ASIFA-Hollywood: The International Animated Film Society
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Martha`s Book Signing
Tomorrow (Sunday) Book Signing – Be There
April 17, 2005 - 2:00pm to 5:00pm Van Eaton Gallery
13613 Ventura Blvd.
Sherman Oaks, CA
MORE
Tomorrow (Sunday) Book Signing – Be There
April 17, 2005 - 2:00pm to 5:00pm Van Eaton Gallery
13613 Ventura Blvd.
Sherman Oaks, CA
MORE
We are all just animators on this bus
First week of new term, last class of the week. Walking out of the school when one of last term`s students calls me over. He is standing with a number of other students I have taught. Mr. Loc I have given up trying to get some students to call me by my first name we have something to show you.
They are all excited and active and filled with life. I sense a non-assigned group animation project. Nothing makes a group of separate students into a closely-knit conspiracy like an independent personal driven animation project.
One of the conspirators pulls out a character design and it is me all hat and beard and glasses without any other sign of face. I am in a student animation again. Cool! It is one of the highest complements an animation student can give a teacher. (Sometimes it the highest form of revenge, but I don`t think that is the case here?)
Now here is my complement right back to this group of fresh, eager, minds and faces. I`ve got a big personal animation project in pre-production that is going real slowly, laid down the voices, started working on the armatures, but these students infected me. I have to get to some animation right now. I need it. I have to get to a quick project. Something I can bang out in 3 or 4 weeks.
It is not a matter of how good the animation is or what I do with it after it is finished. It is the process. Hell, it is always the process. I ask my first term students how many of you want to be animators? and every hand goes up. Stupid question to ask animation students. Then I ask them how many of you have to be animators? How many of you would not be happy doing anything else?
Now that is the question. If you have to answer yes to that question then, my friends, you already are an animator. Everything else is just becoming a better animator. And that is why I try to get students to call me by my first name. We are all just animators on this bus.
They are all excited and active and filled with life. I sense a non-assigned group animation project. Nothing makes a group of separate students into a closely-knit conspiracy like an independent personal driven animation project.
One of the conspirators pulls out a character design and it is me all hat and beard and glasses without any other sign of face. I am in a student animation again. Cool! It is one of the highest complements an animation student can give a teacher. (Sometimes it the highest form of revenge, but I don`t think that is the case here?)
Now here is my complement right back to this group of fresh, eager, minds and faces. I`ve got a big personal animation project in pre-production that is going real slowly, laid down the voices, started working on the armatures, but these students infected me. I have to get to some animation right now. I need it. I have to get to a quick project. Something I can bang out in 3 or 4 weeks.
It is not a matter of how good the animation is or what I do with it after it is finished. It is the process. Hell, it is always the process. I ask my first term students how many of you want to be animators? and every hand goes up. Stupid question to ask animation students. Then I ask them how many of you have to be animators? How many of you would not be happy doing anything else?
Now that is the question. If you have to answer yes to that question then, my friends, you already are an animator. Everything else is just becoming a better animator. And that is why I try to get students to call me by my first name. We are all just animators on this bus.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Call for Entries - Angelus Awards Student Film Festival
Special cash awards for best
Call for Entries NOW OPEN through July 1st. Enter by June 1st to get the EARLY BIRD $25 rate. www.angelus.org
$10,000 Grand Prize
Over $23,000 in cash and industry prizes
$10,000 Grand Prize
Over $23,000 in cash and industry prizes
Special cash awards for best
documentary and animation
Screening at Directors Guild, Hollywood October 22
Screening at Directors Guild, Hollywood October 22
Fantastic Memories
Gary Sassaman has this great piece on his blog today about the early days of the Kirby Fantastic Four comic books. It made me want to go dig out some old comics and spend the whole weekend re-reading my past. If you grew up with the FF, like I did, you will want to head on over to:innocent bystander .
Thursday, April 14, 2005
The new semester is underway at one of the schools I teach at. I am also putting together a lot of stuff for Comic Con right now. Not able to put much here today, but I was at a school meeting the other night so here is a copy of my not so hidden agenda.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Martha`s Book Signing and Birthday Bash
Here is the one, my friends. Martha is doing a number of book signings, even one that I am putting on at Comic Con, but this is the big one. This is her birthday / book signing combo put on by ASIFA. So everybody is going to be coming out the woodwork. I`m taking the whole family. I`m getting my book signed. And if you have read her book yet then you know that animators know how to party!
