Animations of Christmas past and present

Well, as you'll have noticed, Christmas is coming and the geese are getting fat. To ring in the festive season, here are some Christmastime shorts old and new to enjoy before you all go off to wassail the orchards.

To start with here's one made by Falmouth-based Christian Topf Design as a gift to its clients in 2007. Very limited in terms of animation, the clip is basically a moving illustration, and rather charming in its way:

Next, here's a 1988 short by Sheila Graber, Toys Will be Toys:

And here we have a characteristically warped festive outing from Cyriak Harris:

Moving swiftly on to something rather more traditional, here's a stop-motion Nativity story made by year 6 six pupils from the Hempstead Junior School in Gillingham:

And now, Walter R. Booth's 1901 trickfilm Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost, the earliest surviving film adaptation of Charles Dickens' work. More information can be found on Screenonline.

And finally, an eight-minute BFI documentary about a form of pre-film animation, the magic lantern show. Not strictly pertaining to Christmas (although A Christmas Carol turns up again), it nonetheless seems somewhat appropriate for the season:

Christmas through the ages

It's time to take a break from blogging for the festivities, but before I go here's a smattering of short films old and new celebrating Christmas.

First, here's an 1898 trickfilm titled simply Santa Claus.

Here's a GPO short made in 1951, titled Christmas is Coming. Its rather mundane subject - what date to post parcels by during Christmastime - is turned into something special by Lotte Reiniger's animation.

Time for something rather more offbeat: a Weebl and Bob celebration of Christmas 2008.

Christmas Round the World, from 1978, is one of Sheila Graber's earlier films.

Here's Graham Ralph's 2000 short So Many Santas, featuring unscripted interviews with a range of department store Father Christmases.

Next is a one-and-a-half minute Christmas greeting that was shown to cinema viewers in 1946, featuring a short bit of stop-motion.

And finally, parts one and two of a Creature Comforts Christmas special; unfortunately, the Aardman YouTube channel doesn't allow embedding.

And to all a good night...

Following up on Gifford: the 1970s

The eighth in a series of posts using Denis Gifford's book British Animated Films, 1895-1985: A Filmography to provide a decade-by-decade analysis of British animation's history.

Disclaimer: Although wide-ranging Gifford's book is not perfect. He missed out several films and sometimes provided incorrect dates or crew information. I have done my best to correct any errors which I have found myself repeating in these posts.

In 1970 Halas & Batchelor was once again the most active studio, releasing This Love Thing, directed by Geoff Dunbar; The Wotdot; Children and Cars, for British Petroleum; The Five, for the British Life Assurance Trust; Sputum, for Boehringer Ingelheim; and Ways and Means, a Lewis Carroll adaptation made in collaboration with Bob Godfrey. This was not Godfrey's only film from that year: he also directed Henry 9 Till 5, and collaborated with the Larkins studio on The Electron's Tale, a promotional film for the fiftieth anniversary of Mullard. Larkins also made The World of Automation for the Foreign Office that year.

Richard Taylor's Jobs for Early School Leavers, a public information film targeting teenagers. More stills can be seen here.

Richard Taylor continued his work in instructional animation, directing Jobs for Early School Leavers and providing animated sequences for Richard Crosfield's Corporate Planning in British Railways (made for British Transport Films, who also commissioned Bob Privett's Careful Charlie). Taylor also directed a promotional film for Vickers, The Patient Analyst.

Richard Crosfield's Corporate Planning in British Railways is mostly live action, but contains a few animated sequences to get its points across. Here, a well-run railway is compared to a ballet.

Derek Phillips made three more independent films - Airport, The Battle and Now - while George Dunning and the rest at TVC made the science fiction short Moon Rock and two films for the National Coal Board, titled A Sense of Responsibility and The Self-Rescue Breathing Apparatus. World Wide Pictures also released three films: After the Arrow, Glyn Jones' Post Office ad; Problematics, an IBM advertisement made as a student project by R.A. Lord; and Magnetism, made by Eric Wylam for Philips Electrical.

Public information superstars Joe and Petunia. See this post for more on them.

Nicholas Spargo directed Flags, the first public information film in his Joe & Petunia series. Gifford also lists a 1971 film which he refers to simply as Joe & Petunia; most likely this is Acceptance of the Country Code, the only short in the series that was released that year. The others are not listed, presumably because they were not shown in cinemas. And finally, Bernard Queenman directed the seventeen-minute The Pied Piper of Hamelin while Peter Roberts made the sardonically-titled A Film.

