Link: Great Bakshi Podcast

Ralph Bakshi just posted a podcast talking about working in the New York commercial studios back in the late 50s. At about 10 minutes in, Ralph tells an amazing story about the creation of the Mighty Heroes. DON'T MISS IT!

Bakshi Podcast: Commercial Studios and Terrytoons
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Animation Salon: SAY SOMETHING DAMMIT! March 21

Woodbury University has graciously invited ASIFA-Hollywood to host events at their newly opened Fletcher Jones Foundation Auditorium. These events are free and open to the animation community.

AN ANIMATION SALON
Saturday, March 21st, 2009 7:30pm
Admission FREE
Woodbury University
7500 Glenoaks Bl
Burbank, CA 91510


Jean Francois de Troy, "Reading from Moliere" 1728
On Saturday, March 21st at 7:30pm, we will be holding an Animation Salon to encourage animated filmmakers to...

SAY SOMETHING, DAMMIT!
Yesterday at Animation Nation, Don Bluth asked, "How did traditional animation come to be viewed by almost every American household as children's entertainment?"

It's a good question... one that we will be discussing this Saturday March 21st at 7:30pm at Woodbury University.

Animation didn't start out as a vehicle for fairy tales and trite moral platitudes. Pioneers like Winsor McCay saw animation as an outgrowth of print cartooning, a powerful medium for challenging social comment going all the way back to Thomas Nast.

In the years since McCay, animation has proven itself to be effective for education and persuasion. Animated propaganda films helped to win World War II, and animated commercials have sold billions of dollars worth of products.


In some countries, animation is a powerful tool of persuasion and enlightenment. Even though animation is by its very nature collaborative, some filmmakers have been able to use it as a medium of personal expression.

Why has it come to be perceived as children's entertainment then?

Not that children's entertainment is necessarily a bad thing. There have been animators who have pushed the envelope to create kids' TV that not only entertains, but has something interesting to say as well. But on the whole, animation that has a point is the exception, not the rule.

This Saturday, we will be screening some examples of animated films that successfully merge entertainment with meaningful comment on life and the world around us.

Some of them take a wide ranging view, tackling immense subjects...

...Others take the opposite approach, using a small scale to make a large point. Both are valid.

But when it comes to feature animation, films with something to say are as rare as hen's teeth. Sprinkled in amongst the talking dogs and fairy tale princesses are occasional sparks of life. But often those sparks are extinguished before the film even reaches the theater.

For instance, do you know about the hidden link between Disney's Fox and the Hound...

...and Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin?

You'll find out the secret if you attend ASIFA-Hollywood's Animation Salon at Woodbury this Saturday night!

Don't miss it!

Here as a little sneak peek is a clip from Bakshi's Coonskin. This sequence was designed by Mark Kausler and animated by Charlie Downs and John Walker. Here is a bit of Mark Kausler's storyboard for the sequence...


And here is the sequence as it appears in the film...

Malcolm the Cockroach
from Ralph Bakshi's "Coonskin" (1975)
(Quicktime 7 / 6.5 MB)

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.

We'll be discussing and screening examples related to these and many more topics at Woodbury University on March 21st. I hope you can join us.

Animation Salon: SAY SOMETHING, DAMMIT!
Saturday, March 21st, 2009 7:30pm
Admission FREE to the animation community
Woodbury University
School of Business / Fletcher Jones Foundation Theater
7500 Glenoaks Bl
Burbank, CA 91510
(Click for printable map)

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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ZIM Book Update

All ethnic groups were fair game for caricature in Judge magazine in the 1880s- even white people. "Crackers" referred to the type of boastful "rube" or "hick" who might be found congregating around the cracker barrel at the general store.

ZIM BOOK NEARING COMPLETION
The Archive volunteers and I have been cranking for the past few months on cleaning up and formatting the over 650 pages in Zim's Correspondence School of Cartooning, Comic Art and Caricature. This is the granddaddy of all cartooning courses, written by the man who was a pioneer in the art of the humorous caricature. I've been in touch with the Horseheads Historical Society, the group that operates ZIM's home as a museum, and have received some valuable biographical information from them for the upcoming book. At this point, the entire cartooning course spans two large hardback volumes. We may release it as four smaller paperbacks in the future.


For more on the genius of Eugene "ZIM" Zimmerman, see our Previous Posts on ZIM. (Scroll down for earlier posts.)

RALPH LENDS A HAND
Ralph Bakshi has been assembling a collection of ZIMiana for four decades. His collection includes original art, magazine illustrations and books by ZIM. Ralph has agreed to write the forward for our republication of the ZIM course. When he heard that I was looking for examples of ZIM's watercolor work for the covers and frontispieces, Ralph dug into his collection and came up with some wonderful treasures... enough for another volume of ZIM's cartooning to follow the cartooning course.


But that wasn't all... Ralph heard that there was a bound volume of Judge magazines from 1885-1887 for sale at eBay. During this time period, ZIM was the leading cartoonist at Judge, and he was producing the best work of his lifetime. The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive doesn't have an acquisition budget, so we couldn't afford to purchase the book. But Ralph felt that we needed it to do ZIM justice, so he dug into his own pocket to make sure we got it.

The book hasn't arrived yet, but check out these photos from the seller...


