Networking

I got my first professional job through a recommendation of a man who admired my work. That is how I got the second job and just about every job since then. I only recommend artists to others that I can be sure will perform work up to the standards I expect of myself. Now that so many new people have come into the industry, I find I have to reintroduce myself to employers all over again. Only now I have a reputation. Once you build your reputation, protect it. It will bring you work. You build up that reputation through strong networking. Today, this word "networking" means electronic communication but, even today, a personal visit or your actual voice on the phone holds greater value. Sometimes you don't have that phone number you need and that requires you contact a friend who does.

After working at the HB Company as a unit layout supervisor for a couple of years, my immediate supervisor left to become the Production Manager at a new company. After working there a couple of months, he recommended me to head up their Layout department. He set up a meeting with the studio executives. This new company had as a department head a tremendous designer as layout supervisor. Unfortunately, this great artist was a poor manager. His right brain overwhelmed his left and the company was way behind schedule. I agreed to accept this new position but I wasn't interested in holding this job. I wanted a different situation in the company. The executive producer asked me what job I was seeking and I said, "Yours."

My boldness and honesty did not scare him off and we agreed to see if we both lived up to our expectations. After three years, when the growth of the company warrented it, I was promoted to producer, then senior producer as other producers were employed. This all started because of the recommendation of the Production Manager who knew my work. I outlasted him at that company but we continued to work together on mutual projects over the years. Good recommendations are the life blood of this industry.

The Shit Filter

Anybody who thinks being a supervisor is an easy job has never been one. You answer to way too many people and you are responsible for the work of way too many others. The difference in pay is negligible or less than what a good, fast artist can make. I say FAST because commercial animation art is all about volume. As a Layout Supervisor I was responsible for turning out 300 scenes of layouts in two weeks time. This required being able to do the layouts that my crew was unable to do or did incorrectly. Why not hand the bad layouts back to be done over or corrected? I did, if there was time. If not, I found it faster to do them myself. This made for a lot of late nights.

It was also essential that I know the strengths and weaknesses of every artist on my staff. Not all artists are born equal. Some are very good at landscapes but weak at character drawing. Some can produce great poses but have no idea how to draw architecture. Animal drawings are no problem to some artists but automobiles or bicycles are beyond them. Casting the artist to his strength was a mark of a good supervisor. Of course, background layouts are often more difficult and time consuming to draw then a simple close-up of a character. In order to keep on schedule and prevent rioting, I would have to balance out how many background heavy scenes I gave to everyone. The scenes that demanded a good background went to good background artists and when excellent character acting was required, I'd cast a great character artist. That meant, I'd have to correct character posing in the scenes that the background artist had to draw and adjust the background in the scenes that the character artist couldn't do.

Once I had my crew running smoothly and our quotas were being met, they gave me another show to run at the same time! Oh, I got more people, of course. Instead of doing one show with a mere staff of six artists, I now had ten artists to do two shows! By the standards of the day, this seemed fair...to management. This challenge required a division of work. The solid background artists were pulled off into a separate unit to draw nothing but backgrounds for the two productions. I had to hire outside "free-lancers" to make up the difference in personnel. Their work was competent but I had less time to require repairs...so I did them. I had little time to train new people, least of all a new assistant supervisor I was required to take on. I was issued an ultimatum; either I choose an assistant or the department head would. I picked a solid, if unimaginative, artist with good work habits for the job. He thought it was an advancement until he started to make repairs and excuses for his crew. I felt vindicated when this former worker came to me and said; "Until I started doing this job, I never realized what jerks my co-workers were!" Supervisors aren't born they're made.

In Charge...At Large

After a very disappointing second attempt at running my own company, I wondered if there was any need for a small operator in a time big industry? As it turned out, there was! The layouts I did as a Free Trapper were in demand and a spot opened up as a Crew Chief for the Company. An ol' employer of mine remembered the level of quality I turned in on a regular basis and hired me on. I was back working at the HB company but this time running a crew of layout artists.

Most of the guys I learned from were now retired or had moved up the ladder. This left a spot open in management. My reputation as an artist with a functional left brain recommended me to this task. More importantly, I had the ability to communicate specific information clear enough to expect an accurate product in return. So, my job as a Layout Supervisor began. This position is rather an antique one by today's digital production system. In the days of 35mm film production and paper animation the process demanded that scripts be converted into storyboards. These were small panels of shot by shot action and compositional drawings of background elements that visualize the whole cartoon in a form similar to comic books. They were done quickly in those days and were often very sketchy. The details of the actual compositions, background designs, incidental characters and prop designs as well as all initial animation posing was done by the Layout Department.

