The Return of Chris P

During my years as a student at SVA, there were two superstar students capturing everyone's imagination. One was a year ahead of me, named Chris Prynoski (pictured above in cartoon form), and the other was Aaron Augenblick, two years behind. Despite not being in any classes together, I got to know Chris P quite well because he was always around, logging long hours in the animation room, and helping and inspiring underclassman like myself.

With his beard, fisherman's hat, shaggy clothes, constant smile, tendency to say "right-on," and an original artistic vision matched only by his killer work ethic, Chris P was a combination of the best aspects of 1960s hippie culture mixed with the DIY early 90s indie film spirit.

My first introduction to his animation was when my second year instructor, Don Duga, screened a tape of the previous years work, where two Chris Prynoski films were represented. Imagine that. He made two films in his second year! And, more amazing still, they were both good!

As good as his second year animations were, nothing topped his wonderful thesis film, Card Table Tales, which was framed around stories told by residents of an old folks home. It seemed the entire senior class worked on Chris P's film. It was as if he was running a mini-production studio from within SVA, where students flocked to him in droves, just wanting to be around his energy, talent, and good vibes.

In my senior year at SVA my career class instructor, Linda Simenksy, took us on a few studio visits. One of our first trips was to a now long-defunct studio (Vangard?), and who do you think was sitting there animating on a project when our class walked in the door? Chris P, of course. There he was, just out of school and still inspiring SVA students––now by his success in the field. A couple of months later we visited MTV Animation, then in its Columbus Circle digs, and who do you think our class passed by as we wandered through the MTV halls? George Clooney. No, that's wrong. It was Chris P once again. He was just beginning his many years residency at what became NYC's largest animation studio of the 1990s.

As many already know, Chris P became a key player at the bustling studio, helming the hallucination sequence of the feature Beavis and Butthead Do America, and more importantly, creating the original and highly regarded series Downtown (pictured above). During much of his run at MTV I was working downstairs in the same building, on Blue's Clues, so Chris P and I would occasionally meet for lunch. It was fun hearing stories about his growing responsiblitiy at the studio. For all the misteps MTV would take, they did something right by having talent around like him.

While I was working on my indie short, Snow Business, I would sneak up to MTV Animation to use their video pencil test to check my scenes, where Chris P would sometimes saunter by and then sit with me the whole time I was shooting. He was still the same guy that he was at SVA, interested in what everyone was doing, and forever encouraging.

After MTV bit the dust, Chris P relocated to L.A. where he directed series for Cartoon Network (Megas XLR), and launched his own successful studio, Titmouse, where he helmed series for Adult Swim (Metalocalypse, among other series and projects). Unless you've been living under a rock, by now you've heard that Titmouse just opened a massive animation studio in downtown Manhattan, where its already starting to tackle a few series orders. The artist-run operation of Titmouse is in sharp contrast to the Gulag-inspired studios others have set up in this town. Given the choice, now that Titmouse is on the block, where do you think people will choose to work?


I got a chance to say hi to Chris P and his studio co-owner, and wife, Shannon Prynoski (also a former classmate from SVA), at a huge party this past Friday, launching their studio and kicking off the production of the second season of Super Jail (pictured above). It seemed as if almost everyone in NY animation came out for this party: indie superstars, students, rival producers, veterans of MTV animation, and proffesional NYC animation talent of all stripes. The evening was kind of like that scene in Bambi when all the animals came out to meet the new Prince of the Forest.

Cartoon analogies aside, there was hope and promise in the air that night. The vibe was a lot like the kind that surrounds Chris P himself. This is no accident. Studios are always a reflection of their owners' personalities.

"Right-on," indeed.

Animated Gems

Murder on the Orient Express

Big Wednesday
Jane Eyre
The Cabinet of Dr. Calagari

Animator, writer, ASIFA-East executive board member, and teacher Rich Gorey and I have been close friends for over ten years. When we meet up for lunch, Rich never fails to ask me what animated films I've recently seen that knocked my socks off. Much to his dismay, I don't always wear socks, nor do I usually have a ready answer for this question. As I've recently posted, these days I'm getting my kicks from a whole host of film. In the last two weeks I've watched the breathtaking German silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Calagari (1920), the under-appreciated surfer epic Big Wednesday (1978), Sidney Lumet's lush Murder on the Orient Express (1974), with a performance by Albert Finney that was simply sublime, and the gothic wonder of Robert Stevenson's Jane Eyre (1943). In light of such stimulating viewing, I can't say that I always have animation as my go-to source for creative inspiration.