Here is the one, my friends. Martha is doing a number of book signings, even one that I am putting on at Comic Con, but this is the big one. This is her birthday / book signing combo put on by ASIFA. So everybody is going to be coming out the woodwork. I`m taking the whole family. I`m getting my book signed. And if you have read her book yet then you know that animators know how to party!
April 17, 2005 - 2:00pm to 5:00pm
ASIFA-Hollywood cordially invites you a
Book Signing & Birthday Party for MARTHA SIGALL
In honor of the
publication of her biography
Martha`s book!
LIVING LIFE INSIDE THE LINES
Join us as we celebrate the publication of Martha
Sigall`s book, "Living Life Inside The Lines: Tales From The Golden Age of
Animation", and a special birthday celebration at the Van Eaton Animation Art
Gallery in Sherman Oaks. Martha will be signing copies of her book, rare
one-of-a-kind items will be on sale and raffled away - and they`ll be cake for
all!
Martha is one of the last of those who worked (as a teenager) at
the fabled Termite Terrace. Her stories of her career at Leon Schlesinger, MGM
(alongside Hanna, Barbera and Tex Avery), with Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, etc.
are collected in her book - and here`s a rare chance to meet her in person!
Don`t miss this rare Asifa-Hollywood event!
April 17, 2005 - 2:00pm to 5:00pm
Van Eaton Gallery
13613 Ventura Blvd.
Sherman Oaks, CA
http://www.vegalleries.com/
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Teenage Robot Event Update
I was checking the RSVP list for the Teenage Robot event and I will say I am very happy with the responses we received from members. Not only did the list fill to capacity, we also received a couple of new members because of the interest the event caused. We had to close the RSVP line due to the amount of responses we were getting. So far, 2005 has been a tremendous year for ASIFA-Hollywood and events like this make the experience for members an incredible one.
99 Cent Review, $1.07 with Tax
I took another chance at the 99 Cent Only Store the other day. The Felix and Friends Volume One was the one I thought would be killer. Okay, I knew that the first 3 Felix cartoons are Van Beuren, Burt Gillett / Tom Palmer, squeaky voiced, not really Felix, crap cartoons. I knew that.
It was cartoon number four that I had high hopes for. It was listed as Felix in a Tale of Two Kitties. Now I know that there was no such animal. I`m thinking, Bob Clampett and the first Tweety. The only one where Tweety is flesh colored because the Hays office made them paint him yellow. The one with the Abbott and Castello cats. I don`t have that on DVD.
Well folks, I still don`t have it on DVD. The transfer was really, I mean really bad. The only good thing about the disk is one of my all time favorite Famous Studios cartoons Hep Cat Symphony.
The find turned out to be the Nursery Classics Volume One. Five, count them five Ub Iwerks Cinecolor cartoons with okay to very good transfers. And the Ray Harryhausen Humpty Dumpty fairytale. (You never know when they say Humpty Dumpty one one of these DVD`s what you are going to get)
I took another chance at the 99 Cent Only Store the other day. The Felix and Friends Volume One was the one I thought would be killer. Okay, I knew that the first 3 Felix cartoons are Van Beuren, Burt Gillett / Tom Palmer, squeaky voiced, not really Felix, crap cartoons. I knew that.
It was cartoon number four that I had high hopes for. It was listed as Felix in a Tale of Two Kitties. Now I know that there was no such animal. I`m thinking, Bob Clampett and the first Tweety. The only one where Tweety is flesh colored because the Hays office made them paint him yellow. The one with the Abbott and Castello cats. I don`t have that on DVD.
Well folks, I still don`t have it on DVD. The transfer was really, I mean really bad. The only good thing about the disk is one of my all time favorite Famous Studios cartoons Hep Cat Symphony.
The find turned out to be the Nursery Classics Volume One. Five, count them five Ub Iwerks Cinecolor cartoons with okay to very good transfers. And the Ray Harryhausen Humpty Dumpty fairytale. (You never know when they say Humpty Dumpty one one of these DVD`s what you are going to get)
Last Chance to See Inside Nickelodeon - Deadline to RSVP
Not sure if there are any seats left, but it is worth a shot.