The Layout Department was the first directorial step in the film making process. Each panel of the storyboard was broken down into sequences based, usually, on background elements.; Ext. Schoolyard, Int. Classroom, Int. Soda Shop. Ext. Athletic Field, etc. Obviously, if the episode took place mostly in a lifeboat at sea, where the background was the same, this system didn't work. In that circumstance, the show was broken down into Night and Day, Storm, Ship Sighting, Shark Sequence, etc. This was my job. I had a staff of artists that needed a week's worth of work each Monday and I had to break the show down into chewable/doable sizes that could be done in a 40 hour week. There were approximately 300 layouts in a typical half-hour show. Each artist was expected to do 30 layouts a week. Therefore using simple math, the only kind I know, I'd need 10 artists to do a half-hour show each week. I didn't have 10 artists on my team. I had between 4 and 6 artists of varying levels of speed, talent and competency. I needed two weeks to produce a half-hour episode. My job required that I meet that schedule. How I did it, Young Artist, is the subject of another blog.

Studio Ownership...Part Two

The fledgling studio I started took on a partner when Nandu relented and joined the experiment. We were the best of friends and took out a two year lease in a new building. We needed to sign a partnership contract between us so we had an attorney draw one up. This was like getting married! The lawyer asked us terrible questions like; "If one of you gets sick and can't work, does he still get paid? If one of you dies does the business pass onto the partner or does the wife or children inherit that share?" Our friendship was tested at the beginning during this contract process. We survived and assessed our assets. Nandu was a designer as well as an animator so he designed a flyer and we hired a business promoter. I had established a contact with a major studio and we exploited that by contracting out all the layout designs for a new show. Thanks to Nandu, a well known cartoonist collaborated with us to produce and animate a couple of main titles for a Mexican studio. We paid our bills and shared all revenues. Unfortunately, Magic Lantern Animation made the same money as before but now had to divide it by two. This was less than we could live on. After a year, we bought out of the lease and went in search of new prospects. It was my first entry into the pleasures and pitfalls of studio ownership. I'd recommend it to everyone who is young and stupid. You have many years to recover from your mistakes and maybe learn something from them. By then you'll be older and smarter or, at least, less stupid.

Studio Ownership...Part One.

I played with feature animation for awhile. After Nandu's exit, a constant drain of talent left Vinnie's studio. I stayed on until the last moment requiring a formal "layoff notice" for termination. This allowed certain unemployment benefits to kick in. Afterwards, with feature "credits", I followed another animator over to the next feature in town. This one was funded by Asian money with a young Asian designer as studio head. The money was good but there seemed to be less structure at this studio than the last. There was amazing talent hired but no clear direction as to what the story was that we planned to tell. And so we drifted into development purgatory for months, maybe years. I saw my opportunities for advancement and creative expression wane away. A veteran animator saw it differently: "I have no problem being a rich man's play thing!" I was too young for such philosophy and I slid into a creative depression.

So, I quit that comfortable job and opened my own studio with no prospects and no clients. This was something I often talked about with my animator friend Nandu, so I suggested we team up. Nandu was reluctant to get involved. Starting your own studio was a big risk and he was already running a nice side business doing publication illustrations for a big studio. So Nandu deferred. I made a few phone calls and let it be known that I was available and a few small jobs came in. Then the television animation season kicked in and I became one of the "farm houses" the major studios jobbed overflow production to. A couple of nice little product commercials ended up in my hands and the studio made the rent. In fact, my wife, who was against the whole enterprise from the start, had to admit that by the end of the year my income had exceeded the salary I made at the feature studio!

Now, Pilgrim Artist, I know what your thinking. You think that starting your own place is the fastest way to success. I beg to differ. For me it was the course of last resort. I'm a brick by brick kind of builder. Over the years as I acquired more respect and opportunity I moved up the pay rate. Client meetings, self-promotion, budgets, schedules, taxes and expenses, long hours for no extra pay, artists who fail to deliver and someone else's vision to perfect, was NOT my idea of the perfect employment situation. Yet, I was doing okay and my self-image picked up. This was noticed by friends and acquaintances and everyone wanted to attach themselves to a "winner". Best of all, I thought, Nandu came back.

