Creative Consultant and Writer, Rhett Wickham Reports.

DAVE ZABOSKI speaks with an enthusiastic confidence that is infectious and hypnotic - an ideal demeanor for an artist whose personal vision of the future is ablaze with the endless creative wealth yet to be mined across the globe. Of the many hats Zaboski has worn since he started working in animation nearly twenty years ago, he has spent most of the past decade inspiring creativity in others; helping them “navigate” creation and “clarifying their direction to being even more creative.”

It doesn’t seem so unusual if you think about it, for a former Disney animator to turn his attention to opening up the creative potential of others. After all, what is an animator if not someone who finds endless possibilities where anyone else would have seen nothing more than a blank white sheet of paper.

Given one of his earliest experiences at Disney Animation, the fates seemed to have been preparing Dave for his mentoring role from the outset.

Dave Zaboski at work in his studio

“I was awarded a national internship where I was one of three guys that got the position at Disney”, remembers Dave, speaking from his studio in Chatsworth California, “but I came from a non-animation background – I was an illustration major at Art Center College of Design, so I was studied in draftsmanship and I was a very good draftsman but I did not understand animation. Animation is a whole other level of draftsmanship, it’s drawing in four dimensions, you’re drawing across time. So I was working on “Beauty and the Beast” and very, very excited to be there but felt really inadequate to the task. So I went to the morgue (now the ARL). I made an appointment, with either Doug or Dennis who were the guys who ran the morgue, three times a week to go in and study animation.

Copyright © Walt Disney Animation

It was so incredibly exciting, because I was always a fan of cartoons, but never a student of them. So, to become a student and to be able to have access to the Mickey Mouse drawings from the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and to be able to hold them in my hands and to look at all the incredible drawings that had been done by Disney animators over time, and to look at the drafts!

So I went in there one morning to study, and I’d always do it before I started work, so I got in there early one morning and there was an old man sitting at the table, and he had all these villains spread out all over the table, and I went to check-out the draft for “The Jungle Book”, I wanted to have a look at the Jungle Book drawings and I wanted to look at all that beautiful double-bounce stuff of Baloo in the Bear Necessities. Doug says “Hey Dave, I’ve got a treat for you, I want you to meet Ollie Johnston. Ollie Johnston this is Dave Zaboski!”

Dave mimics his younger self, feigning polite interest, at best. “I said, ‘eh..nice to meet you Mr. Johnston’ …I didn’t know who he was! I had no idea. I had never studied animation, so I didn’t know who the Nine Old Men were, I didn’t know The Illusion of Life, it was just this nice old guy in there, you know? So he and I were sitting there and we were talking, and he was working on the Villains book, and so he had all these Villains out. I didn’t know he was working on the Villains book I was just like ‘Hey, those are cool villains’ and he said ‘yeah’ and …*sigh* …so I was looking through the drafts to get all the double-bounce stuff, and was looking through them and I thought ‘Okay, here they are, great. Baloo, Bear Necessities, here’s the dialogue, Johnston…Oh my Gosh!… wait..and here’s another one…Johnston. Johnston, Johnston, Johnston…every single scene that I was looking up, all of those incredible scenes were all Ollie Johnston, and he was sitting in the room with me!”

Copyright © Walt Disney Animation

Zaboski had the experience of a lifetime that morning, alone with the man who, unbeknownst to Dave until he was actually face to face with him, had been his hero all those years. He turned to Johnston and said “Oh my God…you drew all these things.’ And he said ‘Well I guess I did, son, but that was a long time ago’. We just had a fabulous probably two and half hours in there together, talking about animation. I would flip through the scene and I would ask him questions about it, and …it was just a really marvelous experience to talk to somebody who invented animation, and I didn’t really realize he had until I looked at all that stuff.

I did finally ask him, if you were me, starting where I’m starting, what do you think the most important thing to remember is about animation? And he said ‘Make it entertaining.’”

