Animation Artifacts 02 Feb 2006 07:38 am
Tom Johnson
– Interesting to see cartoons in the news. Quite a stir seems to be brewing across Europe; the publication by a Dutch newspaper of a charicature of Mohammad had garnered protests from Islamic nations. Apparently it’s forbidden to print any resemblance of the prophet. In response, other papers across the continent are printing additional cartoons.
– For those into celebrity gossip, I found this funny post on the site Pinkisthenewblog. Betty Rubble has seen better days.
- David Byrne posts some funny/frustrated comments on his journal about the edited version of Terence Malick‘s film, The New World now playing in theaters.
-As they’ve done in the past, AWN has put up an Oscar showcase on their site. It features information about all of the animated features and shorts that are nominated for the Academy Award. For those who haven’t seen them, it’s a good way to get a flavor of some of the shorts. Thank you AWN.
- Yesterday, at the Brew, Amid Amidi wrote about PEUR[S] DU NOIR, a French animated feature in production at Prima Linea Prods. The film, apparently, features seven different segments designed by as many artists. One of those designers, Richard McGuire, and I have a bit of a history.
Years ago, I knew of a group called Liquid Liquid and loved one of their mini-albums produced by 99 Records. It turned out that my brother knew the owner of 99 Records, and he introduced me. We made a deal in which I would finance a music video, with all rights to the music on the record, and they would have all rights to the music video – for promotion.
It took a month to complete the video; I did all the animation by myself and featured some watercolor drawings of NYC by Pam Wilson, visiting from England. This was 1982 at the time “Beat It” was just starting to hit.
A lot of the production had to do with repetitive editing, which I planned in a tape house called The Tape House (owned by Hal Seeger - there’s history there, too). Hal’s son, David, was my video editor. We edited late night to keep the costs low.
I invited the band members to the editing session, if they wanted to sit in. Only one member showed up, Richard McGuire. Within that month of production, Liquid Liquid had split up. I got the video, Cavern, on a late-night ABC program that featured new videos. It wasn’t mainstream enough for MTV at the time.
Richard and I stayed in and out of contact through the years. This past summer, walking home from my studio, we bumped into each other on the street. He told me he was directing a feature in France and was very excited about it. I’m glad to see it showed up on Cartoon Brew so I could learn a bit more about it.
– Yesterday I posted Tom Johnson’s wife, Marianna’s clipping from the Fleischer Animated News. Today I post his. Obviously, the war is in the air, and he’s about to head off.
Tom Johnson was one of the star animators at the Fleischer studio. After the war he worked for Famous Studios , but he never seemed to gain fame outside of New York’s animation community. He was certainly a loved figure. Many of those I knew in the early days spoke about him. To me, he was a name I had memorized from all those Popeye and Paramount cartoons.
Click the image to enlarge it.
on 02 Feb 2006 at 2:39 pm 1.Cassidy said …
My first job ever was at the Tape House! I was a gofer there during high school… must have been ’86 or ’87. Had to carry those big 2″ videotapes all around Manhattan. Learned a ton about the video biz. You must have eaten well there, I remember their staff chef was pretty good!
on 02 Feb 2006 at 3:20 pm 2.Michael said …
Hi:
I didn’t work for them, but was a client. If I ate there, I had to pay at exorbitant rates. Lenny was a good friend of mine who taught me a lot.