Striking the Mother Load

As a worker bee in the hive of television animation you were "paid by the pound". You got a minimum salary but were expected to turn in so much "footage" or scenes or drawings to justify it. This resulted in the general opinion that television was cheap "rush" work. If you longed for respect, you had to move into theatrical features. This basically meant you had to work at Disney because they had the "lock" on animated features. Disney was considered the "Cloisters" because they didn't seem to fraternize with anyone from television and didn't know what was going on in animation beyond the walls of their studio. Amazingly, they never got laid off! Everyone wanted to work on a feature project but Disney was a "closed shop". You had to be born inside the walls, it seemed, to get a shot at working there. (This was more true than not. Disney workers beget Disney workers!) This all changed in the 70s when the underground comic book movement beget X-rated animated features!

There was a new look to animated features and it was an adult look. It was irreverent, sexy and foul mouthed. It mocked established institutions like government, religion and politics. And it did it all with the raw, unbridled look of underground comics. This movement was headed by a young man from New York, we called him "Vinnie", who brought the world of underground comic book artists to the screen. At the beginning of his rise I ended up working at his studio. During a drunken luncheon one day Nandu, an animator friend of mine, and I decided to enlist with this new studio and embrace its vision to take on the Disney giant. We were hired after an interview, Nandu as an animator and I as his assistant. I was finally working on a feature production. I had hit the mother load!

There's a lot of good things about working on a feature. First off, it's a union staff position so its pays well every week and comes with full benefits. It's a long-form project so it could last two years in production! Best of all, you have all the necessary time you need to do your best work. Of course, this was NOT a Disney feature but an independent production which meant Vinnie could make up his own rules about how the picture was to be made. He took some "shortcuts". He didn't photograph the rough pencil animation before it was painted but waited to see how it looked on the scene in color. Instead, he would "flip" the animation in his hands to see how it played. Tim, another animator on staff, picked up on that and only gave Vinnie completed, cleaned-up roughs to look at. He had a special relationship. His wife was also on staff as his exclusive assistant and his daughter was her exclusive inbetweener. Tim was a favorite because Vinnie could see his work fully as he flipped it. I had worked with Tim before and always thought his work was mediocre but the boss loved it.

The rest of the animators had to use assistants and inbetweeners from the "pool", like me. Vinnie expected a reasonable amount of work from his animators and Nandu had difficulty meeting that demand without utilizing some "tricks" he learned in the television business. Nandu was a master of the "invisible hold". He would keep a character in one position for no more than a third of a second or 8 frames of film. Even if the character stopped moving his body, something else on the character, his arm, his hair or tie, would continue animating. This was known as "overlap" in the industry. And before the character started moving again, he would begin the animation with a simple action like a hand move, an eye blink or a head bob preceding the actual movement of the character. This was called "anticipation". Overlap and anticipation were the marks of an excellent animator. In order to save money in TV animation, Nandu would use separate drawings of hands, heads and eyes animating atop a character body at rest. Employing this technique, he was able to make the footage demanded by Vinnie. The trouble was, it didn't flip well. A character would move a short while then separate into many body parts making seeing the action out of context on paper impossible. This gave Vinnie the impression that Nandu was a "hack animator". They quarreled and Nandu left. But I stayed on. Other animators liked me and was given prestigious, if difficult, assignments.

I stayed at that job long enough to see justice play out. Eventually, all completed animation was painted and photographed onto 35mm film and Vinnie got to see it in action. Tim's work, which seemed so wonderful on paper, was revealed to be mediocre and he was sacked. However, when Vinnie saw Nandu's work on the screen, he was delighted. He loved it and wanted the animator who did it praised and given more work! He seemed confused when he was informed that he fired that artist earlier. Vinnie never even knew who did what on his show. And he certainly wasn't able to tell good from bad by merely "flipping" it through his hands.

Odd Jobs

I've done some odd jobs in my day. I was a traffic cop at a County Fair. I unloaded watermelons out of a produce truck. I trapped gophers out of local farms and sold their feet to the township. I posed as a wax figure in a Hollywood museum. All this was just to get extra money. What I really wanted to do was work in Animation. Well, young critter, once I became a professional in that industry, I found a lot of odd jobs! As a pilgrim moving up the food chain, I gained experience at a number of jobs. I could draw, I could animate, I could tell a story, I could take orders and, when the opportunity arose, I could give orders as well. I'll give you two examples...

