The Animation Guild Oral Histories

Reid Scott (Veep, My Boys) is voicing the lead for Turbo F.A.S.T., which debuts on NetFlix December 24th. We had the opportunity to ask him about his voice-work for the show, and so grabbed it. ...

We talk about how Mr. Scott came to the project, how he and the other actors work, and what kind of input they have as the lead thespians. We cover a goodly amount of ground in twelve minutes.

A few days ago we sat down with veteran animator Frans Vischer for a discussion about the book business ...

Mr. Visher talked to us two years ago (here and here), about life in the cartoon industry. This go-round, we wanted to spend more time talking about the printed page, and how a veteran animator goes about building a second career with his own characters inside lavishly illustrated childrens' books.

Tomorrow, the video version of the interview.

Here in Part III, Don Lusk and I wrap up the first interview and unspool a second, recorded a week later. (I did a wee bit of research after #1, and wanted to find out more about his work at Disney, in particular his animation on Fantasia) ...

Mr. Lusk was not happy with the color work on the whirling, pirouetting fish of "The Nutcracker Suite" (you can listen to what he says about it, I won't spoil it for you here, but allow me to state that Mr. Lusk wanted to "crawl under the theater seat" when he saw the finalized sequence at the premiere.)

Don also discusses his long tenure at Hanna-Barbera, from animation to direction, and what some of his favorite pieces of work are in a sixty-year career.

After leaving Walt Disney Productions at the start of the 60s, Don worked for Walter Lantz and then Hanna-Barbera. And at H-B he found a long-term professional home, and remained there for thirty-plus years. ...

I asked him whether he preferred Disney or Hanna-Barbera; he told me that he had a much happier time at Joe and Bill's place, because he was better respected and made to feel like "one of the family."

Though he worked on some iconic features at Disney, Don felt he was underpaid and not particularly appreciated. And as he relates, Walt held grudges against many of the employees who went out during the 1941 strike ...which likely explains why Don's post-war Disney career never took off.

As Mr. Lusk says, he was "relieved" when finally let go, and the relief turned out to be well-founded: he had decades of productive work still ahead of him.

Cartoon veteran Don Lusk (animator, story man, and director .. from Disney on Hyperion to Hanna-Barbera on Cahuenga) turns turns ten decades old today.

To celebrate, we present you with the Don Lusk 100th birthday interview, which covers his career from Disney in 1933, to Hanna-Barbera in 1993. (Sixty years of work seems to be sufficient, wouldn't you say?) ...

I spoke to Don on the big office speaker-phone in mid-October. He talked about his early days at Walt Disney Productions, his work on "Snow White" and "Pinocchio," about how he walked out with other Disney strikers in 1941, carrying a picket sign until his feet and bank account gave out and he was forced to find other work for eating money.

He has no regrets about hitting the bricks, though it put a good-sized nick in his career at the Mouse House. (He'll be circling back on talking about his work on "Fantasia" and at Hanna-Barbera in Part III of the Interview.)

Here's the second half of Mr. Hickner's audio podcast, and most of the interview in the video version (new camera equipment was a tad glitchy; new processes to learn):

Steve arrived at Disney Feature Animation while The Black Cauldron was in work, and plunged into work on the production. After that came The Great Mouse Detective, in the middle of which Michael Eisner, Frank Wells and Jeffrey Katzenberg arrived to remake the studio, top to bottom.

Peter Schneider was installed as head of Disney Feature Animation. During the production of live-action/animation hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Steve asked Mr. Schneider for two minutes of his time, which Peter granted. (Who can turn down a couple of minutes, right?)

Mr. Hickner told Peter he had heard a second animation unit for Roger Rabbit was opening, and he wanted to be part of it. Mr. Schneider made Steve no promises (he didn't even admit the unit was being formed), but a short while later Steve was an early assignee into Who Framed Roger Rsabbit's new-formed animation unit.

Which demonstrates that it pays not to be shy when there are new worlds to conquer.

Director and story artist Steve Hickner has been in the animation business since Lou Scheimer headed up Filmation (where Steve got his first animation job) and Disney Feature Animation in the Time Before Jeffrey.