Dave Zaboski took Ollie’s counsel to heart, and spent the next ten years entertaining audiences in performances that include the Genie in “Aladdin” under the supervision of Eric Goldberg, and what he recalls as his proudest achievement at Disney, animating John Smith in “Pocahontas”, under the supervision of John Pomeroy. The classical lines and elegant silhouettes of the character seem a natural fit for a man trained in the formal disciplines of painting and illustration. With the character’s design rooted in the work of J.C. Leyendecker, Zaboski’s superbly trained eye for human architecture and, by then, well studied and capable skill for moving it “across time” made for a perfect match.

Ten years after leaving Disney, however, Dave’s life looks a great deal different than he had imagined it. He never thought he would leave. Like so many artists, it never occurred to him that he would ever have to, let alone ever want to give up such a great job. When he started at Disney, Zaboski ran into hundreds of cast members who had been there forty years or longer - “Disney lifers” - and Dave simply figured he’d be one of them. But the “net present value” of the Eisner era forced the artist and hundreds of his colleagues to face a future that was different than they had imagined, and certainly one that didn’t have room for as many, if any, lifers on the lot.

“I think my skills and abilities now are farther than I thought they would be”, says Dave. “I love the vision and the ability that I have right now. I think that my best choice was to not be at Disney anymore, to expand my abilities and my vision.”

Painting by Dave Zaboski

Part of that expansion includes running a creative company called Spirit Flow Inc., committed to connecting people to their spirit through creative endeavors. “That means that we take on just about everything”, he laughs. His recent projects include a maquette and character design for a web-based game, a pair of portraits of the USC head football coach, Pete Carroll, done for a fundraiser, a banner design for an upcoming event, and an album cover for a band for whom he had recently done their logo.

“Sometimes it’s a little confusing. And the meditation right now is ‘how can I unify all of these projects in a cohesive and joyful way.’ And that’s the challenge, I think, for artists these days that want to expand their creativity in multiple directions but also keep some coherence. That’s been my challenge since leaving Disney. I often think what it would be like to be a baseball player and throw the ball as hard as you freakin’ can, once every five days. That’s what it felt like at Disney. All you did was draw cartoon characters. But then, I went to Paris, to work for Disney Studio in Paris, and living in Paris for a year I saw how much art is possible. I went to the Louvre Museum every Monday night and I …I …just…well, my brain exploded. You know!? Oh my God! I want to do that, and I want to do that…I want to be a painter, I want to be a sculptor! Sometimes exploding in all directions is a little dispersing.”

If anyone can manage it, it’s likely to be Zaboski. His personal discipline as an artist is rooted in a background that includes degrees in psychology and French literature from UCSB , as well as a degree in Organizational Psychology from the Universite de Poitiers in France, and a brief venture into law all before he found himself at Art Center, which brought him to Disney in 1990. Now, Dave Zaboski is not only navigating ways to have all of his own artistic passions flowing, and keep some cohesion in his personal vision, but he’s helping others to do the same – in whatever unique way the ‘creative’ takes shape for each individual client.

Painting by Dave Zaboski

“Discipline is the unsung aspect of what makes an artist great. I think that one of the things about having an artistic profession is that you have to take it seriously. It’s a business. I don’t see myself as a ‘freelancer’, I see myself as a soloist. That changes the dynamic of how I manage my work and my discipline. The challenge with clients is that you’re responsible for everything. There’s no blame. It’s all you. One of the things that I find challenging about being a soloist is what I call managing the maybes. Everybody who sees my work likes it to a certain degree. It pleases them. Everybody says ‘oh, I’d like to have one of those’ but there’s a lot of maybes. The game is going from the maybes to the yes’s. Once they’re yes’s then we’re dancing, and that’s the part I love. Most of my clients are really amazing, delightful, impressive people who are happy to collaborate.”

Dave admits that it’s not a perfect world, in so far as life as a soloist is more of a juggling game than what he experienced at Disney – with real-world concerns that come more regularly than clients - mortgages, school tuition, and more. But the illusory guarantee of his safety at Disney is something he was more than happy to trade away for the life he has now. His focus seems sharper, and he continues to meditate on how the individual manifests what he or she is dreaming into being.

Drawing by Dave Zaboski

“For me, what’s most exciting about being an artist is being a border dweller; being that person who exists beyond the border of the known and brings what he finds back as a gift and as a purpose…to build a bridge back to the consciousness of the known. When animation wasn’t that for me, it was time to move on. So I feel that that purpose is deeper than it’s ever been – to be that border dweller, to be the person who is willing to go over the edge of the known and bring the treasure back.”