I was approached by a feller that wanted me to produce a music video for him of a group of kids singing "Happy Birthday". You know the song but did you know that the song is copyrighted? Yep. This feller licensed the rights. He figured that videos were the next hot item. If he could personalize them by adding a spot of animation to the head of a purchased video, they'd make great birthday gifts. I asked an intelligent question about what name we would record when you came to the part of the song "...Happy Birthday, Dear ???...". He had no answer. True personalization would require a custom recording of the name and animation of a character saying that name in animation. It was a quandary. Such a question almost killed the job. PILGRIM TIP #1: "Never ask a question you don't have an answer for!" I suggested that we include a dog in the animation that would cheerfully bark at the moment a name was called for. Good answer! The picture moved forward. The film was a simple affair. It was just a puppy with a row of kids in their party clothing holding balloons in front of a simple but colorful card. They sang, the camera cut close on the dog who barked and cut back wide for the finale. It was a husband and wife venture. The wife art directed, the husband financed and I jobbed out the work to an animator, layout artist and a background painter. I directed, painted the cells and moved the finished work through to delivery. What happened after that? I'll probably never know. The little film just disappeared.

I also worked free-lance by mail for a small commercial house in New Mexico. They'd send me a script, a pre-recorded sound track, sometimes an existing model of a character and a tiny budget. I'd do everything else. I drew the storyboard, designed the characters and did the animation. This was all sent back to New Mexico where they finished the commercial, sent me a copy of the finished film and a check for the work. It was a lotta work for the money but fun when you're young and need material for a portfolio reel. Well, I did a commercial for a local (New Mexican) dairy that had a pre-existing character of a boy as its logo for their milk. I didn't care for the design but did the commercial. They loved it and sent me another. While I was working on a feature film, I got a call requesting I do another milk commercial. I refused. The money was bad and I had a full-time gig. They begged. The client insisted that the same guy do the commercial. I offered to find them a good replacement and I'd check in if they had any problems. Grumbling, they agreed. I knew of two good artists temporarily out of work and they jumped at the chance! I offered to give them the contact number and they could run the job directly through the New Mexican agency. "No, no!" they said! They didn't want any contact with the business guys. They insisted that I talk to the client and broker the job to them. "Are you guys nuts?," I asked! "Do all the work yourself and keep all the money". "Nope, nope!" They didn't want to hassle with the "suits". So, I took the job, gave it to the two artists and pocketed an agreed upon fee for the service.

That was the day I decided to become a producer.

Atristic Intregity versus a Paycheck

So, Young Artist, what's your price? What will you "sell out" for? Remember, as a member of the animation industry you fall into the category of "Commercial Artist". That means you do "art for hire". If you want to draw strictly for your "heart and soul" you must choose "fine art". A "fine artist" draws what inspires him, what gives him pleasure. It doesn't matter what style the art is in, all that matters is whether the artist works according to his own vision NOT someone else's. Jackson Pollock, Andrew Wyeth, Pablo Picasso all fall into the category of "Fine Artists". They drew first and sold, if they could, their work later. Some well known painters crossed over the line separating these two categories and did "work for hire". Toulouse-Lautrec, Peter Paul Rubens, Michelangelo, Maynard Dixon were all known to have done family portraits, ceiling murals, book illustrations and poster designs for a fee. Other famous illustrators such as N.C. Wyeth and Norman Rockwell were perfectly content to make a living in commercial art and never labeled themselves as fine artists.

You, Dear Animation Artist, fall into that last category. You are a Commercial Artist and your work is bought and paid for as you do it. And you do it according to your employer's direction, even if he has no artistic taste what-so-ever. When I got into the business, my employers and supervisors were all professional artists. They taught as they directed. I got better, they got richer. It was an honest trade-off for the education. Today, animation is often controlled by investment bankers and business school graduates. Art is a product and they are the sellers of that product. It angers them when your work does not illustrate their vision, which they are unable to describe graphically to you. Yet, you, as a professional, must find a way to work with these employers.

I worked with a great designer who knew his employer very well. When designing a character for a new show, he would draw about a dozen variations. Then, he would stack them in the order he wanted his boss to see them in. The top four drawings were the best versions. The BEST drawing, his choice, was the third one down in the stack. The balance were just additional drawings that illustrated how bad this character could be drawn. He said his boss would always reject the first drawings he saw and only make up his mind after seeing multiple choices. This professional designer said the third drawing was the most often picked but he could feel good about any of the first four. You also must learn a technique necessary to help blind men see.

