In this second installment of "Film Editing TV Cartoons", Robert Birchard describes Disney Television Animation's rapid growth and growing corporate structure. ... TAG Interview with Bob Birchard Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Mr Birchard tells of meetings that didn't start until company executives had entered the conference room in the right pecking order, and a bureaucracy that became steadily larger as the division gained more success. Note: You'll find the complete i...
Jan 19, 2015
Robert Birchard, speaking at Cinecon. TAG Interview with Bob Birchard Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Roberts S. Birchard has been an editor of television cartoons for almost forty years. In the early eighties, he broke into the animation business at a studio called Hanna-Barbera, and soon moved on to DIC Animation (where he found the hectic schedules and tight deadlines to be an interesting challenge). Bob was the supervisor of DIC's editorial department, but seven-day w...
Jan 16, 2015
Kelly Ward knows better than many the need to reinvent yourself ... TAG Interview with Kelly Ward Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Mr. Ward, you see, was a professional actor at a young age. He worked on stage, he worked in television, he worked in movies. And he was successful at it. But then he had the bad luck to grow older, and miss out on roles he earlier snagged with regularity. He relates that a casting director told him, "We don't need to hire you for the teenager'...
May 14, 2014
TAG Interview with Nick Ranieri Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link As the 21st century dawned, and Disney hand-drawn animation gave way to its CG cousin, Nik found himself in a quandary. Should he stick with pencil and paper? Or move on to the land of computers and pixels? ... In this final installment of Mr. Ranieri's TAG interview, Nik talks about animating on Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons , then returning to hand-drawn animation with Princess and the Frog . On lat...
Apr 28, 2014
Some Ranieri animation from "Beauty and the Beast". (Ignore the irritating commercial.) TAG Interview with Nick Ranieri Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link When Mr. Ranieri made his way to Burbank after finishing work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? , he had to prove himself as an animator all over again. Which in a short time he did. ... Nik here discusses the challenges working on the Disney blockbusters of the nineties, and how it took awhile to gain the confidence of differen...
Apr 25, 2014
TAG Interview with Nick Ranieri Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Nik Ranieri has had a long, fruitful career as a top-flight animator on hit cartoon features that reach back twenty-five years .... Nik developed an interest in drawing at a tender age. His older brother liked to draw, and Nik liked to emulate his older brother. Although his sibling moved on to other pursuits, Nike stayed with the drawing thing, which led him to Sheridan College's animation program, and then ...
Apr 25, 2014
TAG Interview with Mychal Symka Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Mychal Simka resides in a somewhat different space than many animation creators. He rewrites and reconfigures animated features, turning them into different movies ... Mychal was raised in Anaheim, and his mother worked at Disneyland for a lot of years. (Mr. Simka went to the park a lot as a kid, and continues to visit regularly.) With that background, you might expect he would have ended up animating at Disn...
Apr 18, 2014
TAG Interview with Joanna Romersa Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Joanna Romersa has clear memories of working on the Disney lot in the first weeks of her animation career. She was training to be an inker, and the studio had Lady and the Tramp in production. But Disney's had more than its first Cinemascope cartoon feature going on back then. ... Jack Webb's Dragnet was shooting on one of the newly-built sound stages and a mockup for "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" for some new amu...
Apr 09, 2014
TAG Interview with Randy Myers Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link After Randy left Warner Bros. Feature Animation (and Randy sort of had to, since the studio shut down), he moved to a new studio called Cartoon Network, where Genndy Tartakovsky, a Cal Arts classmate, was creating and directing Dester's Lab and the Power Puff Girls . And Mr. Myers, his animator's background standing him in good stead, quickly became a director of television cartoons. ... Since then, Randy has ...
Mar 20, 2014
TAG Interview with Randy Myers Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Director and animator Randy Myers is nothing if not persistent. When he got turned down by Cal Arts for a spot in their animation program, he applied a second time. When the school declined to accept him a second time, Mr. Myers started taking art classes in earnest, redid his portfolio, and finally found success ... But Randy Myers was a young man in a hurry. "It was the early nineties," he says, "and there w...
Mar 18, 2014
Reid Scott ( Veep, My Boys ) is voicing the lead for Turbo F.A.S.T. , which debuts on NetFlix December 24th. We had the opportunity to ask him about his voice-work for the show, and so grabbed it. ... TAG Interview with Reid Scott Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link We talk about how Mr. Scott came to the project, how he and the other actors work, and what kind of input they have as the lead thespians. We cover a goodly amount of ground in twelve minutes....
Dec 17, 2013
A few days ago we sat down with veteran animator Frans Vischer for a discussion about the book business ... TAG Interview with Frans Vischer Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Mr. Visher talked to us two years ago ( here and here ), about life in the cartoon industry. This go-round, we wanted to spend more time talking about the printed page, and how a veteran animator goes about building a second career with his own characters inside lavishly illustrated childrens' books. T...