Judge was the National Lampoon or Mad magazine of its day. Each issue was devoted to making fun of a particular subject. This issue deals with "Jays", a slang term for oblivious and reckless people. The stereotypical "jay" was the ignorant rural farmer who came to the big city and ignored all traffic and safety laws. The term "Jay" is the root of our slang term "jaywalker".


Here, a hobo tries to get a bank to invest in him... ZIM was the first cartoonist to apply the principles of caricature to the whole body, not just the head. Every part of this character, from the hat down to the shoes, exemplifies the type of personality ZIM was trying to convey.


In his boyhood, ZIM worked as a farmhand. The placement of the signature and the familiar profile (see the photo above) indicate that this gag may have been autobiographical. The caption reads...

Mr Rodgers: Who's that, my young man?
Silas (nervously): B-ben H-harrison, pop.
Mr Rodgers: By Moses! It's great boy. I'll have to send ya down to N' York an' git ye on a paper.

At the time this was published, Benjamin Harrison was the Republican candidate for President of the United States.


Check out the strange shapes and contrasts in this drawing! Bizzare.


ZIM is largely known today for the racial stereotypes that were the stock-in-trade at Judge and Puck magazines at the time. But although the racial humor may now seem too abstract to translate into today's world; the caricatures are well-observed and honest. They were undoubtedly based on real people ZIM knew.


New York City was a melting pot in the late 19th century. Just about everyone was an immigrant. The cartoonists of the day found humor in the juxtapositions of culture one experienced walking through the poorer neighborhoods of the big city. ZIM was no exception. He was an immigrant himself. He arrived in America as a child speaking no English, and quickly adapted to life in a totally new world. His aspiration was to become an American through and through.


Wow, what a drawing! This one really resonates with me. We're looking at two people who were probably born as slaves not only making the transition to becoming a part of society, but depicted as American citizens- note the American flag pants. When I look at this drawing, I can tell how they walk, their personality and temperament... everything. This is as perfect an example of caricature as I have ever seen. Absolutely brilliant.


The Irish are lampooned in this issue.


Here we see a dormer window in a tenement building populated by the faces of all the types of people who made up New York City...


...and here is the common denominator between all of the types of faces in the world- the smile.


ZIM's eye took in all the details of urban life in the 1880s. He definitely exhibited more of an affinity for the poor immigrants than he did the established well-to-do. This set him apart from most of the other illustrators who drew for Puck, Judge and Life.


Can you see a little bit of Don Martin in this comic? The amazing thing about it is that this comic was drawn when Outcault's The Yellow Kid was just getting its start. A. B. Frost had just pioneered sequential "time stop" drawings in his book Stuff and Nonsense a few years before. T. S. Sullivant hadn't even begun his career as a cartoonist yet!


When I saw these images, I was blown away. It's very difficult for me to wrap my head around the fact that these drawings are 120 years old! Before I discovered the genius of ZIM, I had no idea that the art of cartooning was this advanced in the 1880s. That's why I'm so pleased to be able to bring this material to you.


I hope you will support the archive by buying a copy of ZIM's Correspondence School of Cartooning, Comic Art and Caricature when it comes out.

But that's not all! Check out these amazing covers by James Montgomery Flagg!




And how about this cover by Gillam...


Whenever I speak to people interested in the history of cartooning, I find that they have pretty much the same frame of reference as I have... the earliest cartoonists they know about are Sullivant, Outcault and Herriman. A few know a little bit about the most powerful cartoonist who ever lived, Thomas Nast. I'm now discovering that there is a rich history of cartooning between Nast and Sullivant. As I discover more about this exciting period, I'll share it with you here on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive blog.

Many thanks to Ralph Bakshi for making this possible. Make sure to bookmark The Bakshi Blog.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Link: Bakshi Podcast

Bakshi Podcast on Ralph Bakshi's Blog
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Advice: Bakshi On Surviving Tough Times

At this year's San Diego Comic-Con, I had the honor of hosting an interview with Ralph Bakshi. He had some important things to say to the animators in the crowd. Watch Ralph take my question and hit it out of the park...



Many thanks to the Bakshi family for their helpfulness and generosity, and to our fantastic videographer, JD Mata.

Feel free to embed the YouTube on your own website. Spread the word! Educators may download a higher resolution copy of this video to burn to DVD for viewing in their classroom.

Read the comments about this video at YouTube, Cartoon Brew, CGI Society Part One, CGI Society Part Two, Animation Nation and Weirdo's blog on Newgrounds.

UPDATE: I just spoke to Ralph on the phone. He says that he regularly checks the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive site, and was surprised to see his clip posted. He's reading your comments and he's happy that you find his message inspiring. He's promised to do more interviews with me for the Archive soon. Thanks, Ralph!