This does not mean you have to prostitute yourself or your art for money alone. If it's only about the money, then there are other ways to make it faster and more agreeable. I choose a project for three reasons; I like the project, I like the money and I like the people/person I'm working with. When working in children's television, I found that the product was almost identical from studio to studio. Liking the project seldom factored into my decision. I would change studios only when considerable more money or advancement was offered. After I established myself, I would sometimes take a lower position in order to work on a more prestigious project, like a feature film or to work with a known director, like Chuck Jones. The truth is, most artists work for love. If they only worked for money there would be a lot more rich artists out there. Money does not make you smart or talented or ethical, it only gives you power. I'm more than happy to exchange power for the ability to make smart, artistic decisions that help others to do their jobs better. So, if your dumb, untalented and corrupt employer insists upon doing your job badly, be prepared to walk away. If the job hurts, stop doing it!

During an interview, Hollywood Joe, the smartest and most successful artist/producer in the business, was asked what advice he could give new artist film makers based on his years of experience. He answered, "Be prepared for disappointment." 'Nuff said.

In Out of the Cold

As a young artist, I bounced around from "farm house" to "farm house". These small studios lived off the overflow from the major studios, producing a contract series with a small in-house crew and a string of free lancers. It gave the illusion of independence but we were all beholden to "The Company". Struggling to learn AND earn, I longed for a staff position at a Company shop so I'd be noticed by the big players. My opportunity came when the HB Company opened up positions for assistant layout artists. I never considered myself as a Layout Artist. I saw myself as an Animator. Layout artists were combination choreographers, set designers, costumers and stage managers. They drew backgrounds and props and positioned the characters on stage and gave basic stage direction. Animators were performers! They gave life to inanimate drawings and made them dance, sing and act. Animators were obviously the preferred artists. After all, they called the business ANIMATION not Layout! Still, they hired layout artists first and a job is a job so I signed up for the new gig.

As an assistant layout artist, my job was taking rough layout drawings and making them look presentable to the animators who followed. When I was an assistant animator, I had to "clean up"the work of oft times lazy animators. These guys would only do the minimum amount of work required and let the assistant finish off the job. Consequently, I was used to doing 14 to 50 drawings in a scene. Being an assistant layout artist was similar except for one big difference, there was only three to ten layout drawings in a scene! I went through a week's worth of work in two days! Soon my layout artist was complaining that I was working too fast. I found it impossible to stretch out so little volume of work to more than three days. I suggested to my supervisor that I be given two layout artists to assist. Instead, he promoted me to an apprentice journeyman layout artist which had more potential but actually paid less!

By now you're probably wondering what's the moral of this story. The lesson is, don't be afraid to adapt to new skills. The Company hired layout artists six weeks before animators so I started my employment earlier. I worked through the summer and then when layout work ran out, I switched over to animation which continued for an additional six weeks. By learning a new job I extended my work season by three months! The best part of it was I established myself as a responsible employee at a major studio and I became a "first call" when work opened up. After a couple of years of this, I was "kept over" the layoff period to work on special projects. At last I was a Company man! I was on staff, year round and permanent emploment became a reality.

Losing the Green.

I know you're green behind your ears, Pilgrim. We all are when we start. You're still learning about the lay of the land, perfecting your craft and building up relationships. So, don't fret over the green, young one, it'll wear off. Most likely painfully but, most often, not fatally. Here's a couple of examples of how I lost mine.

I worked all summer, and then some, for the Farmhouse. I was having a great time drawing bubbles and drops from water animation and cleaning up the backside of a beautiful woman running away from camera. At break I'd "pitch pennies" with the crew and eat lunch out of a paper bag because I couldn't afford to go to a restaurant. But, hey, life was good! I had a steady job in the "industry" and got union pay and benefits...I thought. The way this benefit thing works is, you have a certain percentage taken out of your paycheck each week and this is co-mingled with monies the Studio pays in your behalf to the Union. This money is kept in a separate fund by the Studio and it will be turned over to the Union at certain times of the work year. This money pays for your health insurance and pension. Unless, of course, your boss lies about the amount of hours you worked. Under contract, you have to work 300 hours during a work period to "qualify" for health benefits. When I was finally laid off, the Union informed me that I hadn't worked enough hours to receive insurance. I checked the time I worked and found that my calendar and pay stubs (Don't EVER throw those away, Pilgrim!) showed I labored over 300 hours! The Union sent over their business manager to look at the Studio books and found my hours were under reported by a week! Their bookkeeper was gone during that time. They were SO sorry. That incident delayed my health benefits by 6 months. I had need of it then.

