interview I hope you enjoyed and get to see the actual film on the big screen! if you enjoyed this in any way, please show your support by subscribing to the Animateducated YouTube. 

Syrenka the Warsaw Mermaid

 Disney's Live Action version of "The Little Mermaid" is coming to a theater or streaming service near you. Are you super excited or like me, a little disappointed. I don't mind that this Ariel is a young black actress, but seeing photos of Sebastian the Crab, Flounder the fish and Scuttle the seagull made me almost gag.

Really WDA, are these the most appealling character designs you could come up with? With your animation studio of the most talented artists in the world, these supporting characters look like an AI program spit them out. Although, I bet an AI program would come up with a lot better choices. And how many designs did it take to narrow them down to these?

Do you think maybe Disney is just pulling our fin? Is this a brilliant Marketing ploy? Maybe Disney is showing these awful character designs to hype the film and then do a bait and switch where we see more appeal supporting characters when we see the film. Oh, what a relief that would be. But I have a funny feeling this is as good as it gets.

The original Little Mermaid was so great when it came out, because Disney animation was coming back, we loved the story and the characters all worked well together. I am not going to go see this new Little Mermaid, because like Disney's Aladdin, I already saw the good original and I don't need to see a Live Action version.

Would you like to see these characters walking along at Disneyland or Disney World? 

And this brings me to a new 2D Mermaid film which you might not see until 2 years from now. Its a short 7 minute or so, animated film by Tina Nawrocki called "Syrenka the Warsaw Mermaid".

This is about Syrenka, the twin sister of the Little Mermaid, swam up to Warsaw, Poland and became a legend there. Below is my interview with Nawrocki and how she is planning to make the film.

If you would like to help Tina finish her film, please check out her Indiegogo campaign and if you send her some support, mention you heard about on Animateducated!

Thanks for the support and Check out more interesting interviews and animated stuff on the Animateducated YouTube channel. and Thanks for your support!

Animateducated channel gaining!

The Animateducated YouTube channel is actually getting some viewers and audience participation! It actually looks like it might even obtain more than 1000 subscribers before 2022 ends. Here are a few things I have been posting lately that you may have missed...

An animation student of mine at CSUF recently completed her student film and we talked about the process.

You can see "Fester" by clicking this link...

That is one of the benefits of teaching, to see a student's work when it first started, how it evolves and is finally finished. Not every student can get to the completion stage, because its a lot of work and commitment.

Here are a collection of Animation Production projects where students had to come up with in my Animation Pre-Production class. Each student came up with an idea for a short animated film with a story, character(s), storyboard and animatic. The next semester, they had 16 weeks to make their animatic into a finished film.

16 weeks to make a 1 or 2 minute animated film can be done, but only if you have a figured out a solid work schedule and enough time to do it. Many students have take a lot more studio classes with other class projects which take more time and energy to do.

During Covid, students were under stress even more with the new way of life or stay at home, avoiding social situations and then having to use their own equipment to make their film. Most could not return to Campus, away from the Wacom Cintiqs and other software.

After taking the Animation Production class, sometimes that rough animatic turns into a colorful animatic instead of a completed film. I have been trying to figure out a solution to avoid this situation. I think if the student can manage to get the beginning or perhaps some sequence of their film into a final state of production, it would show an audience what the final product will look like when it is completed. Having this final production is a rough film, might even help the student continue to finish what they started after the class is over.

The worse case is when I see a student who has really great idea, but only wants to do enough work to get an "A". 

Grades are only a temporary carrot dangling for a limited time in front of a near sighted horse. 

Making a film is not about getting a good grade! Its about coming up with something you want to see, work on  and learn from the experience. And when its done, people can see it and appreciate. Enter it into film festivals, on YouTube, put it on your website. People who see it might hire you or introduce you to others and hopefully you will continue the process. It might take years, but you made something that nobody else did, something you cared about to create. And when you hear an audience reacting to your film or if someone has seen your work, that's very satisfying.  