But with teaching season starting up again I'm reminded of a whole host of animated gems that I keep returning to in hopes to inspire my students. Of course, the result of which is always that I'm inspired anew. I remember Howard Beckerman telling me that he's played Yellow Submarine so many times that he'll often train his eyes on one corner of the screen, which can reveal new delights in a film you already know inside-out.

I haven't been teaching any where nearly as long as Howard, so I can't say I'm up to corner-viewing yet, but I have very much enjoyed revisiting certain films again and again through in-class screenings. A cornerstone of my film selection is anything by Paul Fierlinger. The artistry, storytelling, and honesty in such Fierlinger films such as Still Life With Animated Dogs and A Room Nearby (pictured below) cannot be topped. There's something so personal about his work. It's as if the animation is unspooling in real time, keeping pace with his feelings and thoughts.


Another short that I always play is the more recent John and Karen by Matthew Walker. I can't think of a short animated film in recent memory that has charmed me more. The animation acting is as subtle as it is hilarious. The little Penguin can cut down the giant Polar Bear with a squint of her eye, and the Polar Bear (in turn) can barely make eye contact with her.


As animation professors we die a little inside every time a student wants to animate a space battle or a dragon fight instead of trying to tackle an intimate character study such as John and Karen. Some of us take a while to realize that everyday life is full of meaty stories and moments that could inspire powerful animations. I'm 36 years old and hopefully I've finally learned that lesson myself.

Finally, there's John R. Dilworth's 2002 short The Mousochist, which I think is among his greatest works. The whole animation takes place in one scene, with only one camera move save for the climatic end. Yet, you're never bored with the simplicity (which even extends to the nearly stark-white backdrop), because the character animation is so engaging. Dilworth is such a talent that he can draw a difficult angle of a character screwing on its nose in back view, and make the action read as clear as if it was staged in a more obvious position facing camera. Along with Dilworth's economy of art is his "needle-drop" approach to music, which perfectly suits the changing moods of his character.
Time spent with such masterful animated shorts helps spotlight what amazing work can be done with so little, proving that effective animation is about a lot more than just fancy drawings. So, Rich Gorey, I suppose I can answer your question after all.

The Rauch Bros: First Five StoryCorp films

At a time when each month brings news of another NY animation talent departing for the West Coast (we just waved goodbye to the talented animator/director Dan Forgione, for instance), it's a gift to our community that we have Tim and Mike Rauch (pictured above, drawn by Tim) making intelligent and sensitive films out of their virtual Brooklyn studio.

Recently, when one of their new Storycorp animated films, Danny and Annie, debuted on TV and online (note: you can see all five of their StoryCorp films by clicking here), I was tempted to write about it straight and away, but I'm glad I didn't. By waiting I had the opportunity to look at their five Storycorp films as a whole body of work.

The Rauch brothers are among the most exacting filmmakers working in animation today. They produce beautifully crafted films to an ever increasing set of self-imposed standards. After producing the first two Storycorp films, Germans in the Woods and Q & A, largely as independents, their first official, commissioned Storycorp films followed, putting the brothers on a schedule that required more than one film a year. Big boosters of the NY animation scene, they wanted to work with as much local talent as possible. To that end, they wisely snatched up talented newcomer David Sheahan. But, they were also willing to pull in out-of-town collaborators such as the former Spumco background artists Bill Wray and Jim Smith, both of whose styles are compatible with the types of textured art that the Rauch's featured in Q & A.

Once I had a chance to examine and appreciate the three new films, Danny and Annie, Icing on the Cake, and The Human Voice, I could better understand their artistic ambitions. While the character designs vary from one short to another short, Tim's delicate animation and the brothers' directing style unifies the films, squeezing them neatly into a cohesive series.

A still from Icing on the Cake.

Comparing the three new films to the first two, I noticed that the two original pieces were much more filmic or cinematic with pans and camera moves, and I found that I missed those touches in the later shorts. The new approach has longer scenes, so the viewing experience is more like watching moving layouts. All this is done with confidence and it's a bold choice.