A Film, by Peter Roberts, was the first of two animations made by Amber Films, the other being The Jellyfish. See this Screenonline article for more on this collective.

In 1971 Halas & Batchelor made Milestones in Therapy, an instructional film for Abbott Laboratories; the six-part Condition of Man series, directed by Geoff Dunbar and Tony White; A Short Tall Story, directed by John Halas; and Football Freaks, by Paul Vester.

Kama Sutra Rides Again, one of Bob Godfrey's adult cartoons.

The same year Bob Godfrey directed the Oscar-nominated Kama Sutra Rides Again; Biographic made I'm Glad You Asked That Question (promoting North Sea Gas) and A Cat Is a Cat; Larkins promoted the British Insurance Association with The Square Deal; and the seemingly unstoppable Derek Phillips made For Your Pleasure and Who's Next.

Biographic's A Cat Is a Cat.

The other films of 1971 are from new names. Donald Holwill directed Sisyphus for Films of Scotland; Peter Dockley made the experimental Cast for Intergalactic Films; Roy Evans made the BFI-backed Love Affair; Hitch Hitchens directed the National Westminster Bank advert Dreamcloud; and Central London Polytechnic student Monica Mazure made The Saga of the Scrunge ("A knight called Floop goes on his horse called Phleke to kill the fearful dragon Scrunge", says the British National Film Catalogue).

Donald Holwill's Sisyphus, which can be viewed online here.

Gifford lists one more film from 1971: And Now for Something Completely Different, a Monty Python feature containing 25 minutes of animation by Terry Gilliam.

One of Terry Gilliam's sequences found in Monty Python's big-screen debut And Now for Something Completely Different.

In 1972 films from new directors began to outweigh work from established names. While Halas & Batchelor produced the educational films Mothers and Fathers and Girls Growing Up, Larkins made The Gas Genie for the Gas Council, Richard Taylor directed the informational films Hot Water Bottles and Panic Man and Derek Phillips made The Gulf, New Force and The Visitor, an array of new faces began directing. John Gibbons, with the aid of the BFI, made Windows, described as "A personal view of the surreal quality of windows" by the British National Film Catalogue; Dennis Hunt made I Had a Hippopotamus; Alan Shean made You are Ridiculous for Steve Melendez, son of Peanuts director Bill Melendez; Peter Tupy made the independent film Pardon; Ron Inkpen directed the pornographic Sinderella ("Embarrassingly puerile throughout", says the Monthly Film Bulletin of this film - the censors weren't amused either); Jack Stokes made Boom Bom Boom for S.C. Films; John Tully gave us The Film of Mr. Zyznik, a promotional short for the Gas Council; and John Daborn directed Cluster Analysis, an instructional film about computer programming.

George Dunning's anti-drug film The Maggot.

In 1973 Halas & Batchelor stepped up production again, releasing the adverts Grape Expectations, Carry on Milkmaids and Making Music Together, the instructional film Neville and the Problem Pump, and Children Making Cartoon Films. Larkins made This Is B.P. and the instructional film The Case of the Metal Sheathed Elements, while TVC made Dandruff, Horses of Death, Plant a Tree, How Not to Lose Your Head While Shot Firing, The Maggot and Damon the Mower.

Disgusted, Binchester shows inequality through the ages to make a case for the Race Relations Act.

Nicholas Spargo directed the propaganda film Disgusted, Binchester and the public information film Fooling About, while Derek Phillips made two more shorts: The Sculpture and Weird. Other independent creators active that year include Derek Hayes and Phil Austin, directors of Custard; and Peter Roberts, who made The Jellyfish.

Peter Roberts' The Jellyfish. More about this short can be found at Screenonline.

A couple of shorts came out of the London Film School - John Verbeck's The Ostrich and Thalma Goldman's Green Man Yellow Woman - while Bristol University student Janet Johns made Jumping Joan (not to be confused with Petra Freeman's 1994 short of the same name) and Rachel Igel and Eric Money of the Royal College of Art created Many Moons. Peter Neal animated a balance sheet for World Wide Pictures' Who Needs Finance and Digby Turpin, a director who was previously seen in the fifties, directed the Guinness advert Think Twice. Jim Duffy made Benny for Melendez Productions, while Ron Inkpen made a Sinderella sequel entitled Snow White and the Seven Perverts. And finally, the BFI funded another experimental short, Peter Hickling's Generation Gap.