“Without meaning to get too mystical about it, I think that the scientists and the physicists and the artists are the Knights Errant, looking for some higher knowing, maybe even God. For me, it’s a very exciting time for the artistic minded, because the Knights Errant - the physicists and scientists that we sent out on a path to find the divine – came back and said ‘Well, you know, it seems there’s more than meets the eye.’ And the artist has said from the beginning ‘Yeah! We already knew that. That’s what we have been saying the whole time,” so now the artist is needed to complete the quest.

Zaboski refers to the work of former political speech writer and lecturer Daniel Pink, who writes about the trend toward right brain skills for the healthy growth of society in the future. “The left brain has taken us far enough, and the major skills of the future are going to be the right brain fields. So we’ve paid our doctors, our lawyers, our accountants, our engineers quite handsomely for the work that they’ve done in understanding reality, and their conclusion is ‘there’s more than meets the eye’, so we’re now looking at who else we can get the information from. There are skills that are coming into being like the ability to synthesize, the ability to draw what’s in your head,, the ability to describe poetically, the ability to tell a story – that are incredibly powerful skills that are now coming back into the social and cultural awareness. The world needs stories. And the artist is the one to tell them.”

Artwork by Dave Zaboski

Nowhere else is this renewed power of the artist more palpable than in Dave’s participation with an exciting and life changing organization called Humanity Unites Brilliance. The underlying idea behind HUB it is that people will change the planet not by changing awareness or changing behavior, but by connecting people to their true passion and true service to the world. If people live a life where they are expressing their own creativity and their own voice in the world, they live a life worth caring about and then they live on a planet worth caring about, and that’s how the world is changed.

This brand new organization uses a redesigned network marketing model where the product is self empowerment education, entrepreneurial and social networking, and humanitarian giving. In a way, the individual is the product and the purpose is self-empowerment. It’s about creating whatever you are creating in the world, more powerfully. The faculty of HUB are people like Dr. Jean Houston, Jack Canfield, Lynne Twist, Dr. Sue Morter, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Marie Diamond and Paul Scheele.

Dave was the featured artist at the official U.S. launch for HUB at Cal State Long Beach on June 21st of this year. “I created twelve, eight foot by four foot paintings that were a container for the room. There were five hundred people at this event, so I created a series of paintings that were, in its simplest form, the idea that the caterpillar emerges into a butterfly. Inside the paintings were layers, and layers of other messages, and other swirls and dances, and I used text from the Sufi poet, Hafiz, to enhance the paintings, so each painting was sort of a poem and all twelve of them existed on their own, and they also went together. Then, during each session I did drawings that were really what I’d call “visionary drawings” that expressed the themes and ideas that were in each presentation. Most of them I did on large water color paper at my seat, but two of them I did on two foot by five foot canvases that I had stretched specifically for this occasion – one for Barbara Marx Hubbard and one for the Pachamama Alliance. It was really just an incredible, incredible weekend.”

Artwork by Dave Zaboski

Humanity Unites Brilliance will be creating events all across the country all throughout the year, and anyone interested in learning more about this extraordinary organization and their work is encouraged to visit www.spiritflow.hubhub.org.

For Zaboski, one of the very best examples of an organization connecting people to their true voice is the Creative Talent Network. Using the analogy of the transformation of caterpillar into butterfly, the artist explains. “There are these cells in a caterpillar called imaginal cells, and they have absolutely no known use during the caterpillar’s life, but when the caterpillar goes into the cocoon, something really incredible happens. It completely breaks down its cellular structure and it becomes goop, and these imaginal cells float into this sea of goop. Half way through the period of a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, if you cut open the cocoon you won’t find half butterfly – half caterpillar, you’ll find goop, and inside that goop are these imaginal cells. And somehow they get activated - by the voice and whisper of God, maybe? - they become activated and they start bringing into being, from this amorphous soup, differentiateable cells. They start calling to themselves other cells and they transform these cells into other imaginal cells and they create what’s called imaginal colonies. Now, when they’re small, the goop tries to kill these cells because it sees it as an immune problem…but sooner or later enough imaginal cells get called into being that they create these imaginal colonies and arrange themselves into order, and in a crazy cascade of transformation – butterfly becomes! To me, that is such a fabulous metaphor for the things that I see going on right now. The Creative Talent Network is absolutely an imaginal colony!”