Danny and Annie is the film that has gotten the most attention with its very tender and heartbreaking audio track. While I'm not certain the challenging character design of the piece provides the appropriate accompaniment, it is well drawn and lovingly animated.

A much more literal approach is taken on the most recent soundtracks, a curious direction when the Storycorp soundtracks are already moving and powerful without any visuals. In The Icing on the Cake and Danny and Annie what we see on the screen is generally a literal rendering of what's taking place. There was more abstraction in the visuals and locations created for Germans in the Woods and Q & A. Germans in the Woods depicted a WWII vet's saddest memory of the war in a very dream-like fashion, allowing the audio track to soar to even higher emotional heights as a film. Q & A took the audio of a son interviewing a mother and started out with a literal scene of their time in the recording studio before giving the material room to breathe in a surreal landscape for the rest of the film.

The title card from Danny and Annie.

Still, there's a lot to like in The Icing on the Cake and Danny and Annie. The razzle-dazzle factor is high. They look like expensive productions, regardless of the limited budget. The layouts are Hollywood perfect and each transition of time and place in the stories is seamless. I especially like the condensed time effect used in The Icing on the Cake to simplify the action of characters moving across the spaces. Master filmmaker Konstantin Bronzit used a similar technique in his 1994 short Switchcraft.

The backgrounds in The Icing on the Cake and Danny and Annie are lovely and most of the time the clean spare look works really well. I love the way they depict the office space in The Icing on the Cake, for instance. It works a little less well when it comes to the backgrounds in the Mexican American's family home, where the minimalist treatment, as beautiful as it is, gives their home interiors an unintentional unlived-in effect.


A pair of stills from The Human Voice.

I'm absolutely wild about The Human Voice. I think it vividly captures what I loved about the first two Storycorp films: a visual abstraction that adds so much to the storytelling. The animation of Studs Terkel's rant in this film is simply wonderful (in my opinion, Tim is one of the best character animators since Paul Fierlinger). And while it contains the lightest subject matter of all five films, I found it the most moving.

Kudos to the Rauch Brothers and their collaborators for putting all their blood, sweat, inspiration, and sacrifice into making these wonderful and important animations and setting a new standard of excellence for the next generation behind them.

Four Paintings: One Lesson

Above is a series of four paintings my dad made over one week in 1963. Two years out of Cooper Union, he was working as an art director at a small ad agency. During a rare slow week he used his time to make these paintings with whatever art materials were nearby. Over the years these works have hung in my family home, so I grew up looking at them. Since my career began, they took on new meaning to me––sort of like symbols of the artistic work I could be doing in between my professional obligations. My dad didn't make these paintings to be a fancy painter exhibited in a gallery. These were works created just for self-expression. Instead of taking a three martini lunch, like you see in Mad Men, he stayed at his desk and quietly painted.

Unfortunately the nature of independent animation (as opposed to the act of making an individual painting) can nudge us away from the personal in favor of the commercial because why go through all those hours, days, weeks, months (even years) of work to make an indie animated short if it doesn't have a commercial value? We want our films to be everything at once: magnets to draw paying projects and prestige art pieces to win us respect from our industry peers. Both of these are simply forms of approval. But, I have learned (the hard way) that seeking approval in a personal film, as a reason for making it, is the kiss of death. It won't likely lead to a good film, let alone a great film.

Don't get me wrong, purposefully making an indie animated film to coax new career opportunities is perfectly fine, especially if you are honest with yourself as to your intentions. All my films, even the ones I regret on a creative or artistic level, helped me along in my animation career. And, I'm sure I'll continue to make the occasional film as a commercial sample. My recent film with Xeth Feinberg is such an animation, and I think our short will work great in a network pitch meeting, and maybe even score some success on the children's film festival circuit. But, as much fun as that project was to co-create, it's commercial purpose (to get us a series) was the reason we made it––so it's not exactly close to my heart. In a way, its made-for-the-market intention made its production similar to working on any paying job in the industry––sans the fact that we wrote it.

