TALKING ABOUT A WISH COME TRUE…

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We received notification that OUR WORLD was one of FOUR finalists in the animated short category at the Beaufort Film Festival- a part of a four day event called THE BEAUFORT KALEIDOSCOPE in beautiful town Beaufort, South Carolina - less than an hour from Savannah.

Beaufort has a rich film history as a location with THE BIG CHILL, THE GREAT SANTINI, FOREST GUMP, PRINCE OF TIDES and THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER being shot in that area. In the BIG CHILL, when Kevin Kline and friends take their morning jog - it is through downtown Beaufort, SC.

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Here’s a look at one of their posters….

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A recent OUR WORLD card…just found out last week the producer and good friend Alexandra Ohlsen is engaged to be married.

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Raul O Leary awaits his turn for IN SEARCH OF OSAMA to hit the big screen…

Hello.

I just cleared out my COMMENT box and the 2000 plus spam messages- that plus the 1200 + from the Christmas Holidays and it is NO FUN!

If you have a comment please email me at lanimate@bellsouth.net and I will transfer it to my page.

Thanks…

Here is Ty B. bear in Central Park skating with pretzels, a hot dog - in the bg in a subway and a carriage ride thru the Park

Okay, so I’m a bit late with the New year greetings. We spent Christmas and New Years in New York City with our son and his wife.

It was the first time we had two weeks to explore NYC - most of the time it was quick trips to recruit or use post-production facilities. As the saying goes, “I love New York”. We had a wonderful two weeks exploring Queens and Manhattan. No better place to be in the U.S. during the holidays than a large city.

This first sketch is an early compilation of our New York activities.

It did snow for about 15 minutes - just enough for us to take a walk around the neighborhood

We stayed in Astoria, Queens and it was an easy 10 minute subway ride into “Midtown”. It reminded us so much of Europe- we were smack, dab in the middle of the Greek section - it was aterrific holiday.

Astoria abounds with wonderful Greek cafes- this is an early morning sketch!

We had a couple of meals in Little Italy at Cafe Sorrento. The first was with our family and the second was with an Irish friend visiting during the holidays.

Here is a napkin sketch of Ty B. Bear in Little Italy- note the flying cannolis!

Since we returned on the 3rd - we have been up to our necks in work and projects.
2008 looks like a great year!

Even more animated…

Here is another Christmas bumper we did as part of a package of holiday bumpers….long ago. The Currier and Ives look was achieved by our art director/ B.G. artist, Michael Lowery. These were early in his career and Michael always did a terrific job of translating into color some of our wacky ideas.

By the way…that final shot trucks out from a 10 field to a 23 field on the Christmas bulb.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!

This is a pencil test of the TONY sequence from the animated film OUR WORLD. It was not included in the final because we had enough sequences between longer pieces of animation. If OUR WORLD is an ongoing project- then it will be added later…

All of my animation was shot in FLIPBOOK software by Digicel.

This is RUFF animation and the timing was changed in certain areas after this test…see if you can find what we changed…

Tony is based on my former producer Tony Ames- principle percussionist of the National Symphony in Washington, D.C.

Tony doesn’t really look like this- except for his “go for it” attitude in life. My BEST producer EVER!!!

Sometime last century, a small animation studio on the outskirts of Washington D.C. was a hub of activity. This animated clip motivated their entire process. It was the first animation produced by the Animation House, Inc. in Alexandria, Virginia.

The staff grew from 1 to 6 in about three weeks and on to about 40 artists. keep in mind this was back in the animation stone age when animation was draw by pencil in hand, those drawings inked onto cels and those cels with their beautiful hand-painted backgrounds shot under a camera stand one frame at a time….ahhhhhhhhhh, the good old days.

Freddy’s Christmas was the first animation produced. It was a huge test, a leap of faith, a coming together of kindred animated souls for the art form. Everything seemed so simple then.

It took less than two weeks to animate, paint cels, do backgrounds, do the music, voice (yes, thats me singing off key- on purpose…really), sound effects and mix, edt- out the door.

That was a great time…very special…my thanks to everyone who participated

Raul as depicted in a cartoon sketch on Tybee Island, GA.

Here is a cartoon sketch of a filmmaker friend of mine Raul O Leary. We first worked together on the North/South of Ireland project ANIMAGIC! The idea of ANIMAGIC spawned from the CINEMAGIC Film Festival in Belfast and Derry (known as Londonderry to some folks.)

Anyhow, Raul was instrumental to the animation that appeared between the animated sequences. Raul was GREAT! He never complained and just did his work.

The cartoon sketch here depicts him in his new role from his new live-action project IN SEARCH OF OSAMA.

Hopefully, I can get a hold of some footage and place it on the site or give a link to his site.

Raul spent three years on his quest, it is ALL shot POV (point of view).

Some more info on character design and posing

A pose with Ty B. Bear

Here’s the breakdown of the character with some tips on pushing poses!

A breakdown of the character construction with some posing suggestions

This weekend was a trip back into a time warp.

Here a sketch from a while back- after the Animation House, Inc. days

We had a wonderful visit with my old producer, Tony Ames and his wife. We met in Alexandria, Virgina - the birthplace of the Animation House, Inc. (AH).
Tony is the best producer I ever worked with- just amazing energy and vision and an all around great guy!

