?Brian: I first met John while working at Nelvana on Rock and Rule. He was the lead animator on the characters, Quadhole and Cindy Schlepper and a large majority of the scenes involving Mylar. I had the opportunity to inbetween some of his scenes during the production.

Thanks a lot for doing this interview John. Can you tell us about your life in animation to date?
John: I broke into the animation business in 1974, starting out as a “go-fer” for Shamus Culhane, who was producing an animated TV special using his New York City apartment as his studio. My time with him consisted of my punching paper, Xeroxing drawings, and getting yelled at for making production mistakes that I (never having worked in an animation studio) had no way of knowing that I was making. Prior to that, my training in animation consisted of only a summer school course at the School of Visual Art in New York City. The course met for six evening classes once a week over the period of six consecutive weeks. The material covered the basics of squash and stretch, overlapping action, how to use exposure sheets, breaking down sound tracks, and shooting pencil tests on an old Oxberry camera. I came away from my stint with Shamus Culhane learning two very important lessons: the immense value of the quick sketch in capturing motion, and the necessity of knowing every phase of producing an animated film.

My next job consisted of working as an assistant animator cleaning up the animator’s key drawings and doing all the inbetweening on two commercials produced by a two-man animation studio in New York City.

In 1975, I was fortunate to be hired on at New York Tech, located on Long Island. The college was producing “Tubby the Tuba”, an animated feature staffed by former Terrytoons and Max Fleischer/Famous Studio animators. It was there that I became part of a classical animation studio, receiving great on-the-job learning experience in the various phases of production “New York-style”. This experience helped me land my next job as a supervising assistant animator on the Richard Williams directed feature “Raggedy Ann and Andy” (1976).

1977 was a major turning point for me: I was fortunate to be hired by Friz Freleng to animate at his DePatie-Freleng Studios in Los Angeles where I learned the “Hollywood-style” of production (which was the same as New York, accept that the animation paper was punched on the bottom instead of on the top). This year was also a major turning point for me as I left DePatie-Freleng to spend the next six years at Nelvana, eventually becoming Director of Animation.

Brian: What have you been up to since then?
John: During the following years, the studios I worked at included the Don Bluth Studio, Filmation Studios, and Rich Animation Studios. At present, my position is Vice President/Animation at Grace Global Media, a start-up company in Kentucky. My goal is to help build a studio that will produce all its original productions the way films used to be produced: under one roof, where nothing is outsourced. It’s a difficult goal, but one that I know is very possible to achieve.

Brian: O.k., let’s jump right in then. What is your personal approach is to animating a scene?
John: I lock in on the emotional energy that the character is trying to communicate and analyze how best to convey it physically to the audience. Mime is the most important key to a successful scene, as the emotion must be understood in any language.

Brian: Let’s say you have a scene with dialogue, do you listen to the soundtrack very many times?
John: Yes. I listen to it repeatedly, focusing on the rhythm of the dialog until I determine the key points in the phrasing where the character should shift from pose to pose.

Brian: When you read off the exposure sheet, do you make any notations on them?
John: I use the exposure sheet much as a musical composer would, writing his notes down for a musical piece. I treat movement as though it were music, setting a tempo, using major beats for major actions, and then planning secondary actions within those beats. This is important for structuring motion so that I have a solid idea of how the motion will appear on the screen before I do a Pencil Test. This is particularly crucial when two or more characters must interact in the same scene. Just as there is musical theory, there is movement theory. When you have two or more characters, there should be definite differences in their movements so that they play off of each other: calm against nervous/jittery, fast against slow, graceful against clumsy, etc.

Brian: Do you act the scene out physically?
John: Yes.

Brian: Ever do it in front of a mirror or video camera?
John: At times, I will act out in front of a mirror. But not very often anymore.

Brian: Do you draw any thumbnails first?
John: Depends on the scene. I will stage variations with preliminary thumbnails, then, when I’ve decided on my choice, blow them up to full size.

Brian: How rough are your initial keys?
John: EXTREMELY rough. They are force vectors that only I (or another really good animator) can understand.

Brian: By “force vectors” do you mean, the main lines of action in the character’s body?
John: The dictionary's definition of a vector is "a quantity (for example: force or velocity) made up of components of both direction and magnitude." This is different from main lines of action in the character's body.

I'm using the term "force vectors" in referring to my drawing forces---similar to the way it is used in the pages of class notes from Don Graham's action analysis class in 1937, in which he refers to the approach of drawing forces versus drawing forms.

Brian: Hah! The fabled Don Graham Notes!! And the very pages that I'm missing in my collection too! I should have known.

* Note: John was good enough to send me copies of the two pages from the Don Graham notes in which he and some animators discuss animating the force as opposed to the full structure of the drawing. It’s a sort of short-hand way of drawing the primary forces of the actions that are taking place within the scene.

So, do you just do the block out the main keys first, then come back and put in any secondary keys?
John: I will block out the main ones first, then put in secondary keys, then the important breakdowns, putting in overlapping action, etc. I then start with the first key and mold the drawings as though I were animating straight-ahead. This is particularly crucial in action scenes. For dialog scenes, I leave out only the cushioning in and out of poses.

Brian: O.k., let me get this straight. You draw all the primary keys as force vectors, then go back and add in the secondary keys and breakdowns as force vectors as well...
John: Yes

Brian: Then you go back over the drawings and add in the volumes and structure in rough form...
?John: Yes, in very rough form. Then I shoot my first pencil test and sync it with whatever dialog or music it works with. I will fine tune the timing and re-shoot the pencil test if necessary.

And then you clean-up the final drawings?
John: For the past many years, I’ve been cleaning up my own scenes.

Brian: What’s the average amount of time you spend planning before you actually start animating.
John: I really haven’t officially noted that---however, I tend to work on several consecutive scenes at a time in various stages of development. I will start staging two or three consecutive scenes, put them on the back burner to allow for a little “simmering”. I will come back to them a day or two later with a fresh eye, then tackle them in order from simplest to most difficult.

Brian: Before you start animating, do you go over the scene with the director?
John: Most definitely…if I am not directing.

Brian: Is the amount of time you have to animate a scene different between working on a feature film v.s. a commercial, or a television show?
?John: I haven’t worked on a commercial for some time, but in the past I had twice as much time on a feature versus commercial. For the past 4 years I have been in partnership in a start-up animation studio and I'm in charge of developing our own series for TV and Direct-to-Home DVD. I have been concentrating on story arcs and character development, mannerisms, etc. I am constantly switching between Animator and Producer modes, juggling how can I get the most out of each piece of animation.

Brian: Which do you like working on better: feature, commercials, or television?
?John: Previous to my present experience, I would say "the feature". But now that I'm on this series, I would say "television show".

Brian: Why?
?John: The commercial is usually focused on the product being sold and will rush through the acting/action to deliver the selling points. The feature allows more screen time to develop the personality of the characters more fully. However, in my present situation (since we are the owner/producers of the animation property) we want a quality series, so I am able to develop the characters and stories much more deeply (over a number of episodes) than even in a feature. Remember the First Law of Business: "Those who have the cash call the shots."

Brian: Any advice to someone in a college program?
John: Learn everything you can about the crafts of storytelling and acting, the principles of motion and music. Be aware that animation isn’t just about moving drawings across a movie screen, it’s about being able to control what is seen on that screen. Sure there are “happy accidents” in the process, but if you rely on them for the vast majority of what is seen on the screen, then you’re just throwing paint on a canvas (which a monkey can do, too).

Back to Homepage