Click the link to see the mov. It is a step down for size so it may not play properly at the right frame rate . Best to just pause it while it loads then get it over with quick. All the scene captures from below are from this one clip.
Had to reupload. I think it got corrupted . Hmmmmm.
So, Rover, then a bit of tin soldier from Nutcracker. I don't think many people saw that film and while I only was there a few months I both animated and posed (mostly the end sequence where the mouse king attacks Clara, the finals of my Claras were done by the brilliant Chris Sauve, I'll talk about him more later ) . The voice is Peter OToole and the mumbling he is doing is something he said was a typical British military officer standard. I love when actors do that , it's so much better than a perfectly clean voice track. You can hang things on it.
A couple scenes from Rocka Doodle. Yeah I know you haven't seen that but they were there . My last film with Bluth ( I did Land and ll Dogs) and I left early because my mom got sick and I went to Disney right after. Loved working with Pomeroy, such a positive person , as many people discovered working on George awesome person to work with. I think he is on the Simpsons movie now. It was funny watching him act out the Chanticlar dancing , he actually is quite good. He had the Elvis thing down.
Ok, the green flying superhero, Weedman. Lol, oh you are thinking weed as in pot right ? No, real weeds and dandelions. Ok , it was a commercial I did (oh, and it's grease pencil on cell by the way, try that some time if you want to go insane, (this is why I had assistants with beautiful line ) and I thought it was weird so there it is. Obviously I was going through a wipe drawing phase ( known as the 3 drawing blur ) . Really tacky in grease pencil , aggh. Ha, enjoy the little transformer thing at the end. Yes , they were big then and the client ..... wanted .... kid appeal ? Oh god, I have no idea. None. Zip , zilch, nada. Whatever it will be like one of life's great mysteries like UFO's. Commercials are viciously fast and this was no exception. I think it was like the very first one I ever did. Yeah it i really hard to look back , I think I had to do it in week.
A couple scenes from the Grinch promo I did (no sound) . Sorry folks , that is all I could find,I think the original is on U-matic , somewhere. I am pretty sure I coped out on the final scene too and didn't take it far enough but I have no way of telling , live and learn. The premise was about just how long the Grinch could maintain his new found love of humanity with all the awful things that happen to us every day. Oh , what you think this is a terrible idea to do to a classic AGAIN ? Oh Bambi 7 is ok though =) You ain't seen nothin hunny buns. Working commercially is the test of just how much of that you can take. Anyway, I tried to stay as close to the original drawing wise as I could. Ok, the birds suck because they aren't Suess like. It was a test so, you get to do everything wrong there. I think the Grinch translated well for not having been copying the Jones/Karloff thing (though if I'd had a chance I would have loved doing that design, Jones was brilliant ) .
Next one you saw the rotation on the house mom earlier, I did his out of my house for Pascal Blais in Montreal. Roger rabbit was big so it kind of has that Benny the Cab thing going. I'm not including every scene I did just to keep this all small or er ,... smaller.
A little All Dogs, I did a lot of Charlie walking ( read A LOT 0 WALKING ) and while the crowds were roto based (thank god) the doggies weren't. My only secret for animating quadruped is do the front legs first, everything else follows ,mine suck but they got passed so shut up ok. Love the coat scene (I called it the chest bursting Alien scene) , was both painful and fun. You can hurt your brain trying to figue it out threee characters riding each other. Don't belie me ? Go on, try it ! Dan K did the layouts for that section and kept telling me to get Charlies mouth open wider for this one vowel . During the one word he wanted his jaw flat against his chest , I look at it now and I still didn't do it enough. Funny looking back. The horror, the horror.
Some Zack/ Crysta FG scenes. A few Batty scenes , I boarded that rap section with Bill as well.
Hunchback, I only got a chance to do Clopin . Well plus Pheobbie, the horses and all the soldiers, my first official scene after sitting in solitude for 8 month as they reworked the film, a good time to pick up a heroin addiction don't you think ) . Now I wasn't to find out later but James Baxter (who totally LOVES drawing horses) thought that I should do it because he thought I would enjoy it (yeah James , one horse would have been excellent, four with riders , well how much enjoyment can one person have, well then it is Spirit precursor ) . I believe I walked by his room, stuck my head in and mumbled my curse of revenge. Sadly, I loved doing it , it took a while though . Sickening business, isn't it ? And no, thats a fraction of the scenes. The Esmeraldas there too.
Some Pink Panther for Kroyers
A little ELD Miguel (James did the Tulio) .
Osmosis mayor , Shatners voice, yes , before Over the Hedge. Oh and that's my OJ too.
Asterix in America , the reason I included the water sequence we did in our apartment in TO is that before Mr K's "tradigital" statement we had all long since working with cg and 2D combinations ( Bill Kroyer was giving us cg plots back on Ferngully in 91) . I believe this was the first time water had been done like this and it was done for Gerhard Hahn studio's in Germany. Got a lot of press ........ over ... in Europe =) I like the fact they were trying to make the water fit the cartoon and not the reverse. Gerhard is an amazing man. Very forward thinking, was cutting tons of series while we were doing this simultaneously. Oh, and I had one of the other satellite studio's attack me to the company for PAYING MY CREW TOO MUCH MONEY ! I feel guilty over that but , well, I will live. And ... uh .... so will my crew.
I did Obelix, Asterix , the Indian princess (got to do yet another power up from drinking Getafixes exlirs), Getafix , the medicine man and a whole lot of bg characters, boarded and did some series designs while doing that . Animators on it were Chris Sauve , Jamie Oliff , Wendy, Jamie Mason , Morgan Ginsberg , Dave B and myself Chuck even did a scene later . The bear in the Obelix drug sequence is exclusively Chris Sauve except for one scene Jamie O did where he is rounding the corner ( boarded that entire seq as I remember ). Now that is a bit of a strange one as it did not exist in the books, not for more than a panel or two. I just thought it would be funny to have the bear land on Ob's shoulders.