1974 saw the the release of two more films classified by Gifford as British animated features, although neither is generally included in lists of such: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which contained several animated sequences by Terry Gilliam; and the Anglo-Italian The Glorious Musketeers, directed by John Halas and Jeffrey Veri. Halas directed a shorter co-production with Italy that year - the film The Christmas Feast - as did Joy Batchelor, with The Ass and the Stick. Other Halas & Batchelor productions from 1974 include the Alan Aldridge-designed The Butterfly Ball and the promotional films Kitchen Think and Contact.

Lee Mishkin and Alan Aldridge's The Butterfly Ball. More stills here.

As far as the other major companies go, TVC made Five Problems in Communication; Larkins made A Better Mousetrap for IBM and Emsleigh Dockyard Computer System for the Ministry of Defense; the Richard Williams Studio advertised Count Pushkin Vodka with Trans-Siberian Express; Richard Taylor's studio made Alice in Label Land; and World Wide Pictures gave us the educational Who Needs the Computer. Other companies active that year include Eothen Films, which made the educational films As Girls Grow Up and How Babies Are Born, both directed by Vivienne Collins; Timeless Films produced Ian Emes' French Windows (boasting music by Pink Floyd); and Videological Productions, responsible for the handy-sounding How to Lie with Statistics.

The BFI funded Chris Majka's Dialogue, the Arts Council sponsored Geoff Dunbar's Lautrec (which features animation by Oscar Grillo and Ginger Gibbons) and the Welsh Arts Council backed Clive Walley's This Is the Life. Derek Phllips made one short, The Losers Club, while fellow independent director Ted Rockley made three: The Inventor, Join the Army and The Day Battersea Power Station Flew Away, the latter in collaboration with Dave Pescod. As well as his work on Holy Grail Terry Gilliam made the short The Miracle of Flight; meanwhile, Bill Mather - probably best known for initiating the Animated Conversations series on TV later in the decade - made Classical Cartoon.

Antoinette Starkiewicz's student film Puttin' on the Ritz. More stills can be seen here.

Mary Turner directed the six films in the Tree Top Tales series, featuring puppets of woodland animals: Hoppy's Hiccups, Dazzling Diamonds, Learning Fast, The Black White Kitchen, How Does Your Garden Grow and Time to Wake Up. Also for children was Lesley Keen's Ondra, about a boy visiting the Man in the Moon. Student work from the year includes Puttin' on the Ritz, by Antoinette Starkiewicz of the London Film School; Herb the Verb, by West Surrey College of Art student Chris Jelley; and The Castaway, made at the Central School of Art by Clive Pallant.

One of Ronald Searle's character designs for Dick Deadeye or Duty Done. More here.

The rest of the decade brought us a few more features. The first was Dick Deadeye or Duty Done, released in 1975; based on the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, it was directed by Bill Melendez and featured character designs by Ronald Searle. The same year Halas & Batchelor provided the climactic gladiatorial fight in the French film The Twelve Tasks of Asterix.

Watership Down.

In 1978 came Martin Rosen's Wateship Down, now generally remembered as the country's third significant animated feature, after Animal Farm and Yellow Submarine; the review quoted by Gifford is dismissive but history has been kinder to the film. The same cannot be said for 1978's The Water Babies, directed by Lionel Jeffries; this film featured animation provide by Polish studio Miniatur Filmowych bookended by live action sequences and was very much one for smaller kids. Gifford also lists the mostly live-action films The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle and Monty Python's Life of Brian in the strength of their animated sequences; the Pythons' company, incidentally, also produced Terry Gilliam's short Story Time in 1979.

The Water Babies.

Meanwhile, a feature of the last decade was spoofed in Little Big Films' short Yellow Submarine Sandwich, made for Eric Idle and Neil Innes' parody group the Rutles.

George Parker and Tony White lampoon Heinz Edelmann and George Dunning in Yellow Submarine Sandwich. More stills here.

Aside from Asterix, Halas & Batchelor made How Not to Succeed in Business: Parkinson's Law for the Parkinson Institute, the entertainment shorts Deadlock and Skyrider, the documentaries Chromatographic Separation, Making it Move, Measure of Man and Noah's Arc; the music video Autobahn (directed by Roger Mainwood, who also made the student film The Cage earlier in the decade); and Together for Children: Principle 10, part of a series whose other episodes were made in Mexico, East Germany, Canada, Finland, Russia, Hungary, Italy, Sweden and Poland. The studio collaborated with Bob Godfrey and Yugoslavia's Zagreb Studio on Dream Doll; Bob Godfrey also directed his masterpiece Great in 1975, the X-rated Dear Margery Boobs in 1977 and the five-part Screen Test Series in 1978. He also served as producer on Safe in the Sea in 1978 and on Graeme Jackson's Instant Sex in 1979.