If you found this article interesting, see... Bakshi's Phone Doodles, Bakshi Speaks To CGI Animators Part One and Part Two, Louise Zingarelli's Cool World Storyboards, Bakshi Meltdown Comics Party Pictures

See also... Imitation vs. Inspiration: Chaplin's Shadow, The Application Of Inspiration, How To Properly Use Reference, Incorporating Natural Forms, (Visual) Literacy, Why Do We Need An Animation Archive?, Parody: Whack! Comics

UNFILTERED: The Complete Ralph Bakshi isn't one of those "art books" with postage stamp sized pictures floating in oceans of tasteful white space and huge text blocks of scholarly blather that crowds out the images. It's just pictures, pictures and more pictures... along with just enough text to put them in context. The book is organized to show Ralph's career from his earliest days at Terry-Toons, to his groundbreaking features, to his revolutionary TV work, to his most recent fine art paintings. Even if you think you know all there is to know about Bakshi, this book will grab you by the lapels and shake you and show you things you've never seen the likes of before. Click through the link to pick up the Bakshi book at Amazon.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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Event: Bakshi Party Pictures

If you weren't there, you missed an amazing party last Saturday night. Ralph Bakshi was in town and all his old friends came out to see him.



Before the party started, Ralph visited with the guys who put together his recent book, Unfiltered... Chris McDonnell and Jon Gibson.


It wasn't really a signing party, but Ralph still made sure everyone who wanted a signature got one.


Ralph greets animator, Steve Gordon with Barry Jackson and Trish Docktor.


Conrad Vernon


Kent Butterworth


Tom Minton and Eddie Fitzgerald


Kali Fontecchio and John Kricfalusi


Eddie and Ralph share some memories.


Tom McGrath and Dave Spafford

UNFILTERED: The Complete Ralph Bakshi isn't one of those "art books" with postage stamp sized pictures floating in oceans of tasteful white space and huge text blocks of scholarly blather that crowds out the images. It's just pictures, pictures and more pictures... along with just enough text to put them in context. The book is organized to show Ralph's career from his earliest days at Terry-Toons, to his groundbreaking features, to his revolutionary TV work, to his most recent fine art paintings. Even if you think you know all there is to know about Bakshi, this book will grab you by the lapels and shake you and show you things you've never seen the likes of before. Click through the link to pick up the Bakshi book at Amazon.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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Mailbag: Nice Surprises From Our Friends

We received a couple of nice surprises in the mail in the last week...

A couple of weeks ago, John Canemaker was in town to receive his career achievement, Winsor McCay Award at this year's Annie Awards... Here's ASIFA-Hollywood board member Frank Gladstone presenting John with his award...


John has been a supporter of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive since we started. You might remember the article on Bill Tytla that he shared with us last year... (Bill Tytla Part One and Part Two) John stopped by the Archive on his latest trip to see in person what we were working on, and he followed up his visit with this kind note...


Thanks for the kind words, John!

Yesterday, a courier stopped by the Archive with a package for us from Ralph Bakshi. Ralph has also been following our progress at the Archive from his home in New Mexico. One of the first articles I wrote here was a Tribute to Ralph, illustrated with Bakshi phone doodles. Later, Ralph himself contributed a two part article addressing the kids in the trenches in the CGI world. (Bakshi on 2D vs 3D Part One and Part Two). Now he sends us a copy of his new book...


BUY THIS BOOK!
If all you know about Bakshi is his rotoscope pictures, you're in for a surprise. Ralph is one of the most innovative and wildly creative geniuses of recent times. His influence on animation is immense. On the back cover, Frank Frazetta is quoted as saying, "Ralph Bakshi is one of the finest artists I've ever met." He isn't exaggerating a bit. Take a look at this incredible stuff...






This book is packed with incredible pictures like this! Artwork by Frank Frazetta, John Kricfalusi, Barry Jackson, Louise Zingarelli, Michael Ploog, Ian Miller, Irv Spence, Robert Dranko, Mark Kausler and Ambi Paliwoda.

UNFILTERED: The Complete Ralph Bakshi isn't one of those "art books" with postage stamp sized pictures floating in oceans of tasteful white space or huge text blocks of psudo-scholarly blather that crowds out the images. It's just pictures, pictures and more pictures... along with just enough text to put them in context. The book is organized to show Ralph's career from his earliest days at Terry-Toons, to his groundbreaking features, to his revolutionary TV work, to his most recent fine art paintings. Even if you think you know all there is to know about Bakshi, this book will grab you by the lapels and shake you and show you things you've never seen the likes of before. Click through the link to pick up the Bakshi book at Amazon.

Ralph Bakshi is animation's greatest living artist and one of the most influential animators in the history of the medium. If you don't realize that yet, READ THIS ARTICLE.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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2007 Review: 4 Advice For CGI Animators

As the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive completes its second year in operation, it's time to review the accomplishments of the past year. Here's a countdown of the ten most important subjects we've covered in 2007. See if your list matches mine. (View the complete list.) Click on the link to read more on this topic.


In 1914, Max Fleischer invented the rotoscope as a time and labor saving way of producing animation. He soon came to realize that although the device was a great aid in effects and technical animation, it was a poor substitute for character animation.



In 1986, engineer Ernie Blood developed motion capture techniques as a time and labor saving way of producing animation. A decade and several mocap features later, many CGI animators are coming to the same realization that Max Fleischer and his staff had more than a half century ago.

NUMBER 4: ADVICE FOR CG ANIMATORS

One of the principle purposes of this website is to provide the link between animation of the past and animation of the future. The principles that brought Pinocchio and Bugs Bunny to life are the same principles that should be used to create current computer animated characters. This is not a website devoted to promoting hand drawn animation. This is a website devoted to promoting animation.


