Annies: 2007 Winsor McCay Award Winners

Congratulations to this year's honorees of the prestigious Winsor McCay career achievement Annie Award. Here are the bios and clip reels for the three Winsor McCay winners at the 35th annual Annie Awards, which were held recently at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus...


John Canemaker, John Kricfalusi,
Frank Gladstone (presenter), Glen Keane
JOHN CANEMAKER

John Canemaker is an animation historian, educator, lecturer, Academy award winning animator and the author of numerous books on animation. He is also a regular contributor of articles and essays on animation for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

His books are some of the most important and thoroughly researched in the field. They include The Animated Raggedy Ann & Andy (1977), Walt Disney's Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation (2001) and Winsor McCay: His Life and Art (1987) detailing one of the pioneers of animation in whose honor John is receiving this award.


John has taught at several colleges and universities, but is most closely associated with New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he is a full, tenured professor who became the program's executive director in 1988. John has been a featured commentator on many classic animation DVD releases, and has lectured at New York's Museum of Modern Art and many film and animation festivals around the world.


He commissioned work for television and feature film includes commercials, Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Pee Wee's Playhouse, and The World According to Garp.

In 2006 John received the Academy Award for his autobiographical short film, The Moon And The Son: An Imagined Conversation.

GLEN KEANE

At a very young age Glen Keane's interest in art was no mystery. Growing up with a cartoonist father, Bill Keane, the creator of Family Circus, Glen thought that every kid's father was a cartoonist.


Although Glen could have gone to Arizona State for football, he ended up being accepted into the California Institute for the Arts, where he was introduced to animation and the goal of becoming a Disney animator. After graduation, Glen studied at Disney under Ollie Johnston, one of the "Nine Old Men", with Ron Clements, Brad Bird, John Lasseter, Don Bluth and others.


After becoming an animator on The Rescuers, Pete's Dragon, The Fox and the Hound and The Great Mouse Detective. He took a break from Disney to work on The Chipmunk Adventure, and returned as a supervising animator for Sykes in Oliver & Company, Marahute in Rescuers Down Under, Beast in Beauty and the Beast, John Silver in Treasure Planet and the title characters of The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Pocahontas and Tarzan.

Glen's influence on Disney animation has been such that he has been referred to as one of the "Nine New Men". He is currently directing Disney's Rapuunzel, due for release in 2009.

JOHN KRICFALUSI:
An Appreciation By Eddie Fitzgerald

I'm merely stating the obvious when I say that John Kricfalusi's contribution to animation has been immense. He and Ralph Bakshi re-invigorated a dying TV animation industry with Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, which, together with Disney's Roger Rabbit, ushered in the 90's animation boom. The Ren & Stimpy Show was groundbreaking in every way, and is still massively influential. Flash animation was little more than a way to do banner ads before John got hold of it, and his blog, all kinds of stuff is a stunning teaching tool and oasis of thoughtful cartoon analysis. If I were to write about his drawing innovations, this essay would require a couple of hours to read. The man's amazing, what can I say?

Of course, John is best known as the creator of Ren & Stimpy, two of the most recognizable characters in all of modern animation. Fans talk about Ren & Stimpy being cute AND demented, and they are, but it took dozens of behind-the-scenes innovations to bring out those qualities. At the outset of that show, John upturned a cornucopia of new techniques onto the table. Layered on top of terrific voice work by John and Billy West were new ways of handling story, dialogue, character design, character animation, layouts, music, sound effects and color– even a new way of doing in-betweens. All this came out of John's belief that every stage in animation should be creative. I think if there had been a way to make emptying the trash creative, he would have found it.


It's funny to think that one of the industry's best artists is also one of its best writers. John's knack for dialogue is near legendary. At an autograph party on Melrose, fans wrapped around the block chanting Ren & Stimpy lines like, "You bloated sack of protoplasm!" and "I've had thees ice cream bar seence I was a child!" The man has a way with words. Maybe it's his affinity for exotic words like "interloper", "rapscallion", and "poltroon". Maybe it's the Baroque syntax in constructions like, "It is not I who am angry! It is I who am MAD!" It's cutting-edge, modern entertainment, yet it sounds like it was written by someone wearing pantaloons and a codpiece!

Just as impressive are John's hilarious, artist-friendly stories. How about this one from Naked Beach Frenzy:

An over-zealous, hairy David Hasselhoff-type lifeguard tries to save the beautiful babes on the beach from Ren, who he thinks is a sand crab. Between the lifeguard sequences, Ren & Stimpy serve as attendants in the ladies' shower, with Stimpy doubling as "SHAMPOO MASTER!"

That's it! That's the whole story! No politically-correct gang of skateboarding teens, no contest with the mayor handing out a trophy, no secondary character arcs with little Timmy learning about prejudice... Just funny gag situations, and plenty of 'em. If you've seen the film, then you know that gags, when they're done as well as John does them, can provide all the story momentum you need. Not only that, but they lend themselves to funny posing and funny acting.


And cartoon acting? The man is obsessed with cartoon acting! Maybe it's all those Warner Bros. cartoons and Honeymooners episodes he watches incessantly. John loves to set up a scene so that the performance carries it. Cartoonists who work for him quickly learn that the standard five expressions aren't enough. He expects unique, one-of-a-kind poses and expressions that are tailor-made to fit the dialogue. And did I mention that it has to be funny?

I'll close with a summary of what I think John is all about. It won't take long to write because it's fairly simple, viz., funny stories, drawn and acted in a funny way, and executed with skill and imagination. This simple formula changed the whole business and made a hatload of profit for the studios. I think John imagines his studio as a sort of haven for really talented class clowns. That, I am delighted to say, it has always been.

ASIFA-Hollywood Annie Awards
2007 Winsor McCay Award Winners
(Quicktime 7 / 21.25 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

For more info on the Annie Awards, see www.annieawards.org

I would like to post more of the ceremonies, but the material is in the Betacam format. If anyone has facilities to transfer from Betacam to DV Quicktime, please let me know.

Thanks!
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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