Dave Zaboski Working

The calling from one imaginal being to another is tangible for Zaboski. Already he has connected through CTN with former Disney animators turned soloists Ellen Woodbury and Dave Pruiksma, both of whom Zaboski trained under when he first started at Disney. Like Zaboski, Woodbury is now sculpting from her home in Colorado, and Pruiksma creating from his home in Cambria.

Reconnecting has also renewed the artist with what he sees as a powerful and rewarding time at Disney, in spite of his decision to depart. “It was a very, very exciting time, and I’m really grateful for it. I know that there are a lot of guys who became bitter afterwards when things didn’t work, but you know we were as culpable as anybody in that relationship. We as artists, it’s our mission to hold a space in society and be the visionaries, to be the border dwellers, those people who go over the border to see into the unknown, bring something of value back and share it with others. That’s our mission, and I think we were as guilty as anybody in letting go of our power, saying we’re going to trust that Disney will take care of us and we’ll be provided for, instead of really seeing that we provide for ourselves. As a soloist, I’m not beholden to somebody else for my living, it’s my business. I have no bitterness toward Disney. I have nothing but the most beautiful fond memories of the people that I worked with and the training, the incredible training that I got there - training that says you have to live up to a legacy of magnificence, that you have to perform at an incredible level of your ability on time, you know?! There is an expectation of greatness that is in you, and that you will settle for nothing less, that’s what I take from that place, and I love it!”

Dave Zaboski Sketchbook

In the end, Ollie Johnston’s long-ago lesson is still being passed on, as Zaboski reminds us when he observes that “animation is beginning to find its voice again. I think we relied too much on the tool and not on the heart. We’re starting to find our heart again. All of a sudden we got these brand new tools and we got seduced by how beautiful the tool was and we forgot that we were using the tools to tell a story. What I would say to a young artist is remember the story, remember it is entertainment, and that’s how we connect to each other. It’s okay to entertain.”

Dave Zaboski is co-teaching a three-day workshop in mid July in Chatsworth, CA, called Wonderous Stories, writing children’s stories with your children. The workshop allows families to connect to the stories inside of their own families and results in creating a book, complete with text and images you create during the course of the three days. Interested families can get more information by calling Dave Zaboski at (818) 445-8500.

To find out more about Dave please visit his website http://www.davezaboski.com/.

]]> http://www.drawn2gether.com/blog/2008/07/05/the-life-of-a-border-dweller/feed/ http://www.drawn2gether.com/blog/2008/06/18/banjo-days/ http://www.drawn2gether.com/blog/2008/06/18/banjo-days/#comments Wed, 18 Jun 2008 05:56:02 +0000 admin http://www.drawn2gether.com/blog/?p=209

Words and Images care of Dorse Lanphers memoirs “Flyin’ Chunks and Other things to Duck”

In 1979 I was comfortable in my position as department supervisor at Walt Disney Feature Animation but there were political clouds forming on the animation horizon. Don Bluth, along with Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy felt the studio wasn’t being true to what they thought Walt Disney himself wanted of animation. There were others who didn’t agree and tensions were mounting.

Don’s backyard lunch break for a few of the Saturday Banjo crew.
Left to Right, John Pomeroy, Don Bluth, Dave Spafford and Linda Miller

Don, Gary and John had set up a part time animation shop in Don’s garage in Culver City , California . Don had written a script for a short cartoon called “Banjo the Woodpile Cat.” A group of Disney animation aficionados joined him in the garage to help make an animated film with the purpose of learning how to make an animated film in the Disney tradition. Everyone worked in their spare time for the love of the art, the fun of the project and a promise of some sort of success in the distant future. Everyone would arrive at Don’s garage after a full day at Disney’s and work late into the evening and most weekends, developing their skills as cartoon animation artists. Everyone was hoping to make a little film which would be noticed by the big world out there. I had a conversation with Don about staying at Disney’s because all the equipment was there, a complete animation facility. He replied “It’s just buildings.”