Bakshi Phone Doodle
Ralph Bakshi is a monumental force in the world of animation. I convinced him to come out of retirement to speak directly to the CGI guys in the trenches and share his viewpoint on the current state of animation. Ralph has an uncanny knack for kicking your ass in a way that makes you want to say "thank you!" afterwards. These two articles are Bakshi at his best.

There are no sides here, only techniques. The important thing is to do something more than just sell dolls and hamburgers, or get the best table at some bullshit restaurant. Stop crying. Go out and do something. Starve to death if you have to. It's honorable. -Ralph Bakshi

Bakshi Speaks To CGI Animators August 13th, 2007

Bakshi On 2D vs. 3D August 31st, 2007

A few weeks ago, I stuck my own head on the chopping block with a post titled, CGI Animators Should THINK Like Artists. I received some flak from an industry pro who said, "You take an all-or-nothing approach, where everything ever done in CG animation is crap, and everyone making these films are dopes." Well, that isn't what I'm actually saying... Crappy animation is crappy animation, no matter what technique is used to create it. And a lot of great artists are working on crappy CG films. The problem isn't that CG animation sucks and the people making it are dopes... It's that the current crop of CG features don't come close to scratching the surface of what's possible using the medium.


In the late teens and early 20's, hand drawn animation was in the same place CG is today. Everyone was focused on developing technical processes and filing patents on techniques. The drawings were realistic and stiff, the stories were simplistic, and they recycled cliched formulas and stock animation without a great deal of variety. Audiences didn't mind, because they were amused by the novelty of drawings that moved. But the novelty eventually wore off.

The medium had to advance itself creatively to survive, and animators like Otto Messmer and Bill Nolan stepped up to the bat to pioneer personality animation, the Fleischers developed musical timing, and Walt Disney codified the fundamental principles of animation like overlapping action, follow through and squash and stretch. We can learn a lot from the past. Motion libraries and rotoscoping were a dead end in 1925 and they're a dead end now. Earl Hurd's patent for the cel system didn't make cartoons any more entertaining, and neither do new techniques for rendering fur or water in CG. The thing that makes cartoons better is to utilize the unique aspects of the medium to tell new and original stories in an expressive and creative way.


In this article, I use an illustrated book from a century ago to attempt to show how the reference on this website is relevant to artists working in the field of computer animation...

CGI Animators Should THINK Like Artists
November 28th, 2007

I ask every animator who walks through the doors of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive for the same favor... Use the resources I'm sharing with you to make animation that people like me who love animation would want to watch. That goes the same for animators who use a computer as it does those who use a pencil. Take Ralph's advice to tell fresh and original stories, and my advice to think like an artist, and you can't go wrong.

Go To Number 3 on the list of Top Ten Subjects of 2007

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Opinion: Bakshi on 2D vs. 3D

ASIFA-Hollywood is honored to post this article by the legendary animation director Ralph Bakshi. Ralph has retired to New Mexico to paint, but he is still very much in touch with the animation scene today. In this article, Ralph addresses animators in both the 2D and 3D fields, and points the direction that he thinks animation should take in the future. -Stephen Worth


The paintings on this page are by Ralph Bakshi. (© Bakshi) To see more of Ralph's work, visit RalphBakshi.com

BAKSHI ON 2D vs 3D

First of all, when it comes to controversy over 2D vs. 3D, I'm in no particular camp. I think computer animation is amazing. Some of the Japanese hand drawn animation I've seen is great too. John K. was a breath of fresh air for animation. But the discussion always comes down to the same one I always have with the young kids in the industry- the starving ones with mortgages to pay. When I see the end credits on big studio animated films, I'm floored by the amount of people it takes to finish a film. The cost to make the first 20 minutes of your modern animated feature would comprise the entire budgets of all of my first six films put together. Hard to believe but true!


It's probably inconceivable to you guys, but I made my feature films with no pencil tests, no storyboards, no retakes, no color keys, no character designers, no special effects department, nothing, zip, nada- because we had to. (How I did that is another discussion altogether.) I was my own animation director- everything came to me. I flipped the drawings and gave the OK. God bless the professionalism of Irv Spence, John Sparey, Ambi Paliwoda, Virgil Ross, Manny Perez... all those guys who animated for me, because they're the ones that made it all come alive.


I'll tell you a secret... Not having pencil tests was liberating for the animators who worked for me. They knew I was expecting creativity, not perfection. I wasn't gonna be standing over the moviola looking at their tests saying, "raise that pinkie finger a little higher" or "fix that lip flap". There was no room for retakes. Knowing that made them unafraid. No one was going to look over their shoulder and second guess them. They puzzled out the scene, expressed themselves through the character, and moved on to the next scene. You better believe- they loved it!

When I was young, I had a dream- and a rage over Disney's insistence that nothing worked on the big screen unless it was perfect- redone and reworked until it was flawless. I always thought the difference between my films and the Disney ones was the difference between rock n' roll and a symphony. I love them both if the music is right. But a lot of spoiled animators claimed that I was ruining every young kid's life with my rough animation- and that Terry-Toons and I were nothing. I didn't listen to them, because I always felt that honesty, leaving the pack, telling stories that were part of the director's personal life and not some merchandiser's idea- all those things were more important than Disney's insistence on perfect animation.

OK. Let's talk animation. First of all, I want to talk to you drawing type animators...

