ANIMATOR magazine article 1984

Eric Goldberg talks about Ken Harris

LINK to YouTube clip

Once...

....there were two students of animation at the University of Essen called Holger and Dietmar. They were taught by a certain Hans Bacher who one day approached them – as if it was the most normal thing in the world – with the words: „You two should make a show reel and shop it around in London“

In 1990, London was the place where „it happened“. Disney made „Treasure of the Lamp“. Universal was working on „American Tail“ and then there was Pizzazz, Felix Films, Oscar Grillo's Klacto and many others in the commercial business.

Well, in proper „deutscher Arbeitseinstellung“ Holger and I went to work. Today you would copy your portfolio on a DvD, in 1990 we cut and assembled everything on 16 mm film. After that, we needed to pay a laboratory to transfer the film to a U-matic tape. I remember this cost being so high, that we only got one copy.

The next step in „deutscher Gründlichkeit“ was to phone the different studios in London to make appointments, only to find out that there was a much more relaxed atmosphere there than with german studios. Basically we were told to just „knock on the door“ when we were in London.

In 1990, this worked not only for the small studios that did commercials, but also for the feature film companies. Already on our first day we had appointments at Disney („Sorry guys, we are closing the studio here“) and Dick Purdom. They had a job that they would offer to one of us, all we had to do is duel ourselves outside for it. Oscar Grillo and Eric Goldberg advised us to show our stuff to Dick Williams. Williams wasn't officially hiring, but they had heard that he would be looking for people soon. Through Hans Bacher we were familiar with Williams' work and we had seen several inspiring documentaries, one of them about his masterpiece „The Thief and the Cobbler“ - but while dreaming of working in London was in order, dreaming of ever working on the „Thief“ seemed outrageous.

We showed our tape at Universal and got an offer to start as inbetweeners on „American Tail“ for the astronomical sum of 250 pounds per week. Could it get any better? We were so upbeat about the opportunity to work in „proper“ animation that we decided to go for broke. We took the tube to Camden Town and walked up to the famous building on Royal College Street – No. 138. Our flamboyant ringing of the doorbell produced a slightly irritated Ian Cook, Williams' production coordinator, who greeted us with a brief „Mr. Williams does not meet any applicants“. We were further told, that we could leave our tape in the studio, with no promise that Mr. Williams would actually take a look at it. „Almost no chance“ seemed better than „no chance“, so we handed our tape over. After the door closed, we realized that we had in fact given away our one and only tape and we were now stuck with 2 days in London and nothing to show if we wanted to apply elsewhere. Bit of a bummer.

I don't remember how we killed the next days, waiting for the flight back, but at least we tried and phoned 138 times and again to see if there was any feedback from the maestro. Alas, it was the answering machine every time and finally it was Friday, our plane was scheduled to leave in a few hours and we decided to try and enter the lion's den once more to at least retrieve our precious tape. Once again our not-so-flamboyant ringing of the doorbell was answered by Ian Cook and before we were finished uttering some nonsense about planes and flights and our only tape, Ian Cook said the words I shall never forget: „Mr Williams wants to see you“.

To sum up the next 30 minutes: heartbeat at 120, walking on clouds, holy choirs singing, cherubs blowing trumpets, the world seen through a soft focus lens, a grin on the face like an idiot.

Somewhere in there we met Dick and Roy and got a job as assistant animators „starting tomorrow if you want“. Oh boy, did we want to – but the small issue of having to break this news to my newly-wed wife and arranging things at the university and around the house delayed our start a little bit.

Later Hans Bacher told us that Dick had called him up to ask if he could recommend anybody else. Hans knew 2 other German guys from Muenster, Andreas Wessell-Therhorn and Michael Schlingmann. They also went to London to see Williams, were hired and we all started to work on the Thief on March 5^th, 1990. Andreas and Holger entered the hallowed halls of 138 to work there and Michael and I were among the first to occupy desks in „The Forum“. And the rest is...as they say...history. On which we now look back, 20 years later.

The Animator's Survival Kit - Expanded Edition

The major text book of the animation trade has just been updated. In the DVD version of "The Animator's Survival Kit", Dick had already added more material than what had been in the first edition of the book. Now the good news is that after finishing the DVDs, Dick went back to work on a new "Expanded Edition" of the book, updating it with the additional material.The added material is nicely organized at the end of the book:
Here is an example page with a beautiful analysis of animal motion.
You don't want to miss the lectures on the DVDs, where Dick talks you through everything, but the book is indispensable for animators in their day to day work. I'm glad I have it in my book shelf.