The Inventor begins

Creating a film is no easy task and Jim Capobianco should know this after working on his first 2d animation short, Leonardo. The film follows a cartoon version of Leonard Da Vinci and uses music from the era which Da Vinci may have heard during his life.

A Kickstarter campaign has begun to help fund a new feature film called "The Inventor" about Leonardo traveling to and living out the rest of his life in France. If you are interested about learning more about this project, please watch this recent interview which Jim Capobianco.

If you enjoyed this and would like to help fund "The Inventor", please visited this link to the Kickstarter Campaign; https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/77077682/the-inventor 

And if this post was of interest, please show your support and subscribe to the Animateducated YouTube channel!

The Tomm Moore interview

If you've seen "The Secret of Kells" or "Song of the Sea", then you have seen the work of Tomm Moore and his animation studio Cartoon Saloon in Kilkenny, Ireland. Recently, I got an opportunity to interview Tomm and talked a lot about his new film, Wolfwalkers.

The theme of this film is "When friendship conquers fear" and is the story of a young girl living in Kilkenny in 1650. Her father is a hunter who she wants to be like. One day, she goes hunting by herself and she meets a very interesting and wild little girl who lives in the woods nearby.

When I spoke with Moore, he was in middle of finishing up the movie poster for the film. I also learned that Moore will be doing the 2d animation for Jim Capobianco's upcoming animated feature called "The Inventor"; another upcoming interview. Take a look at the interview below and learn how this film is also based on Irish history. 

If you enjoyed this interview, please show your support by leaving a comment below or subscribing or liking the YouTube channel Animateducated ! 

The Ron Husband Interview

As a young kid, Ron Husband loved to draw and his High School art teacher got him to start drawing quick sketches from life in a sketchbook. He did and started filling up every sketchbook he owned. He majored in art and won the Scholastic Arts national competition as well as played varsity football for Monrovia High.

While taking a class at Art Center in Los Angeles, Ron met Disney Imagineering and teacher, Sam McKim who got him an interview with Eric Larson at Walt Disney Studios. Larson was in charge of recruiting for the Walt Disney animation training program.

Ron had a portfolio which wasn't acceptable, but he was able to deliver 3 of his sketchbooks from High School filled with quick sketches. In 1975, Ron was accepted into the program and would eventually become the first African American animator working at Disney.

From 1975 to 2008, Ron animated on 19 Disney animated films and still keeps a sketchbook to this day. To find out more about him, check out the Animateducated interview on YouTube.

To learn more about Ron Husband's work, here's a link to his current blog and how to get his book, Quick Sketching. 

If you enjoyed this post and would like to show your support, please leave a comment below or subscribe to the Animateducated Youtube channel!

The Ron and John Interview

I'm preparing for another big interview, this time with the directors of Disney classics like The Great Mouse Detective, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Princess and the Frog and Moana. 

The dynamic duo of Ron Clements and John Musker.

I will be recording the interview this Wednesday if the weather is right and posting it later to the Animateducated YouTube channel which you are a subscriber of or should be!

It was also Ruthie Thompson's 110th birthday!

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. 

If you enjoy it, please subscribe to the Animateducated 

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

Winsor McCay

I feels good to finally go through these boxes in my garage and clean up the place for a change. As I mentioned before, I have collected a lot of articles of interest, long before the internet was available, and will post them for all to see, enjoy and learn from somewhere in the Animateducated blog. Its kinda of a Information yard sale, all I ask is that you click on the ads to let me know you appreciate this blog.

So here's another interesting tid bit about Winsor McCay, the grand daddy of animation from Cartoonist Profiles.

Enjoy,

 

Well there you have it, here's McCay's early animated film, How a Mosquito Operates (1912) based on the comic strip in the article above...

Here's a link to another article I found in that same box.

Thank You!

Sergio Pablos 2020 Interview

My first interview with Sergio Pablos was back in 2016, just before Klaus was pitched to Netflix. You can see the posted interview by clicking here.