Wednesday April 13th
6:00pm
NICKELODEON STUDIOS
Gymnasium
231 West Olive Ave.
Burbank, CA
ASIFA-Hollywood presents
A SPOTLIGHT ON MY LIFE AS A TEENAGE ROBOT
Nicktoons and Frederator Studios invite you to a colorful Q&A with the creators of Nickelodeon's hit series, MY LIFE AS A TEENAGE ROBOT. This special event will cover the how the show was created and sold, the artists inspirations and stories of behind the scenes mayhem. Rare episodes and new unaired episodes will be screened - and food will be served! Seating is limited. Please RSVP by email to teenagerobot@yahoogroups.com
Wednesday April 13th
6:00pm
NICKELODEON STUDIOS
Gymnasium
231 West Olive Ave.
Burbank, CA
ASIFA-Hollywood presents
A SPOTLIGHT ON MY LIFE AS A TEENAGE ROBOT
Nicktoons and Frederator Studios invite you to a colorful Q&A with the creators of Nickelodeon's hit series, MY LIFE AS A TEENAGE ROBOT. This special event will cover the how the show was created and sold, the artists inspirations and stories of behind the scenes mayhem. Rare episodes and new unaired episodes will be screened - and food will be served! Seating is limited. Please RSVP by email to teenagerobot@yahoogroups.com
Monday, April 11, 2005
(from left Tom Sito and Bob Kurtz) Golden Awards. My server was down for much of yesterday evening. Somehow Pat Sito managed to get a couple of photos from Saturday`s event through anyhow. (Maybe there will be more later?)
Sunday, April 10, 2005
GOLDEN AWARDS
Hollywood is known for liking awards and awards shows. Many lumps of electroplate and crystal are handed out year round for various reasons. In 1983 the Hollywood Animators Guild Local 839, then called the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists, thought there should be a way for the animation workers to receive an acknowledgement from their peers for a lifetimes worth of work. So they
created the Golden Awards.
The Golden Awards honor the well known and the not-so well known. It's only requirement was fifty years of service in the animation field. The late, great Frank Thomas joked when he got his: "It's the first time I ever got an award for being old!" But besides famous artists like Frank the Golden Awards were at last a chance for the "great anonymous" craftsmen and women who made some of our favorite cartoon memories to receive some long over do recognition. Because of a problem getting volunteers for the support infrastructure the awards were allowed to lapse for a few years. So this years ceremony had to cover a long period, people who had entered the industry from 1943-1955. A lot of animation history to cover in those years, WWII, the Age of UPA, the great Warner Shorts like Rabbit Fire and One Froggy Evening, Disney's Cinderella and Peter Pan; and the dawn of a new technology called Television.
On warm, breezy, Saturday night April 9, 2005, Four hundred animators and their families packed the Pickwick Banquet Center strategically situated directly between the Walt Disney and Dreamworks Studios. Folks flew in from Phoenix, NY, England and Ireland. Guild President Kevin Koch and MC President-Emeritus Tom Sito introduced presenters Bill Melendez, Floyd Norman, Chuck Swenson, Martha Sigall, Tee Bosustow, Tina Price, Tim Walker, Gary Owens, Rusty Mills, Mark Kausler and Scott Shaw!
These luminaries handed out awards to the 55 present out of 72 honorees: Iwao Takamoto the creator of Scooby Doo, John Wilson the creator of the 1971 film Shinbone Alley, Chris Jenkyns the creator of Super Chicken, Paul Carlson of the How-To-Draw-Magoo books and many more. A complete list of the Class of 2005 is available on the Guilds website www.mpsc839.org
Now that the Golden Age Generation of the Walt, Chuck Jones, Friz, Hubley and the Nine Old Men are fading into legend, this event marked the honoring of the next tier of animation masters. Fred Wolf and Jimmy Murakami, Phil Roman, Gene Deitch, Gwen Wetzler, Eve Fletcher, Willie Ito, Tiger West, John Sparey, Lee Guttman, Corny Cole. For baby boomers like me, when you entered the business the great masters of the 1930's were distant idols you were fortunate to interact with at times. But this second generation were the on-the-ground, in-your-face supervisors and directors who worked with you every day. That night there were many of the Boomer Generation on hand to say thank you to their teachers and mentors.
Writer Leonard Maltin handed out a special award to June Foray, the voice of Rocky and Natasha Fatale. Other highlights were a rare gag reel of Termite Terrace artists clowning around, Footage of the Disney Strike of 1941 a montage of cartoons intercut with timely news footage of MacArthur, Marylin Monroe and Uncle Milty. Martha Sigal had copies of her new book Living Life Inside the Lines to autograph. Stuart Ng was there selling copies of rare animation books.