The next year, I followed Tumbleweed Tex over to another contract studio where I got to draw basketball players dribbling all summer long. I worked at a desk by the door in a small apartment-like studio. Directly behind my back was another animation desk, unmanned. The high shelves of the empty desk was used to hold the 20 cup coffee pot for the caffeine drinkers. The drinkers were supposed to go behind the vacant desk and draw their coffee from the spout. Of course, this meant several extra steps. One of the partners decided he could save time by turning the pot towards me, lean over and draw his coffee. Over time, this pulled the pot closer to the edge of the desk. One day, I rolled my chair back to get a good look at my drawing and nudged the desk behind me. The pot tipped over the edge of the shelf above and 20 cups of boiling hot coffee poured down my back! My screams brought assistance and I was rushed off to the hospital. I suffered first degree burns all down my back to my waist. At my belt line, where the coffee pooled up, I had second degree damage. For two months afterwards I had my dressing changed every evening by my wife and had a check up at a doctor's office each week. My employers complained about my absence when I had to go to the doctor. Although a torts attorney would have had a great time with this case, I did NOT sue. I considered my reputation as a loyal employee, new to the business, more valuable than the pain I suffered. That coffee burned the green off me, though. The red along my back faded away but there is a permanent ring around my waist as a reminder that loss of innocence comes with a cost.

Bottom of the Food Chain

There seems to be a misconception of what it means to be at the bottom of the food chain. Let me explain it to you. As a boy, I had a summer job at the County Fair grounds. It was after the Fair was over cleaning out the livestock stalls. A mule eats grain and hay, passes it through its digestive track and drops what he doesn't use out the back end onto the ground. That's the bottom of the food chain! I got paid minimum wage to shovel it up. I shoveled a LOT of hog, sheep, cattle and mule shit. And I shoveled it fast. I did that so I could get this hideous job over quicker. You see, I had hay fever real bad. Amongst all that foul smelling crap was a lot of straw, hay and grain dust that I inhaled along with the fragrance. My eyes swelled up, my nose ran and I could barely breathe. The worse I felt, the faster I shoveled. The rest of the young men who were smoking or resting when the boss wasn't around told me to slow down! I was making them look bad. The boss loved me. If I was fifteen pounds heavier and two years older, I could have been running that gang. But who would want to?

Welcome to animation, Pilgrim. Here's your shovel. The lowest paid job in animation when I started was Apprentice Inbetweener. That's the bottom of the food chain. I got paid less than minimum wage to shovel it up. Here's how it worked: the Animator did rough drawings (eight) of all the key poses in an action and gave them to an Assistant Animator who cleaned up several drawings (2), did several new drawings (4) then gave the rest to me (24) to finish. I did the most work and was paid the least.

There were six of us working in that converted one bedroom apartment. Tex sat by the window in the front near "Looney", the world's slowest and most meticulous assistant animator. "Sunny", the veteran assistant, sat in the kitchen and "Aussie", who had the exalted position of Layout Artist, sat by the door. I sat in the back by the hallway. The bedroom was reserved for "The Don". The Don was a regal looking Spanish Art Director who had an elegant moustache and wore an ascot. He didn't mix with the rest of us much. He was Feature production. We were television drones.

After a month, I had to join the Union. Their one time enlistment fee was a whole weeks salary! It was more money than I was earning! I brought this up, reluctantly, to my boss who begrudgingly brought my pay up to the legal lowest amount. A wise investment because I shoveled fast. I found out how fast when a month later I was "promoted" from Apprentice Inbetweener to Journeyman Inbetweener! This was a mind-boggling jump of 12% in my pay! Of course there was a "catch" to this generosity. My Boss expected me to bring my production quota up to 200 ft. per week.