Klaus was nominated for an Academy Award in 2020 and during the Covid-19 situation, I was able to set up a Zoom interview with Sergio from his SPA Studios in Madrid, Spain. Enjoy the interview below and please share it with a friend!

If you enjoyed this interview, please leave a comment below or subscribe to see past and future interviews on YouTube channel Animateducated! 

And one more thing! 

Do you have any questions for the next interview with Don Hahn? Leave your questions in the comment section below!

Two Acting cousins

If you want to be an Animator, you got to have some acting skills. Think about it, if you are animating a character either in Maya or in Harmony, you need to be able to create a performance and understand how your character will act or react in different situations.

I interviewed my two cousins, who are not animators, but one is a well known Shakespearean actor in the Bay area named James Carpenter.

James was recently in an online play using Zoom. Check out the link below to this new form of online theater.
https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/1_MtILep_GBLS6PsuETRULQ5Hb_Vaaa82nRN_vNYmRxhfMk7Psmf2o3_6ChLShKs?startTime=1589050830000

And then there's Jeremy Foley, who began his acting character in a SeaWorld video with Samu which lead to him escaping from Dante's Peak. He made the transition from child actor to adult filmmaker and talks more about some of the films he and his wife Sara have made together.

If you enjoyed these interviews, please leave a comment below or subscribe to the Animateducated YouTube channel. 

The next interview will be with Sergio Pablos, the writer and director of Klaus, which was nominated for an Academy Award this year and is bringing back traditional 2d animation!

Nancy Beiman and Tee Hee!

Nancy Beiman is an well known author of several animation books and an independent animator. I found a few articles she wrote in Cartoonist Profiles back around 1989, early in her career...

Hope you enjoyed this article which I have been carrying around with me for years, just so you could read it. Perhaps one day, I will get a chance to interview Nancy on Animateducated. Before that happens, feel free to share this with a friend or subscribe to the Animateducated YouTube channel!

 

Summer Online Animation Sckool

For years I have been teaching Animation classes during the Fall and Spring semesters, but I've always wanted to have an Animation Summer class. 

And so, this June, I'm offer an online animation class teaching the hidden secrets of 2D animation and how to use Toon Boom Harmony to anyone interested in signing up. 

Click here to receive more infomation. 

Any questions? Please leave a comment below!

New Animateducated Interviews

Here's the most recent interview with Amber Aviles who explains how she became a voice actor and gives a lot of advice to anyone interested in becoming one.
https://youtu.be/paV2lBN86fM

While we have all been staying at home these days, I have had to learn how to teach a few online animation classes which has required me to create various tutorials for the students. These include:

Animating a Head Turn using Toon Boom Harmony.
https://youtu.be/SoBRf72Dk8c

Animating an animation "Take" using Toon Boom Harmony.
https://youtu.be/owQ8ATezyI4

Setting up different layers and adding a camera to create depth and motion in Harmony.
https://youtu.be/pi_Cq3IjaXQ

In addition, I have managed to post a few new interviews to the Animateducated channel on Youtube.

David Brain Interview 
https://youtu.be/RrWIg4NIlDg

Take a look at the new interviews on the YouTube channel and let me know you enjoyed it.

Working from Home

Here's a very interesting Zoom meeting of the Creators Society and the recent online lecture about working from home in animation. Click here to watch it.

https://vimeo.com/406247820/a8a87e8675?ct=t(creators-society-work-from-home-2020_no-show)&mc_cid=6b3c48d32d&mc_eid=9f0b2af90c

As a third of the world's population goes into lock-down, "Work from Home" becomes the new normal for many. Not everyone can work, to their full capacity, from home but artists working in animation can largely do everything they need from home. 

In 2019 most job adverts read as 'onsite' so many people don't know how to work effectively from home or how to setup a workflow for it. But for the coming months, and probably longer, we can expect to see 'remote' or 'WFH' as an increasingly common option. 

We're gathering some of the most experienced artists and animated filmmakers for this panel to talk about the ups and downs of working from home. Tips and tricks for making the most of it and making it sustainable for artists and the companies that employ them.