When I hear 2D animators today talking about acting in hand-drawn cartoons, I ask, what kind of acting? Are you talking about the old fashioned acting that animators have always done? You know... the hand on the hip, finger-pointing, broad action, lots of overlapping action, screeching to a halt- all that turn-of-the-century old fashioned mime stuff. Is that what you're talking about? Well, forget about it. If you're gonna compete with computer animation, you better go all out and do something that's totally different. Call it "new acting". Blow the computer out of the water. Sure, Milt Kahl, Irv Spence, Bill Tytla and all those guys were great. Leave them alone. They've done their job. It would just seem old to do the exact same thing today. Find something new to call your own- something exciting as hell.


To you computer guys...

I'm supposed to scold you computer animators and tell you to think more like the hand drawn guys. Well, there's no question hand drawn animation is different than CGI, motion capture or rotoscope, or even limited animation. Yes, computer animators CAN learn a lot from hand drawn if they know where to look. Maybe... maybe... maybe...

Some history- Early on, hand drawn was great- Fleischer's Popeye, Jim Tyer, Freddie Moore, Rod Scribner, Bill Tytla, Johnny Gent... the direct, fresh stuff. But then suddenly, along came "real good animation" with all its complication, and the long painful looks, big shrugs and sighs, batting eyelashes, cutesy pie phony crap until you want to vomit... Overnight, all the old greats were forced to either kill themselves, stay drunk all the time, or quickly fade away. Animation got saddled with a bunch of boring, repetitive, old fashioned, dumb cliches. I am NOT going to tell computer animation to follow that road. Sure, computer animators should look at hand drawn animation to learn. But don't get down on your knees. Don't make the same mistakes hand drawn animation made at the end. Study the right stuff. There's a hell of a lot more to learn from a Fleischer Popeye than there is from some "epic fantasy" like Prince of Egypt.


So I'm sitting in the theater watching a rat trying to cook some food. Now he's trying to get out the window... I blink with amazement at the brilliance of your computer, but wait a minute... This is nothing more than a Disney film made with a computer! Your bosses must have MADE you do this. Where do you guys think you're headed? Do you really think copying Disney films over and over isn't going to get just as boring as the boring Disney films you're copying? You've got all these great computers... show me something I haven't seen a million times already. I have things in my head that the computer could do that would stun you. (But don't worry. I got turned down by every studio in town.)


Listen. I'm talking to that bunch of you computer guys out there who want to crawl into a basement with a big stack of machines and kick ass- the guys who want to do something NEW and DIFFERENT. Don't worry about the money. You're not getting paid that much anyway. If your characters shake and spit the colors off in some scenes- great. It doesn't matter. And if some of the textures jiggle a little, who cares? Back in the day, I heard animators critique the animation in my films as being "too ruff". Well, we didn't like it all either- but we LOVED what we were making- Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic, Coonskin, Hey Good Lookin', Wizards- thirty years later and they're still playing worldwide, because they were honest and rugged. The animation didn't take away from the movie like the slick stuff I see in hand drawn animation at the end. Something REAL is always better than something realistic.


OK. Now I'm talking to ALL animators- with a computer or with a pencil...

Here's a guy you could all learn a trick or two from... John Kricfalusi. Why is John Kricfalusi so great? Why do people copy John's stuff but never seem to really get it? Great draftsmen have tried and failed to imitate him. How the hell does he do it?

Well, when I first let John direct, it was an amazing thing to watch. It wasn't the way he combed his hair and it wasn't the way he tried to hustle me. John was a one-of-a-kind. When one of John's characters pointed a finger, it REALLY pointed. It pointed like no other finger in no other cartoon ever pointed before. When John drew the curve of an ankle on a girl character, it was like no ankle curve I ever saw before. Everybody thinks John's style is what sets him apart. It isn't about his style... it's not about the color... it's not about the jokes... it's not about the expressions... it's not the voices... Don't imitate that stuff. If I hear another fake John K cartoon voice I think I'm gonna scream!


The thing that put John so far ahead of the pack was his originality. His poses were fresh and they jumped off the sheet at you. They lived and breathed and acted in a way that wasn't like anything that came before. Every drawing was brand new for him. He thought things out for himself, expressed his own ideas, and didn't keep rehashing someone else's tired old cheats. John's brilliant posing took animation to another level, and animators would be smart if they followed his lead. BUT HEAR THIS... Don't imitate his creations. Imitate his creativity.

There are no sides here, only techniques. The important thing is to do something more than just sell dolls and hamburgers, or get the best table at some bullshit restaurant. Stop crying. Go out and do something. Starve to death if you have to. It's honorable.

Go buy my book. Read more. Learn more. Get mad at me again.
Old Man Ralph

© Bakshi Productions


Click for more Bakshi Phone Doodles
This article has been translated into Persian.

If you found this article interesting, see... Imitation vs. Inspiration: Chaplin's Shadow / The Application Of Inspiration / How To Properly Use Reference / Incorporating Natural Forms / (Visual) Literacy / Why Do We Need An Animation Archive? / Parody: Whack! Comics

UNFILTERED: The Complete Ralph Bakshi isn't one of those "art books" with postage stamp sized pictures floating in oceans of tasteful white space and huge text blocks of scholarly blather that crowds out the images. It's just pictures, pictures and more pictures... along with just enough text to put them in context. The book is organized to show Ralph's career from his earliest days at Terry-Toons, to his groundbreaking features, to his revolutionary TV work, to his most recent fine art paintings. Even if you think you know all there is to know about Bakshi, this book will grab you by the lapels and shake you and show you things you've never seen the likes of before. Click through the link to pick up the Bakshi book at Amazon.
.