Bob Godfrey's Great.

The Larkins studio, meanwhile, made Discovering Electricity, What Is Electricity?, Around the World in Eighty Ways and Operation Teastrainer; while TVC produced the Safety Senses Series, Teamwork, The Devil May Care and Black and White Magic; and Taylor Cartoons put out Icarus, Coastguard Telephone and Fishing Accident.

Russell Hall's lavish Count Pushkn advert Imperial Guard Cavalry, made at the Richard Williams Studio. More stills here.

Nicholas Cartoons made Super Natural Gas for British Gas, while Richard Williams' studio advertised Count Pushkin Vodka with Imperial Guard Cavalry and a Canadian railway company with Discovery Train.

Derek Phillips' A Concert.

Way Out, a short from 1975, was a collaboration between three prominent figures of the era: Ted Rockley directed it, Stan Hayward wrote it and Derek Phillips provided the music; the three also directed When I'm Rich together in 1977. Phillips also made A Concert, Switched On and Bigger is Better, while Rockley made A Tale of Two Cities and Hayward directed the experimental computer animation The Mathematician, backed by the BFI.

Early computer animation in Stan Hayward's The Mathematician.

Ian Emes made I Told You So; Freefall, originally shown as a back-projected image for Pink Floyd performances; Heart's Right; Witchflight; Oriental Nightfish, for Paul and Linda McCartney; and The Beard. Tony Hall gave us T'Batley Faust, reimagining Faust as a Yorkshireman; TV personality Tony Hart animated How to Lie with Statistics: The Average Chap and designed What Is a Computer, while Alison de Vere made two more shorts: Cafe Bar and Mr. Pascal.

Alison de Vere's Cafe Bar.

Other established directors active in the latter half of the seventies are Digby Turpin, who made the Guinness ad Is This a Record; Keith Learner, Nancy Hanna and Vera Linnecar of Biographic, who made I'm Sorry You've Been Kept Waiting; Vivienne Collins, who made Responsibility: A Film about Contraception; Peter Hickling, who directed Man and the Motor Car and The Mysterious Moon for Concord; Thalma Goldman, who made Amateur Night, Night Call and Stanley; Derek Hayes and Phil Austin, who made the student film Max Beeza and the City in the Sky; and Geoff Dunbar, who directed Ubu.

Geoff Dunbar's Ubu.

A major new talent from the seventies was Sheila Graber, who is portrayed by Gifford as exploding onto the scene with nine films in 1976 and seven more across the following years of the decade. Gifford's dates don't entirely match up by the ones she herself provided when I interviewed her, with these first nine films actually being made between 1974 and 1976, but this output still ranks alongside that of Derek Phillips in terms of sheer fruitfulness.

The Boy and the Cat, an early film by Sheila Graber, which can be viewed online here. See my interview with her for more on this animator's work.

The closing years of the decade saw early work from directors who would become prominent later on: Vera Neubauer made Animation for Live Action; Ian Moo-Young made The Ballad of Lucy Jordan; Nick Park directed Jack and the Beanstalk at the Sheffield Polytechnic; Michael Dudok de Wit made The Interview at the West Surrey College of Art and Design; Simon and Sara Bor made Father Christmas Forgets; and the Brothers Quay made Nocterna Artificiala. The Leeds Animation Workshop collective also appeared with their debut film Who Needs Nurseries? We Do!

Nocterna Artificiala, the earlest surviving film by the Brothers Quay.

Towards the end of the decade Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel started Cucumber Studios, which made two films in the seventies. The first, Clive Morton and Kevin Attew's Marx for Beginners, was thoroughly atypical - a cartoon history of the world from a Marxist point of view, produced by Bob Godfrey and showing the influence of Robert Crumb. The company later became associated instead with pop promos, such as their second film: 1979's Elvis Costello video Accidents Will Happen.

Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel's Accidents Will Happen, made for Elvis Costello. Go here for more stills.

As well as The Mathematician, the BFI financed Antoinette Starkiewicz's second British film High Fidelity, Jack Daniels' The Miracle, Anna Fodorova's Loop and Donald Holwill's The Adventures of Flutterguy. The Arts Council, meanwhile, funded Chris James' About Face and Tony White's Hokusai while the Greater London Arts Association backed Keith Greig's The Listeners and Michael Coulson and Nicola Bruce's Boolean Procedure.