Ultimately, I'm just suggesting that we understand our motivations for making films because the clarity I have on this today has been very helpful. Early on in my side-career making shorts, I thought that any indie short I made automatically had credibility has a personal film just because I'd made it. How could it be otherwise? But, now when I make a short I better understand why I'm making it. No film, or any work of art for that matter, can be all things at once... so if I know what I'm trying to achieve (or say) it gives me a clarity of purpose and realistic idea of what I'm creating and why.

When I made Good Morning, which is my most successful short to date, all I thought was: I can't wait to show this to my wife, who happened to be busy in another room of our apartment. When she walked over I was ready to surprise her with 8 seconds of finished animation. She and I were the only audience I cared about. I wasn't trying to show off, make a masterpiece, or create a breakthrough film. With my new short (an animated documentary about my family) I'm living in that satisfying world once again, making a film for self-expression, and maybe feeling a bit of what my dad felt when he made those four paintings just to please himself.

Spinning Animation for the Web

As we all know, people have been making commercial animation for the Web for more than a decade. At the beginning, Web animation was a shaky speculation. Some companies tried to use it to create a sort of TV channel-style destination, speculating with other people's money and using it to rent huge lofts and purchase cappuccino machines. Then there were individuals like John K., who was so ahead of his time that the Internet wasn't ready to play his George Liquor cartoons even on the fastest connections of the day.

Some 10 years later, Web animation is still here, thriving as viral videos made by living-room Hanna-Barberas and posted on YouTube, as acquisitions for sites such as collegehumor.com and atom.com, and as podcasts like Sesame Workshop's Word on the Street for which I have been making 30-second films.

In addition to the my Word on the Street films, I was just engaged by Stephen and Joel Moss Levinson to create a film with them for their client, an online Jewish magazine called tabletmag.com. We finished the minute-and-half film set to a song written by Joel, in one week, and I'm excited to report that it's a hoot. These quick productions have the ability to capture some of that spontaneity I was writing about in last week's post. When you work at this pace, planning and animation take place simultaneously. It's working without a safety net, and I love it!

I've already explained in a previous post how I write, design, animate, and direct my Word on the Street podcast shorts, only employing my pal Adrian Urquidez to tackle backgrounds. It's not so much wearing all these different hats that make these projects so much fun (although it keeps my head warm), it's the amount of creative freedom Web animation offers. Somehow (knock on wood) animation for the Web is not micro-managed the way network or film projects are. For instance, on the newest Sesame short, Arachnid (pictured in two stills above and below), the plan was to showcase three types of arachnids––highlighting their eight legs, pinchers, tails, and other attributes. That was fine, but it seemed a little dry. To jazz it up, I suggested that at the end of the cartoon the first two arachnids show up to celebrate the third arachnid's birthday. I knew it was an odd idea out of nowhere, but the producer loved it and ran it by the research department who approved as well. So before you can say "arachnid," I'm adding party hats, presents, cupcakes, and confetti to an otherwise straightforward cartoon.


The short for the Levinson brothers was just as fun. Joel's song gave us a great foundation and, he and Stephen provided a good outline for what they envisioned for the animation. It was a very happy collaboration, one that matched the joy and fun of Joel's music and performance. I got to put a lot of myself into the piece, so much that during the production my wife remarked, "You're really coming into your own style lately." How often can that be said about work for hire?
*a rabbi chats on the phone in a couple of drawings I drew for the Levinson's Tabletmag.com short.

These short and simple Web animations demand a shrewd production plan, encourage creative freedom, and foster individuality. Like all golden moments in time, I know these days won't last...but, I'm going to enjoy myself while they're here and seize the opportunity these special films afford me.

Battling The Non-Spontaneous Side of Animation

*drawing above from my new indie film in-progress.

The busier I get, the more determined I get to jam in some time to work on personal projects. I mentioned a few posts ago that for the short films I'm making for Sesame's Word on the Street series, the deadlines are so tight that I'm sort of writing and storyboarding on the fly. Often I have to just invent a story as I draw it. Usually, us animators work to someone else's script, so these Sesame films go against that norm and forced me to work a new way. Having to work in different ways, for whatever the reason, pushes me out of my comfort zone. And, that's a good way to keep growing as a filmmaker.

I had an idea to make a personal film about a member of my extended family, some two years ago. It sort of laid there for a long time while other projects and priorities pushed ahead of it. But, recent events in my life convinced me to finally make this film. I don't like to say too much on a film in progress so I'm going to keep it pretty general and just discuss process here.

