Channel Frederator Blog

Floyd Bishop posted the other day about Dustin McLean’s recent parody of one of the most famous animated video of all time: A-Ha’s “Take On Me”. Who can forget its sketchy rotoscope stylings and corny comic book love story?

(You can go to Dustfilms to find out more about the parody creator, btw.)

This made me curious about the folks who worked on the animated portion of the original video. I found some additional info:

The animation was done by married couple Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger. Patterson studied experimental animation with Jules Engel at Cal Arts and worked for many years at Rhythm and Hues. You can see his award-winning student film Commuter (1981) here–this is where he developed the techniques he put to good use in “Take On Me” (1985).

Patterson and Reckinger were also responsible for the animated portion of Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract” video, which was inspired by the Gene Kelly/Jerry the Mouse dance sequence from the film Anchors Aweigh.

Then I was delighted to find a side-by-side comparison of the man/mouse number from Anchors Aweigh with a recent parody from Family Guy where Jerry is replace by Stewie! (Watch it at the top of this post.)

—Anne D. Bernstein