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Opinion: Bakshi Speaks To CGI Animators

In 1914, Max Fleischer invented the rotoscope as a time and labor saving way of producing animation. He soon came to realize that although the device was a great aid in effects and technical animation, it was a poor substitute for character animation.

In 1986, engineer Ernie Blood developed motion capture techniques as a time and labor saving way of producing animation. A decade and several mocap features later, many CGI animators are coming to the same realization that Max Fleischer and his staff had more than a half century ago.

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive documents the golden age of hand drawn animation, but it isn't intended as a resource exclusively for 2D animators. I encourage CGI artists to think of themselves as animators and build upon animation's rich history instead of reinventing it bit by bit. Animation is animation. Pencils and computers are only tools.

No one today has as much experience with hand drawn animation and rotoscoping than the legendary director, Ralph Bakshi (See related article Bakshi Phone Doodles). I've asked him to speak "animator to animator" to CGI artists and pass along his observations about the things that really count when it comes to animation. -Stephen Worth

BAKSHI SPEAKS TO CGI ANIMATORS

Frame to frame animation eventually came to a grinding end. I'm not sure which generation of young animators were at Disney redoing and relearning the tradition of making boring films and recreating cliched motion when it expired. Except for Jim Tyer, "Modern Animation" and Ralph Bakshi, animation was dying- while doing the same old thing. Big money and animators never really followed Bakshi, "Modern Animation" or Jim Tyer. They just rehashed its past.


(Read Chuck Jones' article on the failure of "Modern Animation")
UPA failed because it was nothing more than elitist designers trying to animate on museum walls. Content was unimportant to them, really. Matisse or Picasso were more important. Bakshi was hounded out of the business by controversy. And you'd be surprised how many animation directors at Terrytoons disliked Jim Tyer's work because it didn't look like Disney- or anything else for that matter. Terry kept him on because his weekly footage output was so large.


(See the gallery of images from Lord of the Rings on RalphBakshi.com)
Lord of the Rings was done in rotoscope animation because rotoscope made it physically possible to do it. You couldn't do Lord of the Rings in less than 25 years using traditional animation. Thirty years later- Wow! Along comes the computer... "We can do Disney story animation with another look and sell it back to audiences." Of course, I would have used computers and motion capture if they had been around during my day. But I turned to Tolkien to try to change the kinds of stories animation told. My city films were being thrown out of theaters.

So, what's the argument here? Unless hand-drawn animation finds new creative story approaches and new creative drawn motion exaggerations, it will look as it always looked at the end- faded and drawn. There'll be no great interest for it either. Computer animation has the exact same problem. Computer animation will eventually grow old, just like hand-drawn animation, unless something new happens. It will fall into manneristic boredom if it continues to endlessly redo what's already been done before. The success and the money will always follow the creative artists who take either of these two mediums and do something different with it.

A lot of people remember and love Jim Tyer's animation today because he really did something different with hand-drawn animation. He didn't follow the crowd.


(See Jim Tyer's work: Terrytoons: Barnyard Actor / Funny Animal Comics Part One and Part Two

Ralph Bakshi 2007


At this year's San Diego Comic-Con, I had the honor of hosting an interview with Ralph Bakshi. He had some important things to say to young animators. Watch Ralph take my question and hit it out of the park...



Many thanks to the Bakshi family for their helpfulness and generosity, and to our fantastic videographer, JD Mata.

Feel free to embed the YouTube on your own website. Spread the word! Educators may download a higher resolution copy of this video to burn to DVD for viewing in their classroom.

Read the comments about this video at YouTube, Cartoon Brew and Weirdo's blog on Newgrounds.

UNFILTERED: The Complete Ralph Bakshi isn't one of those "art books" with postage stamp sized pictures floating in oceans of tasteful white space and huge text blocks of scholarly blather that crowds out the images. It's just pictures, pictures and more pictures... along with just enough text to put them in context. The book is organized to show Ralph's career from his earliest days at Terry-Toons, to his groundbreaking features, to his revolutionary TV work, to his most recent fine art paintings. Even if you think you know all there is to know about Bakshi, this book will grab you by the lapels and shake you and show you things you've never seen the likes of before. Click through the link to pick up the Bakshi book at Amazon.
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Biography: Louise ZIngarelli (Cool World)

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great info on the careers of great animators.

Recently, there's been a flurry of posts around the blogosphere about development executives and the impact they have on the cartoons you see in theaters and on television. See John K's post, Why Rock Stars Should Be Animation Executives and the shocking AWN article he links to, Development Execs: Who They Are And How They Got There. It's an eye-opening read.

Today, we digitized a section of storyboard from one of the biggest flops in recent times, Ralph Bakshi's Cool World. This film could be the poster child for devastating executive interference. Paramount bought a hard-R, gritty, sexy, noir horror/thriller from Bakshi and proceeded to revise it into a low-rent Roger Rabbit aimed at teenagers. By the time the film was completed, it bore little resemblence to Bakshi's original concept.