The first thing I did was fill several pages of a journal with memories of a certain time in my life that I wanted to recreate. Jotting down these notes only took about a half hour (I did this while I was on the train). Next, I recorded myself reading the notes in no particular order. I gave myself permission to ad-lib here and there to keep it loose and fresh. The notes were not so much a script as they were talking points.

Next I cut together the bits of track I liked using After Effects. At the end of one day, I had my first rough assembly of the track, which came to about five minutes. I plan to shift audio around as I work.

My philosophy in making this film is to let the film tell me what to do. Usually that's something that happens as you work on a film for a while, when it feels as if the film begins to give you instructions on what to do, but I wanted to see if I could get to that state of mind from the beginning. The key for me was to work in a way I hadn't worked before, allowing the interview snippets to be a sort of audio storyboard.

A day later I started the animation and I've since been able to animate about 20 seconds a day on the film, that is whenever I have a day to spare. I have about 2 minutes of the film completed and my goal is to have the rest of it finished within a month or so.

The thing I like least about animation is how non-spontaneous it can be. I know, typical animation requires lots of planning and process, where a crew or individual follow a pipeline from script, boards, designs, animation, edit, sound, and post. But, all too often the work we do in this industry looks like the process in that the careful planning sucks out any chance of life the animation might have had. I don't want someone to see my process when they watch this film. I want them to feel something instead.

So I'm battling this by working very loosely within a very personal subject. When I start to animate a scene I don't have a full plan of what I'm going to do. I just let it happen as I animate. Also of help is the documentary format of the film, which encourages experimentation in tone changes and narrative flow. So far I'm very pleased with the results. I don't know if I'm making a great film, but its of great importance to me. And, I suppose that's a good start.

MST3K and Me

*above images from MST3K

When I first saw this Mystery Science Theatre 3000 in 1995, it had already been on air for five or so years. In 1995 I was still living at home and since we never had cable TV I had missed out on the quirky series, until my boss, Michael Sporn, asked if I wanted to apartment sit for him and watch his cat. This meant a week in neat railroad apartment in Brooklyn, just one stop away from Manhattan.

Knowing that my first evening of cable TV awaited me, Robert Marianetti, the studio's production manager, told me to watch a new episode of MST3K that night. It was one of his favorite shows. Others in the studio talked it up as well––so my anticipation was mounting. That night, I watched 10 minutes of the show before concluding that the whole thing had been a practical joke. This was the program everyone was so excited about? I honestly didn't know what to make of it. Was it a puppet show? Or a spoof on bad movies? I should have just hunkered down and gave it a chance, but there was a whole gaggle of other cable channels to check out!

Eight years later I met my future wife, Debbie, who (along with her brother) were die-hard original fans of MST3K.

As a slow adopter, it was another six years before I was completely hooked on the show. Besides its entertainment value, the show's origin story is inspirational too. First created by writer/comedian Joel Hogsdon as a public access series in Minnesota, it went to achieve cult success during its 11-year cable TV run, starting out on Comedy Central and finishing on The Sci-fi Network.

You can check out the Wiki entry on MST3K if you're curious for more information.

The genius of MST3K is that it presents bad (sometimes otherwise unwatchable) movies in a new context, throwing high-brow and low-brow riffs on what's happening and not happening on the screen. What seemed so slow paced to me at first, I see now a densely layered show with jokes that hold up and pay off on multiple viewings. The puns, one liners, and pop culture references are delivered in a more relaxed Mid-Western manner than I was used to seeing on a TV screen so dominated by NY and LA productions.

For me it's a good reminder to try to take in some new influences, to be open to experiencing something outside my tried and true favorites. A big problem in the growth of animation as a medium is that so many of today's generation of artists have tastes freeze-dried in adolescence. While there's nothing wrong with being nostalgic for The Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Star Wars, MST3K shows that you can throw jokes about Harold Pinter and Federico Fellini in alongside them.

MST3K was chock full of obscure references and inside-jokes but, as Joel Hogsdon explained (in a doc about the series), "We never ask, 'Well who's going to get this?' We know the right people will." No doubt a good mantra for all creative people to remember–– that you don't have to cater to the lowest common denominator.