Sally Vorheis, A clean up assistant working in Don’s garage.

Eventually there was enough of “Banjo” completed to show money people what promise the artists had as animators. A company called Aurora Entertainment was interested in putting up money for a feature film. They had a connection in Chicago ; a commodity broker who was interested in animation and had lot’s of spare change to invest. Don had suggested that I could come with him to supervise the effects on the Banjo and then we would do The Secret of NIMH. I was torn because I really liked my position at Disney’s. I was working on “The Black Hole,” a live action film with animated effects and I felt that I had a professional obligation to finish it. After that I was going to be on to “The Fox and the Hound.”

Heidi Guedel, Lorna Pomeroy, Linda Miller and Emily Juliano.
All animators depicted here before resigning from Walt Disney Pictures early 1979.

Don, John and Gary secured backing for their feature film “The Secret of NIMH.” Don had bought the rights to the book, a Newberry Award winning children’s book. With financial backing in place, Don quit the studio on his birthday, September 1979, along with John, Gary, Lorna Pomeroy, Vera Macaluso, Heidi Guidel, Diane Landau, Dave Spafford, Skip Jones, Linda Miller, and Sally Voorhies. They all just walked out. There was much political haggling in the animation department at Disney’s at the time, with several ex Cal Arts students competing with Don Bluth for the power position, whatever that was. The three, Don, John, and Gary knew the time was now. It made the front page of the New York Times. A picture of all of them in the back of Gary’s Toyota pickup accompanied the article. The exodus set back the production of “The Fox and Hound” six months. It turned out to be a bigger deal than anyone anticipated and a lesson that reveals the importance of the artist.

Heide Guedel, Lorna Pomeroy, Linda Miller, and Emily Juliano as animators on The Secret of NIMH, 1980

The next day Ron Miller called an emergency meeting of all the remaining animators. We were to meet in his conference room at 2:30 that afternoon. The whole studio was talking about the mass resignation. I had decided to resign from the studio to join Bluth in what I thought would be a great adventure. No one but Don knew of my decision to join a handful of artist silly enough to think we could start an animation studio and do a successful feature in the next year. Since I had not revealed my future resignation I had to attend the meeting with Ron Miller. Every one, maybe 20 or 30 people, were seated around the very big Walnut conference table waiting for the king, Ron, to enter. There was excitement in the air. Finally Ron entered the room. He was late but no one was going to contest it. Not only was he head of the Walt Disney Company, a much, much bigger entity than the animation department, he was a 6 foot 4-inch tall ex- pro football player. A very tanned, hansom, formidable figure. He sat down at the head of the very large shiny table, paused for a moment, and said “Well, now that the cancer has been cut out…”

John and Lorna Pomeroy as Disney animators before leaving Disneys

All my friends who I thought were attempting to save the art of “classical animation” had just been called “a cancer” by the head of the Walt Disney Company and the greatest animation studio in history. Wow. My brain circuits all blew at once after hearing such a strange beginning to what was to be very tense meeting. After some group babbling and power struggling attempts the meeting was adjourned. It seemed everyone was excited about a new beginning for the Disney animation studio. With that troublemaker Don and his buddies gone there would be more creative room for the artist left behind.

Dorse Lanpher and John Pomeroy in at the studio in Studio City discussing effects
for a scene in The Secret of NIMH.

The day had finally arrived for my exit. Don was ready for me to begin on “Banjo.” I had written a long, heart felt, letter of resignation which I was going to present to Ed Hanson, the animation Administrator. The morning was at hand. It was chilly, wintry, November day. I called Ed and ask if we could talk. He was open to it so I bounced into his office all excited about what was to be Dorse’s next big adventure. I handed the envelope to Ed. He opened it, pulled out my letter and began to silently read my brilliant good bye. In the letter I had given two weeks notice, all very proper. Ed very quietly finished reading the letter and as he lowered the letter he raised his eyes to meet mine and said “Dorse, you’d better get out of the studio, Rons coming in this afternoon and he’s going to be upset.” I mumbled something about a two week notice and he said “never mind that, just get out of the studio.” Gee, not even thanks for all the good work I had done. I felt like such a heel. I went back to my room, cleared my desk and fled. A few weeks later Don Bluth sponsored me for membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Ed Hansen was on the board of the Academy. My application was rejected.