Tony White's Hokusai: An Animated Sketchbook, which can be seen here.

Other films from this period include Norman Stone's Support Your Local Poets; Guy Ferguson's Handle with Care, an instructional film for the Ministry of Defense; the Disney-ribbing Mickey's Nasty Turn, by Jeff Goldner of the charmingly-name Abattoir Fillums; Anna Brockett's science fiction short Newsflash; John Gibbons' A to A; Rick Megginson and Steve Hughes' All Sorts of Heroes; Catherine Andrews' Search for Source; Chris James' Reel People; Chris Sharp's Strip Cartoon and Metamorphosis; Robert Reid's The Case of the Sulphuric Acid Plant; Make-Up, by Joanna Fryer; Man the Inventor: The History of the Heat Engine, by David Oliver and Frank Brown; How the Motor Car Works: The Carburettor, by George Seager; Lane Discipline and Read the Road, by Ken Brown; Nostalgie de la Boue, by Peter Rimmer; Engineering Matters or the Continuing Story of Ogg, by Tim Thomas; The Owl and the Pussy Cat, by Lyn O'Neill (not to be confused with the Halas & Batchelor version from the fifties); Mercurious, by Stuart Wynn Jones; The Garden of Eden, by Marcia Kuperberg; The Adventures of Captain Mark and Krystel Klear, by Brian Early; The Code It Story, by Eric Wylam; Vanessa Luther-Smith's Crackers; Ray Bruce's Spare a Thought; Christopher Taylor's Ersatz; Funny Valentine, by Maya Brandt of the brilliantly-named COW Films; Frank Koller's The Bunyip; Four Moving Pictures, by Alan Andrews; Kate Canning's The Chinese Word for Horse; and the twenty-seven Animal Alphabet Parade shorts by John Williams.

Gifford credits the 1977 films Topiary and Hotel to MGR Productions, but doesn't identify any of the individuals responsible. Similarly, the 1978 Smiths Industries promotional film The Vital Spark is credited only to Animated Productions.

As far as student filmmakers go, London International Film School students Frank Bren, Hans Glanzmann and Ian Cook made A Helluva Bet in the West, La Forza Del Destino and Cathedral respectively; the North West Artists Association's Brodnax Moore directed Arrival of the Iron Egg; 11-14 year old pupils at a Whitby secondary school put together Creation; London College of Printing student Jack Warner made Schizophrenia; the National Film School's Andrew Walker made Too Much Monkey Business (and, after graduating, made the independent short Bob); the West Surrey College of Art student Jo Beedel made Swimming Pool; Mike Smith, also of WSCA, made Sakrazy; Ian Henderson of the Central School of Art and Design made That'll Be the Dej, while the same institution's Inni Karine Melbye made Out of Silence; Leeds Polytechnic's Rob Hopkin gave us Kalamazoo; the Royal College of Art's Morgan Sendall directed Doctor Nightmare; and National Film School student Margaret Allen made Mack the Knife.

As I said in the last post in this series the sixties are widely seen as one of UK animation's best decades, with the seventies implictly seen as marking a decline. But yet Gifford's book actually lists nearly twice as many films from the seventies as it does from the sixties: this decade, then, was hardly a drought.

What we do see is a continuing fragmentation: the films of the established studios, typified by Halas & Batchelor and Larkins, are by now completely outweighed by the output of much smaller studios, independent animators and students. We're also seeing fewer of the advertising , instructional and propaganda films that were once so common, as these had found a new home on television; however, music videos have started to become prominent.

In the final post in this series I will be looking at the animation made between 1980 and 1985, the last six years covered by Gifford's book.

Other posts in this series:

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9

Interview with Sheila Graber

For four decades Sheila Graber has been making animation, and has shown great enthusiasm for new developments and opportunities to teach future generations of animators; in this interview she sheds light on each of these aspects of her career. Most of her work is available on her YouTube channel, and so I'll be linking to her films where appropriate.

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LC: When did you first start animating?


SG: In 1970 at the age of 30 I bought a Super 8 movie camera from Dixons to film my Summer Holiday; animation was not even in my mind. After all, at that time it was thought that the only people who could animate were big studios with loads of resources and heaps of people drawing, tracing, painting etc. I was a full time art teacher in a comprehensive school and played about with the camera in my spare time -I was newly divorced so I did have extra spare time. I discovered from the instruction booklet that you could "bump on your titles" by fixing the camera to a tripod and clicking a single frame release whilst shooting plastic letters.