Footage. Now there's an antique term! In the time before pixels and recording tape, all animation (in fact all motion picture production) was measured in footage. The end product that went to market ended up photographed onto celluloid film. Oddly, the width of film was measured in metrics but the length was measured in feet. A foot (12 inches) of 35 mm film contained 16 frames or images. Each scene of an animated film was measured by length. How much work you did was recorded the same way. My new quota was 200 ft. per week. This worked out to 2 minutes and 13 seconds of animation. I thought I shoveled fast but this was twice as much as I could do! I put in more time. I came in early, stayed late and worked on Saturdays. Even with all that, my best week was 156 ft! Finally, my supervisor, Sunny, asked me what I was doing and I told him of my quota. He told me quotas were in violation of the Union contract. The most work any of my peers, including him, were doing was 85 ft. I was being taken advantage of by the Boss and making the rest of the crew look bad! So, I stopped working on Saturdays and cut back on the free overtime hours. I settled in at a comfortable pace of 120 ft. per week. The Boss never complained. Heck, he knew dang well I shoveled fast!

Tumbleweed Tex

You gotta have a portfolio when you go in to ask a total stranger for a job. If you're new out of school, it will most likely look pretty pathetic. Mine did. I had a bunch of drawings of naked models, some illustrations of faux advertising layouts and book covers and a small reel of 16mm film that contained all the animation I ever did. The owner of the studio I applied at never looked at any of it. He told me he wasn't sure if he wanted to take on a beginner and that I should try and get another job somewhere else. If I couldn't find anything elsewhere, I could come crawling back and he'd see what he could do. Nice guy. Listen, Pilgrim, they're all "nice" guys! Expect some serious abuse when you try and convince someone they should pay you professional wages for unproven labor.

I carried back all my unexamined stuff and put it in my car. As luck would have it, I put my film reel on top of the car when I went to unlock the door. I drove off leaving it right where I left it. The last I saw of my complete collection of animation is when I looked in my rear view mirror and saw it bouncing and unreeling down the Ventura Freeway. It made applying for any other job difficult. It's trying times like those that test your belief in a higher power. Luckily, the Big Guy in the Sky was looking over me. In my case, that guy was Tumbleweed Tex.

I wasn't always The Mad Animation Prophet. That took years of of struggle and survival. The wise ol' animation director, Tumbleweed Tex, wasn't always legendary either. On this day he was just another young pup looking for a square meal like I was. Attached to the Animation Farmhouse was a two story apartment complex used as a production facility. The second floor had a balcony along one side. On that balcony stood a young Tex. He saw me as I got in my car and drove off and, he recognized me! He recognized me from Art School where I was two years his senior. Tex rushed to the owner of the studio and asked if I was the same BFA graduate he remembered from those days. He was mightily impressed by my senior project; a music video of a Smothers Brothers song. He went on to exclaim that I was the best artist the school had! Now, if this information made the studio executive regret rejecting me, he didn't show it when I came back two days later to beg for a job. Instead he gave me a beginning job as an Inbetweener at the lowest pay possible, providing I came early, stayed late and worked Saturdays for no over-time. "Consider it on the job training." he said. I did. It was my start as a professional in the business and I owed it to Tumbleweed Tex.

Tex and I have remained friends and co-workers over the years. He was even my commanding officer during the Civil War. Still, to this day, I do not know what I did at school that so impressed him that he gave a positive reference about me at a critical moment. I'm glad he did, though. A key reference can make the difference when your portfolio fails you. Remember that, Pilgrim.

Educated and Unemployed

Right out of school with my portfolio and BFA in hand, I joined the ranks of the unemployed. I was educated but didn't know anything about getting a job. At this moment in time, I was a "non-professional" at everything. How does one go about getting someone to pay you for doing something you were paying others to teach you to do? Luckily, there always seems to be work for someone who is cheap, dumb, insecure and talented. On the other hand, being desperate for a job drives employment away. Desperate people suck the life out of you and every employer knows it. Don't go into a job looking desperate. Also, It is absolutely essential that you know somebody in Hollywood in order to find work. Even if that somebody is another starving artist. I called friends about where to look and I looked there. I found a studio behind schedule that desperately needed artists but had no place to put them. It was a perfect situation for an artist that had a work set-up at home. That wasn't me. I needed a studio job that provided the basic things, like a desk and supplies, in order to work. I heard about a small studio that sub-contracted work for a major animation studio. They call these small shops "farm houses" and extra work is "farmed out" to these places. The first place I worked professionally was, literally, a "farm house". I mean the building used to be a farm house! It's where I first learned about the "business" of Animation.