Dorse Lanpher and Gary at the video viewing a Secret of NIMH scene
at Don Bluth Productions in Studio City.

Don Bluth Productions was planning to screen a rough-cut of “Banjo” at a theater in Hollywood . It was planned as a first get together of the new crew so everyone could see the film and become aware of how much work we had to do to finish the picture. The night of the screening I drove to Hollywood from my apartment in Burbank . I pulled into the dark parking lot across the street from the theater. As I walked out of the darkness toward the crowd of artist in front of the theater everyone started cheering me as if I were the Holy Savior. They were just very happy that I had decided to join the new company as the Effects Supervisor. We all knew we were out on a limb and we would need each other’s total support to make this effort succeed.

The next year I reapplied for membership in the academy and I was accepted.

Bill Matthews interviewing a student, later Disney Assistant Animator at Kansas City Art Institute.

There were so many talented people that connected with my life as a result of my job responsibilities then, so many special occasions we all participated in, that at times it hardly seems easy to know where to start. So let me begin, with paying a special tribute to a great artist, a dear friend not only to me but to everyone in that Studio from top to bottom, and who gave so much of himself to training and inspiring most of you, not to mention thenew youngsters entering our world for the first time…I speak of the one and only Master, Walt Stanchfield!

(Drawings by John Musker and Mike Gabriel)

Do you remember his special handouts, written by himself (and often illustrated with his own sketches and cartoons) which he used to teach, inspire, and just make you feel good about life? Walt already had finished (so he thought) his own long career as a Disney Animator and Assistant-par-excellence, had settled into retirement with his beloved wife and creative partner, Dee…when Don Hahn asked him to come to London and help train artists to finish up Who Framed Roger Rabbit? That done, and he returned, I met him and we became instant lifelong friends as I convinced him to come regularly to conduct quick-sketch classes. His enthusiasm, always infectious, had his noontime classes full continually. And I’ll never forget..whenever his trees of midget tomatos ripened, he’d always bring me a big bag of them. They were addictive, because they were so sweet (no supermarket’s tomatos ever were like Walt’s!). He got me (and others) totally turned on and committed to watercolor painting, which he did all the time; I actually felt guilty when I wasn’t taking time to splash around! Walt’s handouts, which I maintained copies of in the Artist Development Department, ultimately filled 3 whole 3-inch wide, 3 ring binders! He is still missed in the lives of those who called him friend.

Note: Handouts published by Dee Stanchfield and edited by Don Hahn entitled “Drawn To Life” available to purchase March 2009.

Artist Unknown

“We’ve finally found it me compadre!”
“Whaaaooo confound it whaaooo, why you importinant little beast, can’t you understand a dad blamed thing? I say whaaoooo!!”

When I accepted Peter Schneider’s offer to start the training and recruitment program for Feature Animation, he described my job as spending a great amount of time….on the phone! How right he was!! Not only answering calls from everywhere about how do I get into Disney?, or where should I go to study animation?, to my calling and inviting special well-known people to come and speak to our staff, people specifically asked for by those of you at the studio then.

Do you remember sitting in on the fascinating and inspiring talks by these folks? Nick Park (who I gave a tour thru the whole studio, which he’d always wanted to see…just after he accepted the Oscar for Best Cartoon, Creature Comforts..he was like a kid in a candy store!); Charles Schultz, who received a Mickey Mouse watch from me on behalf of our artists, and who was almost in tears..he said he’d always wanted a Mickey Mouse Watch, but this was the first! And who could forget the enthusiasm shared by Chuck Jones, June Foray, Ray Bradbury, John Culhane, Bill Plympton, and Bruno Bozzetto? Others gave of their fantastic special backgrounds in areas not always Animation-specific, such as the Brothers Hildebrandt (great illustrators of children’s books), Bill Peet (one of Walt’s greatest Story guys, who when he visited, was suffering from throat cancer which ultimately took his life), Burne Hogarth (who conducted great after-hours seminars on drawing the human figure ala his approach to Dynamic Drawing, exemplified in his Tarzan comic strips), and, of course, legends such as Grim Natwick at 99 (creator of Betty Boop and animator of Snow White).