So I bought a tripod and SFR but not letters - I used buttons instead. Move, click, move, click, and so on... The film came back 3 weeks later, the buttons were all out of focus but they MOVED of their own accord. Magic... I've been hooked ever since.

At that time I did a lot of oil paintings, so I stuck the camera on a tripod in front of an empty canvas, screwed in the single frame release, made a brush stroke, click etc. Three weeks later when it came back the paint reflected and it was still a bit out of focus but once again to see strokes paint themselves was magic. I then went on to experiment with anything I could lay my hands on, from cut-outs and pastel to plasticine.

Puff the Magic Dragon.

LC: What were the earliest animated shorts you made?


SG: An example of a complete film is Puff the Magic Dragon, shot in1972. Loved the tune and the story - so inspired by this I set out to make a movie linked to the soundtrack. In those days before computers or video the only way of tightly timing a sound track frame by frame was by a mechanical gadget called a "Pic Sync" which literally synced up each sprocketed frame of film to every sprocket on magnetic tape. However, I could not afford this until much later, but I could afford a stop watch - so I used that and home made bar sheets to time the track. The images do fit to the words - which is more than be said for the horizon line fitting to the sky!

I met the author of Puff the Magic Dragon years later whilst running some animation workshops in Tunisia. When asked could I buy the copyright (in order to make a proper broadcast quality version) he said, sorry, he needed the money so had sold it to the highest bidder: Disney. Ten years later I tried this plasticine mixed-media approach again (and the same home built set - with better join) to shoot a film based on Dance Macabre.

This was not only screened in over 25 countries but has also proved to be by far the most popular movie I have up there on YouTube. So I guess this proves that you should not be put off by naivety of your first movies - just keep going and who knows what will develop.

The Lady of Shalott.

LC: Early in your career you made a large number of films in a small space of time. What's the story here?

SG: From 1974 to 1979 I was teaching full time, so had an income and made films for fun at night and weekends. Bit like Tony Hancock in The Rebel. During the day, a normal job; at night, an artist doing whatever I felt like in my head and putting it into movies. I had time, enough money to live on and freedom - the ideal combination to create.

I was able to follow my own "body clock" and that's why the animations just poured out.

The Boy and The Cat - a vehicle to explore cels and character movement. The Twelve Days of Christmas - I had always drawn crazy Xmas decorations for the school hall; just put these in a movie. Michelangelo - I taught the history of art; this was my first go at making a film that would be fun to watch and hopefully get kids interested in art. I had no interest at this time in using this for broadcast so used any music I liked, no thought of copyright clearance. I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General - cut-out experiment in lip sync with lyrics that are just crazy and great...

...so it goes on, just following what I was interested in and exploring what felt to be the next logical step; e.g. I wanted a slow moving piece in which I could experiment with pastel and multi-plane shot so chose The Lady of Shalott, which I heard uttered by Dr Finlay to a dying patient in Dr Finlay's Casebook. After completion I wanted to try something much faster so chose a bit of Mozart which suggested trains and cars... Moving On - the history of transport.

One or two small commissions like Inside Look North and Larn Yersel Geordie crept in. The last film I made just for myself was Evolution; I then became "professional", and when you make a living at animation you have no time or energy to do your own work... well, some, like Alison de Vere, managed it, but I could not.

I finally managed it in Lifeline, in 2004 - a gap of 25 years. I think you can see why I'm now living in Ireland surrounded by trees and cows and am finally managing to make my own stuff again... full circle... I hope!

The Elephant's Child, an episode of Just So Stories.

LC: How did you come to form a partnership with Jen Miller?

SG: My interest in animation grew hugely on two linked paths. One was using it as a tool to get the children I taught interest in learning. I started a cine club after school and was amazed at the interest this generated amongst students who normally wanted to get away from school as quickly as possible. We finally managed to introduce animation as a full CSE subject at National Level. The second was exploring my own ideas through animation. After 10 years I had produced over 30 short films, the later ones in broadcast quality 16mm film. An agent from France, Nicole Jouve, saw my work on Clapperboard, a now defunct TV program that showed amateur award-winning shorts. She enabled these shorts, ranging from The Boy and the Cat to Mondarian, to be screened on world TV. In 1980, thanks to her backing, I produced a complete TV series of 10X10 min programmes based on Kipling's Just So Stories. Thus discovering that you don't need huge studios to produce work - you can go it alone.