Thief flying across mountain

Happy 2010! It's been a while since my last post and even longer since I posted about one of my scenes. (Link to "Thief climbs up witch mountain").
I will jump ahead several scenes to the last scene of the flying sequence that I animated. I've recently found some slides that I just scanned in and which I would like to share.
In the scenes leading up to this one I had animated the Thief doing all sorts of air acrobatics. For the grand finale Dick had asked me to animate the Thief flying across the witch mountain. I remember that I really enjoyed drawing the background layout for this one. Dick had the idea of using Roy's strobing trick again.In this scene with the Cobbler Roy had spaced the round spiral elements corresponding to the spacing of the BG pan and then rotated the spirals so that they appeared to move. Dick wanted the hands to appear moving, as if they were trying to grab the Thief as he was flying by. So preparing for the layout - the first thing I did was to animate a hand doing a grabbing motion. I put registration marks on these animation drawings and xeroxed them several times, increasing and then decreasing in size to create the illusion of a round mountain. I had animated the Thief already and line-tested him with a BG-pan that consisted just of rough wiggly lines to determine how long the drawing for the pan would have to be. It turned out that it would be one of the longest pans used in the film. Then I started placing the hands on the layout corresponding to the spacing of the pan increments, just as Roy had done it, but with one difference. Dick didn't want the effect to be as exact as in the Cobbler scene, so I worked out a stagger pattern, so that the hands appeared to be shaking a bit.
Inga Davelouse turned my layout drawing into the final BG painting that you see below. She painted it in sections that were then taped together.
Here are the people from the checking department shooting the scene for a video test.

Witch swinging around the mountain

Recent reader question:
I couldn't find anything on the blog about this particular piece of animation, which only recently caught my eye: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRPPC2uaoEw#t=2m21s
There are a few quick shots of the side of the mountain- we see it "spinning" as the camera moves- and there really seems to be a lot of detail in every frame. Would you know who was involved with it?

I'm not sure. This scene was done before my time on the film, but I would guess that Roy Naisbitt worked out the animating BG and Dick did the witch animation. If anybody knows - please leave a comment.

Soho Square pictures

Hans Bacher posted more photos. LINK

Miscellaneous Production Art

Rough layout of the messenger by Art Babbitt (?)

Roy and Art photos

Hans Bacher has posted some photos of animation artists. Here is the link to his blog post: CREATIVE WORKSPACES 1
He said that there are more to come in the near future.
In 1981 he met Art Babbitt in the Hollywood QUARTETT film studio, where Art was animating on THE THIEF:


This one of Roy Naisbitt he took in the Soho Square studio in 1987:

On his blog there are also 2 photos of Dick W. that were taken during the production of Roger Rabbit.

On Monday the 27th of April, the Marc Davis lecture on Animation took place at the Academy headquarters in Los Angeles.It turned out to be the most popular animation evening so far and really was a whos who of the industry.Concluding the over 3 hour long program of lectures, film clips and panels was a video message from Dick Williams.First almost timid and humble, he said he wished he could have been at the actual event. Starting to talk about Milt Kahl though, he quickly showed his usual passion . He acknowledged that knowing Milt and having been able to call him from time to time, was a highlight of his life.
Apparently, he always tried to make the never humble Milt admit to being the World's greatest animator.Milt kinda grumbled and didn't commit.Dick recalled the great friendship between Milt and Marc Davis, a kind of admiration society for two.Once they had an argument and Milt shouted after Marc... you cant even draw your own A$%. Marc returned to Milt's office a little later with a giant drawing of exactly that.On one occasion, Dick showed some 20 minutes of Thief footage at the Lucas ranch and had invited Milt to come along. After the screening, some Lucas people excitedly inquired about who had made this and were told that it was Dick's work. They proclaimed him to be the World's greatest animator and Dick turned to Milt and said " No, that is the World's greatest animator" to which Milt kinda nodded. Dick got his admittance of greatness finally when he talked to Milt in '87 and finally made him say that he indeed was the best animator.Two days later, he passed away. Dick freely admitted crying a lot and he said it was especially sad when he realized he cried over the fact that he would no longer be able to call the great man and chat.
It was a fitting and heartfelt tribute from one artist to another. A perfect ending to that evening and a chance for us to see Dick, albeit on video, and be part of this celebration.