Grim Natwick at his 100th birthday party.

Ahh, those folks, but a tiny number I recall who brought so much inspiration to all of us, and always they felt honored to be able to talk to Disney artists! Some others, such as Al Hirschfeld, almost needs a special essay on his inspiration and contribution to our Fantasia 2000. But that will jog some of your memories.

(Mrs Hirschfeld, Bill Matthews, Al Hirschfeld)

I have to pay my own tribute to so many of you artists, producers, directors, production managers, non-artistic staff who unceasingly cooperated with me and my department when it came to training new people for all the work that seemed to just explode with the studio’s expansion. The future seemed undimmed, and the need for fresh blood was constant, and so I was sent on many a recruiting trip to schools around North America, not to mention the resonsibility of assessing talent potential by looking at portfolios beyond counting. It was always a thrill when I spotted someone whose talent just needed to be seen by our Artistic Review Board.

“Bill likes his job!” by Travis Blaise

Now, this body had been set up before I arrived, and was headed by the boss, Peter Schneider. When I came on board, he decided to make me Chairman, not a role I felt too comfortable in, but…hey, it was my job. The Board, normally consisting of all the production Directors, Producers, Lead Animators, Assistants, Story and Viz Dev folks, Production Managers, heads of departments such as Effects, Backgrounds, CGI and Layout usually met about once a month (later twice a month) to review all the portfolios I had selected to be seen by them. It was always held in a conference room and a lavish buffet lunch was supplied (out of my budget), and there was a friendly commeraderie evident. However, it could prove uncomfortable for me, with Peter sitting beside me urging me to keep things moving. Another situation that frequently developed that seems to come up whenever I am in chit-chat over the old days with some folks who used to attend those meetings that involved the A-V equipment.

Now, this old guy never was clever and handy at understanding equipment, and a problem with a conference room in which early on (before everything got built-in) was we used video carts, with TV monitors, and a slew of VCR’s! And, of course, before DVD’s sample VHS demo-tapes were the norm; however, since others often came and used the video equipment, they were prone to unplugging and changing wiring, and not restoring same to their proper positions. It became a source of laughter and a big joke with the Board members..and an acute source of frustration for me…trying to figure out why I wasn’t getting a picture when I popped in a tape!! Usually someone would end up putting it all straight, but my frustration was a wonderful source of jokes and caricatures…all in fun, of course! What a klutz, I was!!

Bill Matthews trying to make the VCR’s work by Ed Gombert

Still, without the help of people in every department who agreed to be the mentors for our training of new recruits, and involvement in internship programs, we’d not have had a training department, and the studio’s great expansion and the many great features we did produce might not have been made!

Artists Unknown

“Alright you filthy scum, row harder or I’m sending you to Filmation!”
After the 1989 intern program.

I could never list everyone who helped out, but perhaps mentioning a few wonderful artists who became mentors time and time again, might represent my grateful remembrance to some of you reading this who might just have benefitted by training under such as: Tony DaRosa, Ruben Aquino, and Mark Henn (for Animating Assistants); Bill Berg, Renee Holt, June Fujimoto, and Alex Topete (for Inbetween Trainees); Dave Bossert, Barry Cook, and Ted Kierscey (for Effects); Rasoul Azadani, Dan St. Pierre (for Layout); Lisa Keene and Cristy Maltese (for Background Painting); and Ed Gombert, the late Joe Ranft (for story), Tina Price (for CGI) and Thom Enriquez (for Story).

Graduation Day for interns destined for Disney Animation Florida Studio

Left to Right Front Row: Glen Keane (feeding Bill), Pres Romanillos, Max Howard, (?), Bill Dennis, (?), (?).
Left to Right Back Row: Matt O’Callahan, (?), (?), (?), Tony Bancroft, (?), (?), (?), (?), Serge Michaels, (?), (?), (?), (?), Walt Stanchfield, (?)