But I'm not going to talk about that sorry story today... Instead, I'm going to tell you about an artist who worked on Cool World who you might not know about, but should... Louise Zingarelli. Louise was a very good friend of mine, and I'd like to share my personal take on her along with this section of storyboard that vividly illustrates her amazing talents.



Louise Zingarelli was the toughest individual I've ever met... and one of the sweetest. If she loved you, man! she REALLY loved you. If she hated you, Boy! you better watch out.

"Hate" isn't a strong enough word for what Louise felt if she didn't like someone. She had a special word for it... SKIEVE. To skieve something was to hate it to the point of physical revulsion. Louise skieved REAL GOOD. She skieved lots of things... parking tickets, Canadian animators, dentist appointments, Jesse Jackson and even Charles Soloman.



Charles made the mistake of criticizing Louise's scenes in The Chipmunk Adventure in the L.A. Times. He wrote that they were "heavily dependent on the crutch of rotoscoping". When she read that, Louise flew into a rage. She hollered, "There wasn't a single frame of roto in the whole goddamn picture! I didn't use a CRUTCH! I used my HEAD, which is more than I can say for Charles friggin' Soloman!" Louise brewed and fumed about that article for years, and finally got her chance for revenge at Grim Natwick's 100th birthday party. When Charles got up to speak, Louise made a noise like a leaky radiator. The Canadian animators on the other side of the room picked it up, and pretty soon she had the whole place going. Charles never knew what hit him.



Louise always reminded me of the tomboy girl in Our Gang- the one who was small, but when her big brother got picked on by the neighborhood bullies, she would roll up her sleeves and wipe the floor with them. Louise was short, but if she was coming at you with THAT look in her eye, you'd swear she was ten feet tall.



Louise hated a lot of things, but she saved special hatred for "The Business"... those words would come out of her mouth dripping in vitriol. "THE BIZZZZZZNESSSSS!" You would need a rug doctor after she said it to clean up all the slime. If Louise knew I was writing about her here in a blog read by people in "the business", she would kick my ass all the way to hell and back.



Now I don't want to make Louise sound like an unpleasant person. On the contrary, she was one of the most thoughtful and considerate people I ever met. I spent many evenings at her house, sharing in her gracious hospitality. She made the most amazing chicken in her Weber grill, and she taught me the value of keeing a bottle of good Russian vodka in the freezer, "just in case". If Louise loved you, you never had the chance to doubt or forget it. She loved just as passionately as she hated.



Louise was a great artist. She could paint with Prismacolors like nobody else. She would build up layers of colors that glowed on the paper. Her characters had an indefinable sense of "ugly-cute"... never cloying, always real. Some animators complained, saying her character designs were unanimatable, but by the time they ended up on the screen, her unusual shapes and true to life personality gave them extra life.


Louise was the fastest artist I ever met. On Cool World, she single handedly laid out all the girl scenes, keying out the poses until they almost animated. Her average footage on layout was over seventy feet a week.

At Bagdasarian, we shared an office. I think I was the only person who ever survived sharing an office with Louise. One day, I gave her an incidental character to design. She sat around sipping her coffee and smoking casually. I finally asked her if she was going to get around to doing the drawing, because the deadline was looming. She said, "Here's a good bet. Get your watch out. I'll design this character in one minute. You take the sketch to Ross for approval. I betcha two bits he not only approves it, he says he LOVES it." "You're on!" I said.

So looking at my watch, I called out, "Ready... set... GO!" Louise just sat there smiling at me. I said, "Time has started." She nodded and set her cigarette down... smoothed out her paper... "Twenty seconds." I called out. She sat down and set in to work on the drawing. Her pencil flew over the paper- beautiful sweeping lines, completely original shapes. She finished the character with time to spare and tore it off her pad. I took the sketch next door to Ross' office. He was on the phone, so I left it on the corner of his desk and went back to Louise. She was smiling like a Cheshire Cat. A couple of minutes later, we heard from the other side of the wall, "FAAAABUUULOOUSS!" Louise casually raised an eyebrow and quietly said, "Pay up."


After Cool World wrapped, Louise moved back to her hometown of Chicago. I heard from her a couple of times, but we lost touch. I later found out that she had moved back to Laguna Niguel and was undergoing kemotherapy for cancer. She fought it as bravely as all of her other battles, and for a short time it seemed like she had licked it. But it came back hard. She was very ill at the end. For weeks she lay in a coma. She was so private about her battle, her best friends didn't know she was gone for a month afterwards. She chose to spend her last days quietly with her cats painting at the ocean.

I owe Louise big time. She championed me when I was just starting out in animation, and she never wavered in her faith in me. She was a great friend and I miss her a lot.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

See also, Ralph Bakshi's Phone Doodles

10.08.08
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Media: Ralph Bakshi's Phone Doodles

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.


Today, I hope you'll allow me to tell you about someone I have had the honor of working closely with. He's my hero too. If anyone ever creates a Mount Rushmore of animation, his head should be right up front, grinning with a stub of a cigarette in his mouth-- Ralph Bakshi.


I'll be doing a panel discussion with Ralph at the San Diego ComicCon this year. The subject of the discussion will be what it means to be an artist and cartoonist in today's world. Whether you're lucky enough to be able to make a living doodling, or if you still dream of being paid to create, you won't want to miss this important presentation...