Nov 08, 2013
TAG Interview with Don Lusk Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Here in Part III, Don Lusk and I wrap up the first interview and unspool a second, recorded a week later. (I did a wee bit of research after #1, and wanted to find out more about his work at Disney, in particular his animation on Fantasia ) ... Mr. Lusk was not happy with the color work on the whirling, pirouetting fish of "The Nutcracker Suite" (you can listen to what he says about it, I won't spoil it for you h...
Oct 30, 2013
TAG Interview with Don Lusk Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link After leaving Walt Disney Productions at the start of the 60s, Don worked for Walter Lantz and then Hanna-Barbera. And at H-B he found a long-term professional home, and remained there for thirty-plus years. ... I asked him whether he preferred Disney or Hanna-Barbera; he told me that he had a much happier time at Joe and Bill's place, because he was better respected and made to feel like "one of the family." Tho...
Oct 29, 2013
TAG Interview with Don Lusk Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Happy 100th! Cartoon veteran Don Lusk (animator, story man, and director .. from Disney on Hyperion to Hanna-Barbera on Cahuenga) turns turns ten decades old today. To celebrate, we present you with the Don Lusk 100th birthday interview, which covers his career from Disney in 1933, to Hanna-Barbera in 1993. (Sixty years of work seems to be sufficient, wouldn't you say?) ... I spoke to Don on the big office speake...
Oct 28, 2013
Here's the second half of Mr. Hickner's audio podcast, and most of the interview in the video version (new camera equipment was a tad glitchy; new processes to learn): TAG Interview with Steve Hickner Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Steve arrived at Disney Feature Animation while The Black Cauldron was in work, and plunged into work on the production. After that came The Great Mouse Detective , in the middle of which Michael Eisner, Frank Wells and Jeffrey Katzenberg arri...
Oct 09, 2013
TAG Interview with Steve Hickner Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Director and story artist Steve Hickner has been in the animation business since Lou Scheimer headed up Filmation (where Steve got his first animation job) and Disney Feature Animation in the Time Before Jeffrey. Steve has worked at DreamWorks Animation since its founding. In a way, he was at DreamWorks Animation before it was DWA ... In the early days of his career, Mr. Hickner never allowed grass to grow u...
Oct 08, 2013
TAG Interview with Tom Sito - 2 Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link College prof, feature director, animator and board artist Tom Sito continues his history of CGI: ... Most of 1985 was spent trying to find a buyer for the Graphics Group [Pixar], ten months of meetings and entertaining offers from buyers as varied as Seimens, Hallmark, Japanese manga publishers Shogakukan, and the makers of Silly Putty. ... When talks with Steve Jobs commenced, on December 9, 1985, papers wer...
Jun 13, 2013
TAG Interview with Tom Sito - 2 Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Tom Sito guides us through CGI's halting start (and all the stumbles that occurred along the way) ... all the way up to its dynamic present. ... ... Cornell University established its Department of Computer Science in 1965. It trained many who would figure prominently in CG, like Michael Wahrman, Marc Levoy and RIchard Weinberg. In the lat 1980s Levoy and Weinberg did research into digital paint ... At Ohio S...
Jun 12, 2013
TAG Interview with Tom Sito - 2 Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link TAG's President Emeritus Tom Sito (who is also an animator, director, storyboard artist and college professor) has written a fine book on the history of Computer Generated Imagery: Computer graphics (or CG) has changed the way we experience the art of moving images. Computer graphics is the difference between Steamboat Willie and Buzz Lightyear, between ping pong and PONG. It began in 1963 when an MIT graduat...
Jun 11, 2013
At the May 28th General Membership Meeting, TAG presented a panel discussion on "Investing for Retirement" featuring Timothy C. Metcalf and Timothy P. Cronin from Wells Fargo Advisors. The talk covered a lot of ground, and there were some lively and provocative questions from Animation Guid Members ... which can be heard at the link below .... TAG Panel Discussion - Investing for Retirement Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Tim Cronin is a Senior Vice President with WFA, an...
Jun 05, 2013
David Rich is an actor, comedian and filmmaker. TAG Interview with David Rich Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link In 2010, Mr Rich began filming a non-fiction movie entitled Actor? , which explores the acting craft through the eyes of Ed Asner, Dee Wallace and numerous others. From the start, David Rich intended large sections of the non-fiction movie to have a complementary animated story weaving around the live-action ... Actor? is filled with entertaining interviews, but t...
May 11, 2013
TAG Interview with David Block Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link David Block was among the earlier applicants to Walt Disney productions feature animation training program, but he was far from a beginner. He had already broken in with Chuck Jones and Abe Lebitow, had already assisted Art Babbit on the Richard Williams feature Ragged Ann and Andy . Disney, however, turned out to be a career track that lasted decades ... Dave worked on Frank Thomas's and Ollie Johnston's last...
Apr 10, 2013
TAG Interview with David Block Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link Animator, director and producer David Block never gave a thought to making a career in animation until he got to college. Then, during his freshman year he saw a re-issue of Disney's Fantasia , and knew that sitting at a desk making characters come to life would be his professional calling. ... But it didn't turn out to be easy. At the time, there were few animation programs happening at colleges, so Dave had ...
Apr 09, 2013