In my last epistle I mentioned some events which made for a happier atmosphere at Feature Animation. Any occasion was a good one for a party, and the holidays usually inspired office and hall decorations par excellence; Christmas was a good time to bring families together and let your hair down! In my case I added hair..to wit, a white beard, mostache, and white wig, combined with added padding (yes, even to my bulk!) in a bright red suit with black belt and black boots. Yeh, the department had it’s built-in Santa Clause for such occasions! For 2 Christmases they sent me down to Florida to be the center of attraction…supposedly for the little kids, but in reality became a photo-op for the (ahem) older kids, most of whom sat on my lap while I looked like the sphinx with a beard! Some interesting stories were told to Mr. Claus by the moms and pops who decided to show up their offspring by being unafraid to sit on what was amusingly called his lap!

But I do want to recall my own starring moments in our productions! While not getting screen credit (the Artistic Development department never did appear on our films credits, though somehow a lot of folks who provided services and food did!), nevertheless who can forget those stirring scenes on 4 of our features where my acting skills were unsurpassed? I speak of my debut, as a wrestler battling Mike Gabriel in the ring on a TV set (watched by an excitable butler) in Oliver and Company;

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Then onto further fame as a chubby fish, complete with tiny mostache and goatee and a couple of teeth with a space between them, surround Sebastian the Crab in his last song line for ˜Unda Da Sea” (what else, The Little Mermaid);

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Next came me as a hefty townsman clad only in a tiger skin pair of shorts, running off a plank holding a beer stein, jumping into a barrel of beer and coming up beer-sudsy, as the camera panned right on by, (yep, the ˜Feast of Fools” sequence in Hunchback of Notre Dame…I even got a trip to our Paris Studio to study Notre Dame, just for the role, ho, ho!);

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and lastly, my Oscar-winning performance as an elderly Chinese gentleman playing checkers with the one and only Walt Stanchfield, also as a Chinese gentleman…who, I’m happy to say, I won thanks to a little help from a young lady named Mulan!

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Yes, some happy memories to share. If you’ve managed to get this far, you have more stamina than I have writing it all down. I’m exhausted! So I think at this point I need to break free…may some of my memories shake your own experience memories and add to this blogsite. Together we might actually provide an archive that might not be found in either the Disney Archives or elsewhere. It’s been fun reminiscing, and sharing these reminders with you, and hope you enjoyed them.

(Original Challenge Memo)

Words and Images care of Darrel Van Citters:

A number of animators would play volleyball almost every day at lunch and often at the 3 PM break on the court just north of the old Animation building. It’s now a parking lot at the side entrance to the studio. I forget what prompted it but I decided to challenge Ron Miller to a volleyball match, probably since he was sports minded and competitive. I sent the challenge via inter-office mail and amazingly, he took us up on it and got together his team from the third floor, all producers. Ron had the studio provide his team with uniforms from the costume department, we all wore our delightful seventies clothes. Tom Wilhite was even enlisted and was provided a uniform but he declined.

Tim Burton was given the name “Backman” as I recall, for doing amazing plays from the back line during our regular games. The match of three games was played after work one day with the winners taking the best two out of three. As expected, Ron was very competitive and got a little annoyed at the play of his teammates. Mind you, we played every day, often twice a day and Ron and his team had never played together before. Late in the second game, we tried to back off but we couldn’t even make it to three games as you can tell by the lopsided scores in both games. After the rout, Ron Miller proposed we meet at Don’s Place, a burger and beer joint up the street on Olive, just past the old Genio’s restaurant, and across from the park.

(Take a close look at these signatures.)

The place has since burned down. We all had burgers and drinks there and I brought along a contract that Gale Musker had hand lettered in nice calligraphy that essentially gave us control of the studio for winning the volleyball match. Everyone of Ron’s team signed it in one form or another, with Ron using a big “X’ for his name. They were all good sports and everyone had a good time. Looking back on it, it was kind of amazing to play volleyball with Moochie and Andy Burnett. Or that you could get the head of a studio to play volleyball with a bunch of lowly animators. Those days evaporated in a flash, never to return.

Too see the Producers vs Animators volley ball game care of Randy Cartwright click here.