There were lots of laughs. One running gag was the number of artists who listed on their credits the TV series Qwicky Koala. We joked that development execs are even now are on their Blackberries checking on the rights for a possible revival series.
Multiple Accolades to organizers Bob Foster, Dave Brain and the TAG 839 staff for a masterful job. The 2005 Golden Awards was the largest gathering of top animation talent in a decade. The numbers of new people entering animation declined in the late 1950s as the large studio units closed and the industry shrank. So future awards ceremonies may not be as large as this one was. Discussions will start soon whether to make the event annual or every few years.
For now let's enjoy the glow of the magic that still lingers in the air. Congratulations once again to the honorees. It was a truly special night.
Tom Sito
(photos to follow)
created the Golden Awards.
The Golden Awards honor the well known and the not-so well known. It's only requirement was fifty years of service in the animation field. The late, great Frank Thomas joked when he got his: "It's the first time I ever got an award for being old!" But besides famous artists like Frank the Golden Awards were at last a chance for the "great anonymous" craftsmen and women who made some of our favorite cartoon memories to receive some long over do recognition. Because of a problem getting volunteers for the support infrastructure the awards were allowed to lapse for a few years. So this years ceremony had to cover a long period, people who had entered the industry from 1943-1955. A lot of animation history to cover in those years, WWII, the Age of UPA, the great Warner Shorts like Rabbit Fire and One Froggy Evening, Disney's Cinderella and Peter Pan; and the dawn of a new technology called Television.
On warm, breezy, Saturday night April 9, 2005, Four hundred animators and their families packed the Pickwick Banquet Center strategically situated directly between the Walt Disney and Dreamworks Studios. Folks flew in from Phoenix, NY, England and Ireland. Guild President Kevin Koch and MC President-Emeritus Tom Sito introduced presenters Bill Melendez, Floyd Norman, Chuck Swenson, Martha Sigall, Tee Bosustow, Tina Price, Tim Walker, Gary Owens, Rusty Mills, Mark Kausler and Scott Shaw!
These luminaries handed out awards to the 55 present out of 72 honorees: Iwao Takamoto the creator of Scooby Doo, John Wilson the creator of the 1971 film Shinbone Alley, Chris Jenkyns the creator of Super Chicken, Paul Carlson of the How-To-Draw-Magoo books and many more. A complete list of the Class of 2005 is available on the Guilds website www.mpsc839.org
Now that the Golden Age Generation of the Walt, Chuck Jones, Friz, Hubley and the Nine Old Men are fading into legend, this event marked the honoring of the next tier of animation masters. Fred Wolf and Jimmy Murakami, Phil Roman, Gene Deitch, Gwen Wetzler, Eve Fletcher, Willie Ito, Tiger West, John Sparey, Lee Guttman, Corny Cole. For baby boomers like me, when you entered the business the great masters of the 1930's were distant idols you were fortunate to interact with at times. But this second generation were the on-the-ground, in-your-face supervisors and directors who worked with you every day. That night there were many of the Boomer Generation on hand to say thank you to their teachers and mentors.
Writer Leonard Maltin handed out a special award to June Foray, the voice of Rocky and Natasha Fatale. Other highlights were a rare gag reel of Termite Terrace artists clowning around, Footage of the Disney Strike of 1941 a montage of cartoons intercut with timely news footage of MacArthur, Marylin Monroe and Uncle Milty. Martha Sigal had copies of her new book Living Life Inside the Lines to autograph. Stuart Ng was there selling copies of rare animation books.
There were lots of laughs. One running gag was the number of artists who listed on their credits the TV series Qwicky Koala. We joked that development execs are even now are on their Blackberries checking on the rights for a possible revival series.
Multiple Accolades to organizers Bob Foster, Dave Brain and the TAG 839 staff for a masterful job. The 2005 Golden Awards was the largest gathering of top animation talent in a decade. The numbers of new people entering animation declined in the late 1950s as the large studio units closed and the industry shrank. So future awards ceremonies may not be as large as this one was. Discussions will start soon whether to make the event annual or every few years.
For now let's enjoy the glow of the magic that still lingers in the air. Congratulations once again to the honorees. It was a truly special night.
Tom Sito
(photos to follow)
King of the Jim Hill Media
Jim Hill over at Jim Hill Media has a story on our upcoming Aladdin Reunion. Jim will be flying in from the east coast for the reunion. If you live in California you have no excuse to miss this once in a lifetime event. For more information on Aladdin Reunion