Artists Only: A Chat With Ralph Bakshi
San Diego ComicCon Room 10
Saturday, July 26th, 2008
4:30 to 5:30 pm

Ralph will be appearing at other events at the ComicCon this year as well. More info on those as his schedule is finalized.


If you are an artist working in animation, whether you know it or not, Ralph Bakshi is the reason you're here. Don't believe me? Throw your mind back to 1970. Look at what the animation business had turned into... Disney was cranking out Robin Hood, a film without a single new idea. On TV, Filmation was lowering the bar so Hanna Barbera could play "quality limbo" with them. Animation was dying, animators were choosing retirement over flogging the dead carcass of the art form they loved, and it looked like it the situation would never get any better.


Enter Bakshi. With his first three films, he turned animation upside down. He showed that it wasn't just a medium for big bears with Phil Harris's voice and crappy sitcom characters in outer space. His films shocked and terrified people... they were crass and sloppy. They were made on a shoestring, and sometimes it showed. But they had something honest to say, and that got noticed. Ralph showed that animation- the most collaborative art form ever- could be an intensely personal medium.


Ralph's first three films- Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic, and Coonskin- came totally out of the blue. They are the animation equivalent of Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives. Great old time animators like Irv Spence, Ambi Paliwoda and Virgil Ross were offered the opportunity to cut loose and make films that weren't just cats chasing mice and dogs chasing cats. These films dealt with what it meant to be an artist, the battle of the sexes, race relations, and the unsenimentalized realities of urban life. They were improvisational and had no rules.


These three films, made in the darkest of the dark ages of animation, offered a glint of hope for what animation could become. If all you've seen of Ralph's work is Lord of the Rings and Fire and Ice you don't know what I'm talking about here. All of the adult targeted animation you see in the US today has its roots in Ralph's example in these three films. They stirred up controversy and caused riots at screenings back in the day, but now they seem to us like they could have been made yesterday, not three decades ago- except for the fact that today's world has trouble accepting brutal honesty when it comes to politically charged topics. Ralph has never been one to pull punches.



In the 1980s, Ralph did for television animation what he did for theatrical features, blowing the lid off of CBS's Saturday morning schedule with Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. Ralph took a chance on the ideas of a kid named John Kricfalusi, and set up the studio after the unit structure model used at Warners. Stories were written with storyboards again. (See the note from John K in the comments.) Artists were cut loose to create cartoons. Without Mighty Mouse, there never would have been Ren & Stimpy or The Simpsons. The artists who worked on Mighty Mouse have gone on to lead the TV animation industry.


Ralph is an absolute genius when it comes to spotting raw talent. He can take a kid straight out of school and turn him into a pro faster than anyone else. Every film had its "graduating class" of kids. Those kids now populate the animation business on every level, from the hotshots at Pixar and Disney to the creative sparks at Warners. I know of Bakshi alumni who are top dogs at Dreamworks and the CGI companies too.



As a filmmaker, Ralph is one-of-a-kind. He doesn't make films for executives... he doesn't even make films for a specific audience. He makes them for himself. You can count the number of animators capable of using this unweildy medium for personal expression on one hand and still have fingers left. Ralph is one of them.


But Ralph is not only the greatest living animation artist. He is the catylist that has more than once pulled the industry out of a hole so deep people had just about given up on cartoons. For that alone, he deserves the respect of any and all animators, whether they like his work or not.


If this business needs anything right now, it's another go round with Bakshi. The era of shi-shi "distressed" animation desks complete with faux wormholes, and middle management producers driving Jaguars paid for by their bonus checks is over. That was great for the people lucky enough to hook up to the gravy train while it lasted. But times have changed. The people left standing will be the ones who REALLY CARE about the medium of animation.


You can take my word for the fact that no one loves cartoons more than Ralph. Sit down and ask him about Jim Tyer. (Ralph was Tyer's assistant...) Listen to what he has to say about Spence or Maltese or any of the other old timers he brought in to work on his films. Ralph lives and breathes animation. His drawings are imbued with the whole history of the medium. He announces his retirement every once in a while, and swears off cartoons forever, but it's in his blood. Just count the days till the bellowing voice out of the blue hollers "BAKSHI'S BACK, YOU BASTUHDS!" over the studio intercom again.



It's time for Ralph to rent a warehouse, fill it full of kids with big dreams, raw talent and lots of ideas and crank out a film. It doesn't even matter if it turns out crappy. It'll be a shot in the arm to the whole business, and it just might lead to something even better. I know I'd love to be a part of it. --Stephen Worth


Visit Ralph's web page... RalphBakshi.com.

UNFILTERED: The Complete Ralph Bakshi isn't one of those "art books" with postage stamp sized pictures floating in oceans of tasteful white space and huge text blocks of scholarly blather that crowds out the images. It's just pictures, pictures and more pictures... along with just enough text to put them in context. The book is organized to show Ralph's career from his earliest days at Terry-Toons, to his groundbreaking features, to his revolutionary TV work, to his most recent fine art paintings. Even if you think you know all there is to know about Bakshi, this book will grab you by the lapels and shake you and show you things you've never seen the likes of before. Click through the link to pick up the Bakshi book at Amazon.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

6.26.08
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