So in 1980 I gave up my day job of teaching (though I still do many animation workshops) and became a full-time professional animator.

It is often the case that if you are efficient at art/animation you are not efficient at managing the business side of your production. It is an extremely difficult, if not impossible, job to sell yourself. I was not very good at it, and although I was producing work by the mile I was running at a loss. Luckily an artist friend who was part of the quite large workforce that I employed introduced me to Jen Miller.

Jen, initially, did some catering for a range of in-house training days that we ran. She was just so efficient that the corporate clients involved were much more impressed with the style and range of their lunch from her than their training from me. (Could have been the champagne on ice that swung it!) It seemed to me that anyone who could manage catering with such efficiency (her budget had only been £50 for the lot) could manage an animation company- and she did! As fellow directors we formed "Sheila Graber Animation Limited" in 1996, which went from strength to strength under her down-to-earth, wise management.

I guess we, in a tiny way, were a bit like Disney - Walt being arty with head in the clouds and his brother Roy providing the sensible feet on the ground side. Both sides are needed to make a successful animation company.

In 2004 Jen asked if I'd ever give up doing jobs for everyone else and concentrate on my own work. I reckoned I never would get the chance if I stayed in the UK as there was a constant stream of jobs. So we closed the company (whilst we were winning!) and moved to Ireland. Here I've been able to produce my book Animation: A Handy Guide, with the backing of the University of Sunderland .

I also run a number of workshops with Jen for adults with learning difficulties - which was an aim of mine from 1970 when I first saw how the practice of animation could be used to break through barriers in teaching.

The influence of Fantasia is evident in Danse Macabre.

LC: Is there any animation that has influenced your work?


SG: Yes - Walt Disney's Fantasia. It was created in 1940 when I was.. I must have first seen it when I was about 7 and just loved the way images moved to the music. Really fell for the devil coming out the mountain- Bill Tytla is my all time fave animator. The way I much prefer to animate is to start with a sound track and create images to it.

In my book Animation: A Handy Guide I explain and show many of the influences of Fantasia upon my work as an animator. Fantasia used to be released along with all his classics about once every 6/7 years - and wherever it was available I tried to see it. Today it's easy to see anything instantly - however maybe there is a sort of magic in the fact you can't see something unless you really put yourself out to find it!

Excerpt from Animation is Fun. See this post for more.

LC: How did you come to write Animation is Fun?

SG: In 1973 I started experimenting with plastic cels and created a little film about a boy falling down a microscope and meeting all sorts of crazy little characters down there. I think the best thing at the start is to build upon things you like and know. I had studied Science in my earlier days and was always fascinated by the new worlds visible via microscopes and telescopes. My little nephew aged 7 was jumping about the place so I used him as a model. At our local newsagent I came across a magazine called Movie Maker in which there were many very useful articles for beginners like myself. There was also an annual competition called the 'Ten Best" in which anyone could enter any sort of film. What was great about this mag was that its editor Tony Rose and team offered invaluable feedback on all entrants. So I entered the microscope movie and it gained 4 stars (one of the lowest grades) but the feedback said - "there is a glimmer of life here - keep going."

So I did - and made The Boy and the Cat - same boy, with my own cat Whitey - and entered it in 1974. It won a "10 Best Trophy" meaning it was one of the ten best entrants in the country. The extra bonus here was that all ten winners were screened at the National Film Theatre in London and you got to be in the audience. They always had a star to present the trophies in this case it was Jimmy Stewart. I always remember his great speech before hand where he said he'd been paid all his life just to be himself! I also remember how soft his handshake was - I guess I expected a big tough grip - but he was just himself, gentle and genuine.

Encouraged by the positive feedback I went on to make more movies and gained 5 more "Ten Best" trophies until I went professional in 1980. During these years Movie Maker asked me to write a monthly series of A4 double page spread articles on animation. I created them in strongly graphic form and simply based the subject matter on my own methods and progress and those of the students I had taught at school. I held the master drawings and copyright of these articles. In 1982 the Tyneside Cinema - an arts cinema linked to the NFT - backed me to publish them in a book. This book I entitled Animation is Fun to hopefully attract beginners into this lively art and find out for themselves how effective their own work could be!

Movie Maker is now sadly, like Tony Rose, no more - however it helped me and many more film makers bridge the gap between Amateur and Professional. Today animation can be created easily on computers, video, Nintendo DS, but most young people watch and interact with animation made by others.