The Indian village being destroyed was John Williamson . Oh yeah the second scene (of the Buffalo) hallucination is the amazing Mark Koetsier. Probably one of the most under rated animators ever he is boarding at DWs. Beautiful timing. Oh speaking of, must include his website for Jet Pack Benny . http://www.jetpackbenny.com
Ok, last but not least , the football game, my first Asterix. Sadly the animation director at the time wanted it more economic so he just pulled out every other drawing whenever he found ones. I mean you are doing an action sequence right, two's are for losers I say =) Screw them !
So that is it for the moment. Please no one rip out your eyes , it's not my fault. You were warned beatch !
Oh and if you click the tinybun.com sign at the top it will take you to some LTBI stuff. Like you want to after this.
12 comments:
This is Awesome!
There are scenes from films I didn't know you worked on, but that I have loved since I was a kid!
Dave your work is amazing!
"Fern Gully", and "All Dogs Go to Heaven", are wonderful films that I loved watching over, and over again as a kid. I still love them to this day.
Thanks Bethie =) They may not have done really well financially but they were worthy I think. The most fun about doing this is when kids tell you they liked it. That is ...... everything.
Hey Dave - Great stuff seeing the old stuff from Dublin on All Dogs and Rock-a-Doodle. I remember hanging out in your office a lot as I was assisting stuff Tom Roth. Either that or I was kidded from Alain Costa when he'd answer the phone when I'd be asking for Tom and I'd say "Tahm" in my Chicago accent and he couldn't understand me. Nice animation!! Yes, and people still say they loved those films. I just put an outtake of mine from Iron Giant on my blog.
Thanks Dave. You're Brilliant-er though.
Funny about that Kev. Gotta check out your giant blog =)
Well on this blog Chris , I'm the decider and you are Brilliant-er !
Well, thanks again. Shannon did the great clean-up on all that stuff. Those bear scenes and the other scenes I did that aren't on this movie here are interesting to me because they represent the best animation I could do at that point in my career. You allowed me a lot of freedom, and I had complete control over every clean-up and inbetween. So there is no one to blame but me!
All the time at Disney I was never able to do anything better than that Asterix stuff, I think I was finally able to do better on Iron Giant, once again a lot of freedom and control.
Freedom and Control, Dave. Is that the key?
You taught me all I needed to know about feature quality animation, back when I was just a young'un. Bob Jaques taught me the cartoony stuff, you taught me the feature stuff, and it was all I needed to know.
So, you're Brilliant-er-er.
Shannon did a terrific job as well, as did Bev Lehman, Lynn Yamazaki ,Jan Burton , Michelle and of course the god, James McCrimmon (oh that was his close up eye scene of Obelix, I forgot he animated ), Claude did some pickup, Jesus that guy is fast and his line is like buttah . Frankly it was just a terrific crew . Oh and Pete who came in and did our production work (scene tracking ) once a week for free (though I tossed him a couple K at the end, he deserved it ) .
Both Maurice Noble and Chuck Jones told me that the greatest thing that happened to them and their crew was to be completely ignored by the studio. We did a lot with our tiny crew in few months. I don't think we had a single scene turned down. And you know something Chris, I am as proud as hell of you all as I could possibly be. Taught you , oh heck no , you all taught me. You, James , Jamie, OH GOD, Darren Vandenberg (what a terrific guy, excellent animator), he had some problems and no one would hire him, but we did.and he was brilliant I totally forgot to mention him. Oh and Doug Bennet did some great scenes too. Orsla would come over with Johnny when he came to shoot his scenes and we talked for hours. Now she is gone , it's all hard to believe. John Collins to , so tragic. It was a lot of work to do on our own but we loved it.
A lot of our crew like Bev were booted out of Nelvana because they were moms and needed to be with their babies ( I had moms breast feeding in our living room and it was actually really beautiful ) . That corporate stupidity really was the greatest thing that could have happened to us because really it made life heaven having some of the best feature clean up keys in all of Canada. At the end as you remember I split up whatever extra pad was left between all the people who had stuck with us. Bev said it was the most she had ever made on any job. That made it totally worth doing for me.
And though we were but little, we were fierce.
Great stuff, Mr. B. ! Thanks for posting it .
Long live "tradigital" !
(2-D + 3-D = 5-D Tradigital)
I want to see that Asterix feature.
I LOVE THAT WEEDMAN COMMERCIAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lol! Oh yeah I think I won shittiest frame wipe award for Weedman, I guess I should write a speech or something heeehehee! Oh forget it, it was the Canadian version of that award.
Is that scene in the shed the ONLY part you animated on Rover Dangerfield? You're credited as "additional animator" and yet when I watch that movie, I see a lot of scenes where Rover moves in that similar style (Ex. the hen scolding the rooster/chase scene, the 1st minute of the film when Rover is gambling a the part where he said "I don't fetch. You want it, you go get it"). Who animated those scenes? They have a Don Bluth-ish quality to them (especially the rooster scene). Jeff Etter? Mark Koister?
I actually animated more. Its a long story and on any other film I would have gotten an animators credit.
Actually on All Dogs Go to Heaven I had more than enough to be on as a full animator. What was done to me was I was assigned someone that they wanted to give a credit to and they did the HELD character head in the BG and took a third of my footage count Here I was animating multiple foreground characters rotating around and walking and acting and the person who did the horse head blinking in the BG got a third of my footage count. But that was Bluth. They always did things to try and screw you up emotionally , break up couples and such. They used to say "There is no such thing as a small scene, just small animators" and then assign you a micro sized character you could barely see walking for 150 feet.
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