Steve has worked at DreamWorks Animation since its founding. In a way, he was at DreamWorks Animation before it was DWA ...

In the early days of his career, Mr. Hickner never allowed grass to grow under his feet. At Filmation, he worked his way up the corporate ladder to become board supervisor. At Disney, he lobbied for a spot on the animation crew of Who Framed Roger Rabbit ... and got it. Later, when he heard that director Steven Spielberg was forming an animation studio, he interviewed for a job in the new studio twice before landing the gig.

Steve remained with Amblimation from its inception to its merger with DreamWorks' animation division several years later. During his time there, he found himself in management positions (something for which, by his own admission, he had minimal training). Later at DreamWorks, he was in the pilot's chair yet again when he co-directed Prince of Egypt, and later Bee Movie.

The leadership roles left a strong impression on Mr. Hickner, which inspired him to write a book about them:

A few of the things Steve has learned from his decades in the cartoon biz are: 1) Never stop learning, 2) Never dodge a challenge, and 3) Every job you have is one more opportunity to improve your skill set.

College prof, feature director, animator and board artist Tom Sito continues his history of CGI:

... Most of 1985 was spent trying to find a buyer for the Graphics Group [Pixar], ten months of meetings and entertaining offers from buyers as varied as Seimens, Hallmark, Japanese manga publishers Shogakukan, and the makers of Silly Putty. ...

When talks with Steve Jobs commenced, on December 9, 1985, papers were filed that were approved in Fubruary of 1986 incorporating the Lucasfilm Graphics Group into a new company called Pixar Animation Studios. It was named for their signature retail product, the Pixar Imaging Computer. At first Jobs balked at Lucas's asking price of $15 million. After weeks of negotiation, getting the asking price down to just $5 million, with an additional $5 million in capital investment in the company, Jobs closed the deal on February 3, 1986. Doug Norby admitted later that had this deal not gone though, he had already decided to close Pixar down and fire all of its forty employees. ...

-- Tom Sito, Moving Innovation, p. 243.

(This concludes the Sito/CGI interviews. We apologize for the long gaps in the series, but the day job keeps getting in the way.)

Tom Sito guides us through CGI's halting start (and all the stumbles that occurred along the way) ... all the way up to its dynamic present. ...

... Cornell University established its Department of Computer Science in 1965. It trained many who would figure prominently in CG, like Michael Wahrman, Marc Levoy and RIchard Weinberg. In the lat 1980s Levoy and Weinberg did research into digital paint ...

At Ohio State University Charles Csuri was an abstract expressionist painter who had been intrigued by computers since the mid-1950s. "I became confident that (CG) animation can become a new kind of art form," he recalled. He began to utilize the university's resources to create art on a computer in 1965. ... In 1967 Csuri created the groundbreaking film Hummingbird. The film is considered one of the landmarks of CG, because it is the first time someone attempted to move a living thing rather than geometric shapes. ...

--Tom Sito, Moving Innovation, pp. 57-58.

(This is Part I of the video version of Tom's CG talk, and Part II of the audio version. Confusing, isn't it?)

TAG's President Emeritus Tom Sito (who is also an animator, director, storyboard artist and college professor) has written a fine book on the history of Computer Generated Imagery:

It began in 1963 when an MIT graduate student named Ivan Sutherland created the first true computer animation program. Instead of presenting a series of numbers, Sutherland's Sketchpad program drew lines that created recognizable images. Sutherland noted: "Since motion can be put into Sketchpad drawings, it might be exciting to try making cartoons." This book, the first full-length history of CG, shows us how Sutherland's seemingly offhand idea grew into a multibillion dollar industry. ...

And Tom takes us through that long-ago beginning to right now. ...

This is Tom's second TAG podcast. The first covered his animation career, the second is centered on his just-released book and the history of CG.

(This audio interview is broken into three parts of thirty minutes each. Starting tomorrow, the video/YouTube versions -- each 45 minutes in length -- will appear. So choose your format.)