Talk to the Snail

I had the good fortune to eat some terrifc breakfast in Manhattan with Dave Levy last week. Dave’s the head of ASIFA in NYC, he teaches at SVA, and he’s been a key player at Nick Jr for a real long time. Oh, and he’s a real good guy, too. Anyway, he told me all about his new book, Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive, being released (according to Amazon) today. Specifically wanting to avoid the more clinical approach used in a lot of other animation resource books, Dave incorporates more than 100 interviews he’s conducted over the years with tons of people in the industry, from artists to executives. It’s light, fun, and extremely informative.

If you’re interested in the business of animation at all, you really need to pick up a copy of this book. Dave knows what he’s writing about.

If I’m not mistaken, nine of this season’s Random! Cartoons were created by graduates of CalArts in nearby Valencia, California. Speaking of years past and What A Cartoon! at Hanna-Barbera/Cartoon Network and Oh Yeah! at Nickelodeon, the number of CalArts grads who created shorts in the many incarnations of this program – not to mention contributed in other art positions – is enormous: Genndy, Craig, Butch, Dave, Rob, Carlos, Miles, etc. and so forth. Well, beginning this Thursday and lasting through mid-August at NYC’s MoMA, is an exhibition called Tomorrowland: CalArts in Moving Pictures, celebrating “more than three decades of intimate, inventive, and technically sophisticated student filmmaking and videomaking from CalArts.” Of special interest regarding this year’s season of Frederator shorts, is that the MoMA will be screening two Gary Conrad shorts. As of this writing, Gary’s slated to direct more Random! shorts than anyone else. Congratulations, Gary. Please, everyone, do yourself a favor and, if you find yourself in the Big [Read more…]

Okay, So I’m a little nervous. Tomorrow (well, later today if you’re on the east coast), we’re screening in the Nickelodeon gym four Random! Cartoons shorts for an open audience for the first time. We had a closed screening for just the Random! crew a few weeks ago, but this is different. This time, we’re inviting Nick employees and the guests of creators to stop by and watch a small sampling of what we’ve been up to for the past year or so. While hardly a perfect barometer of public opinion (these are friends, family, and co-workers for Pete’s sake), it’ll be the most impartial audience of these films to date. Though I know I always say the only audiences we are ultimately interested in are the films’ respective creators and kids, we still want tomorrow’s crowd to have a real good time. With these first four shorts, I think they will.

A pair of mouth charts from Adam Henry’s “Tiffany”: the star (above) and Peggy (below).

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So this Yumi expression sheet by Ms Theofilopoulos reminds me of the Limited Edition model sheets we used to make when I toiled for the Warner Bros Studio Stores way back last century. The model-sheets-as-art was the brainchild of Ruth Clampett, and they were nearly always a great seller (well, maybe not one of my few conceptual contributions to the line - the piece of Muttley, below). Now, the animation art industry isn’t a fraction of what it was a decade ago, but the ol’ production manager in me would kinda like to see these Random! characters recreated in wall art. Maybe someday.

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