We had a great chat and covered every thing from the old AH days to politics to current trends and projects. We hope to work together again some day…
At one point, I drove over to the old studio on Powhattan Street and found the building (brand new when we moved in 1985) was completely demolished in favor of a new span over route 1 at the North end of Olde Towne Alexandria. Unfazed, we drove to thr original site of the AH - and, it too was demolished to make way for a new structure. The heritage of the AH was gone- except for folks like Dave Vallone, Al Rosen, Michael Lowery and myself who are still in the biz.

We had a great time at the AH- in fact, I helped intro Dave V. to his wife, Leigh - the first of 7 couples I have helped introduce through work or classes.

Well - everything changes!

Squash McStretch celebrates his 11th birthday, September 5th

Happy Birthday Squash McStretch!

Eleven years ago today , Squash made his debut at the Disneyanna Convention in Orlando. I created him as an “educational character” for the Disney Institute. He was used in classes by Animation, Photography, TV, Culinary and Gardening around the Institute (now Saratoga Springs).

On September 5th, we decided to roll him out with his image on cels in our programs. One of our programs was a primer where participants would tour the four studios (preproduction, 2D animation, 3D animation and stop motion) while they learned about the animation process and then return to paint by hand a cel of Squash Mc Stretch. They went home with their cel, their paints and brushes.

Meanwhile at the Disneyanna convention, we taught versions of the animation classes and drew for the attendees.
A table was set up and I spent most of two days drawing Squash for folks - at times the lines were out the door.
Prior to the convention, Squash was run by the Legal department in Los Angeles and was deemed a “legal” Disney Character.

Squash, an Irish-American character, grew in stature. We placed him on our animation jackets, made pins, maquettes, three series of cels, used animation of him for special presentations, model sheets, handouts, named a conference room after him, had Squash images with room numbers on our offices and immortalized him in cement in a backstage area. In fact, a few months ago, someone drew a Squash cartoon on an open drawing pad in the activity room at Saratoga Springs (former site of the Institute’s animation studios).

As mentioned in an earlier post, Squash died off after I left the Institute.

At the moment, Squash is enjoying himself, living in a relaxed limbo on an island off the Georgia coast.

Happy Birthday Squash - you haven’t aged a day!

This video of Ward with Tom Snyder says a great deal about Ward and his passion for his family, his art and his trains. Ward never seemed to do anything halfway.

When I re-entered Art Center, a friend of mine James “Bud” Proctor sent me a package- an animation drawing table, my first. Bud never did anything halfway either…one afternoon a 70 pound crate arrived with the “table”. Bud had created a solid wood crate and packed the table inside it. The table was constructed from heavy sheet metal and featured 4 or 5 - 36 inch florescent tubes. There were three places for heavy 3 pronged plugs and a special fuse system built into the inside of the table. The table was made so a double pegged inking board could be inset to be flush with the table’s top surface. Two heavy metal braces cut to 45 degrees fit into the bottom of the device. It was, to say the least, an enormous state of the art piece tabletop of animation equipment.

Bud and I had met in a filmmaking class while I was stationed at Fort Myer in Virginia.

When I told him about Kimball, Bud came out for a visit. With him he brought his super 8mm Beaulieu camera. It was a wonderful movie camera and was as close to 16mm film as our budget would allow.

We decided we had to make a film about Ward Kimball and his trains. I spoke to Ward about it and he was more than happy to oblige. So…we were about to make a film about Ward and his trains!!!

We picked a day between my 2nd and 3rd terms and we paid a visit to Ward’s house. He lived in San Gabriel and his house was easy to spot…there was a full sized boxcar resting on a side rail on the front lawn – in fact, the film began with those first images. The camera cruised down a normal neighborhood street and it did a “down take” when it reached the boxcar at Kimball’s house.

Next, we cut to the boxcar’s door…which slid back - a fully dressed conductor with a white shock of hair and perfectly round glasses peered out in all directions and then leaped down out of the boxcar doorway 4 or 5 feet to the ground. Keep in mind at the time, Ward was somewhere about 65 years old…he landed perfectly and we were ready for the next scene. We were also very grateful that Ward had not damaged himself. It was then that Ward came up to us and exclaimed, “I can do it better”.

Six takes later, Ward was completely satisfied with his performance – all the while I kept thinking, “I am going be known as the guy who killed Ward Kimball!”

And so, the rest of the day proceeded just as before. We would suggest and film an action or shot and then Ward would have an idea on how to improve it. After a few scenes, we realized that Ward was now the director of this movie…and that was fine with us.

We shot footage of him as a conductor with his train station. We shot footage of him in his gray pin striped hat, overalls and red kerchief as an engineer and used it as a transition to move inside to his train collection. He had two rooms in his collection with American trains and one with European trains (with electrical currents to match both rooms). The trains he collected ranged from approximately 1875 to 1945.

With the camera’s close up lens we could get right down at track level to catch the action of the model trains. We did shoot some excellent footage in both rooms.

At the end of the day, we had Ward Kimball, his Grizzley Flats railroad and his toy train collection “in the can”.

When the super 8 film came back from the lab, I couldn’t wait to edit it. I did a cut of the film and sent it to Bud. Bud polished it up and added sound and effects and music to our footage. Our little project came out great! We captured prime Ward Kimball on film doing his train thing!

Unfortunately, over the years the film has vanished! I don’t know if Bud has it or Ward had it or if I had it. We kind of passed it around. In fact, I have lost track of James “Bud” Proctor. Jr. from Falls Church, Virginia and I don’t know where he is now.

If anyone finds him- please let me know. If I ever find that film again- I will post it on the internet.

Great memories of that day with Ward and Bud…

I may write more about Ward another time…

Still Animated!