Let's digress a moment and talk about "the business". In the "old days" the entertainment experience at the movie houses consisted of a feature film preceded by a short film, like "Laurel and Hardy", a newsreel and a color cartoon. These seven minute cartoons, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Woody Woodpecker, Mr. McGoo, were all made by the major film studios in a cartoon shorts department. Prior to TV, many of these cartoons would end up at the local movie house on Saturday morning where all us kids would go and see two hours of cartoons, short subjects and serialized adventure shows like Flash Gordon, etc. The advent of Television changed the Saturday morning serials at the movie house into the Saturday morning cereals in front of the TV set. Sponsored by the major cereal companies, the shows on Saturday morning were almost all cartoons. Forty years ago the television industry was composed of three mighty networks. They all had a block of time on Saturday morning from eight to noon that was set aside for kid's entertainment. Originally they were produced by a motley collection of animation studios; TV Spots, Format, Pantomime Pictures, Friz Freleng, Filmation and, the biggest, Hanna-Barbera. These studios were all owned and staffed by the unemployed artists from the former cartoon departments of the major movie studios. These animation houses all competed for that Saturday morning block of time on the three networks selling sugary cereal. The first of those shows I worked on was "The Perils of Penelope Pitstop" and how I came to get that job is another story...

A Boy and his Pencil

You may wonder when I first realized I was mad. When I realized that I was "different" from normal people. That I saw the world in a different way. I was born of humble and legally married parents in a small meat-packing town in the Northwest Territory. My arrival was no doubt the result of enthusiastic "coupling" that immediately followed the Second World War. The first awakening of my artistic madness was confirmed the first day of school. The Kindergarten teacher made the mistake of praising my fledgling artwork to my overly emotional Bohemian grandmother. With wails of joy, Grandma related the story to my mother who, unlike her stolid German background, broke down and joined her mother-in-law's tearful happiness. I was only five years of age and was thoroughly confused. I realized I was somehow responsible for the weeping going on around me yet I remained unpunished. I knew when my father and grandfather returned home after work to a household in emotional turmoil there would be hell to pay. But no! Once told, the parental males responded in family pride, handed out cigars to the relatives and ice cream to the budding young artist. This incident had a profound effect on my greed. If scribbling on a piece of paper could be exchanged for ice cream, I was definitely going into that line of work!

And so I drew my way blissfully from ice cream after ice cream throughout my normal and healthy childhood. I drew comic books about toy soldiers bayoneting rats attempting to steal gifts from under the Christmas tree. I drew graphic covers for my elementary school folders of G.I.s bayoneting Nazis. I drew a regular comic strip in my High School newspaper, sans bayonets. Then, ignoring the advice of my high school career counselor, I decided to pursue art as an occupation. Finding Walt Disney's name on the board of trustees of the California Institute of the Arts, I figured what was good enough for "Uncle Walt" was good enough for me. The following September after graduation I found myself in the "movie capitol" of the world majoring in Cinemagraphics at Cal-Arts. In spite of many distractions, like the Vietnam war, student protests and an unsuppressed sexual drive, I managed to graduate with a Bachelor of Fine arts degree. I was now a madman with a college degree! Now, the real education began.

The Way West

Starting out young and naive in the animation business, as I did, only requires courage and the belief that you have a talent for it. Common sense has little to do with the decision. Still, attaching yourself to an outfit that claims to know the business multiplies your chance of survival. I recommend higher education. I am often approached by parents who try to get me to apprentice their artistic child right out of high school. In school, this neophyte did badly in everything else but art so naturally he should be just right for a professional career in animation! I always ask the hopeful parent if they would entrust themselves to a vital operation by a surgeon right out of high school just because he was good in Biology. I expect a graduate to enroll themselves in an art school that specializes in animation education before I invest time and money on them. In forty years as a professional artist and film maker, I only hired two people directly out of high school. They are the exception that proves the rule, "hire experienced artists not students".

Anyway, that's what I did. I spend good money on education in order to get a good start at earning all that money back. A good school has former professionals as teachers and former professionals know current professionals. It all starts with a recommendation. In my case, my first job came from a recommendation from an employed underclassman who always admired my work. The first job allows you to make money and get the second job, etc. As an artist, you will find the mere ability to spend the day drawing rather than "working" enough inducement to continue in the animation business. People come west just for this opportunity. I didn't come west for the "opportunity". I came for the ice cream. But that's another story...