Lifeline.

LC: When did you begin working with computer animation?

SG: I first saw BBC computers in schools when I was Media Adviser for South Tyneside LEA in 1985. However, they were so DOS-based that they were of no interest to me as an animator, though I did manage to grab in a gym shoe and tweak the image about a bit - and actually print it out- a great achievement in those days. I bought an Amstrad in 1988 because with extra software you could actually draw with a mouse.

However, it was the Apple Mac in 1991 that really got me interested using a program called Macromedia Director and a Wacom tablet I was actually able to draw frame by frame animation... my interest and available software/hardware grew until finally I stopped using 16mm film in 1994/5 and have used computers ever since.

A good example of an animated movie made completely on Mac computer/Wacom tablet and Painter is "Lifeline."

Hans Christian Andersen for the Youth of Today.

LC: Can you tell us more about your move to series work, and your pilot films that weren't picked up?


SG: A French agent, Nicole Jouve of Interama (who was also agent for The Magic Roundabout) saw some of my short movies thanks to them being screened on TV after winning some "Ten Best" amateur awards. She asked to distribute; I finally agreed. After 3/4 years she got me the world TV commission to animate the 1981 10X10 min Just So Stories. All this is more clearly explained in a short video on YouTube. She later commissioned the 10X5 minute Best Friends series, and later on in 1985 12X5 min La Famille Fenouillard.

In 1990 The Dumpies came from quite a different route. John Patience is an excellent illustrator of Children's Books; one series of books he wrote and illustrated himself was based on characters called the Dumpies. He saw some of my stuff on TV and contacted me regarding possibility of making a TV pilot from his work. I agreed as I liked his books - they are really genuine - as was he; in fact, when I first saw his tall figure as he ambled up the path, I thought "He's a Dumpy!". True self expression. We were all happy with the pilot but the BBC said "we have enough science fiction at the moment, thanks". So we still wait for someone to take it up!

In 1991 the Great British Pioneers series grew from Tyne Tees TV asking me to make short inserts for their new TV series Power House exploring inventions. Excellent scripts were written - alas can't remember the writer's name - and with the help of free access to TTTV library footage I was able to play and get paid for it! This was the first time I'd used a Mac Computer and Macromedia Director Software (instead of 16mm film) for broadcast work. I was just pleased it all worked and could actually be screened.

Hans Christian Andersen for the Youth of Today... By 1996 I was running Sheila Graber Animation ltd. employing two full time and many part-time staff. I also feel I was really getting into computer animation - particulary rotoscoping. High Level Recording Studios and Dodgy Clutch Theatre company were invaluable in helping this pilot happen. H.C. Andersen's stories are quite deep and often dark - not always Danny Kay 's interpretation. I felt there was so much good stuff in them that if they were animated in a lively way the material would appeal to the "Youth of Today". Using everyone's talents I really feel we produced a pilot that would have led to a dynamic and relevant set of stories for today's youth... maybe the youth of tomorrow?




LC: How did you come to write your second book, Animation: A Handy Guide?


SG: I was invited by the University of Sunderland to be their "reader" - which means you get a chance to do research as well as teach part time. One of the staff, Shirley Wheeler, suggested I write a book about animation. I had been considering this for years - ever since Animation is Fun - so I leapt at the chance. I began the first draft in 2000. It was only when I moved to Ireland in 2004 that I had the time and space to create the book. I wanted to create something that would really help animation students get a grasp of history, methods, and creativity.

Watching animation students doing research I noticed they rarely went to books; instead it was straight to the internet. So I thought I'd make a book that covered 20 key items in the history of animation, with loads of pictures and with a matching DVD that linked all key items to the internet and showed my own and student animation footage wherever needed.

Within the DVD are printable pages from Animation is Fun updated to take in digital cameras and computers. Those that have seen it find it easy to use and useful. Not enough colleges or unis know it's out there - I hope readers of your blog might check it out!

LC: Is there any animation you've been enjoying lately?

SG: I like all the blockbusters from Shrek to Toy Story; however, my real interest is in individuals using animation to explore their own world in their own way. So now I mainly enjoy animations by students round the world, thanks to YouTube - it's great to see original ideas and methods being used to express personal feelings.

I'll just use two as examples:
I presently teach at the University of Sunderland now and then I see a lot of their work; one I really like is The Highwayman, set to the famous poem by Alfred Noyes. Alas, due to copyright on this poem, the student had to re-cut it to music to show on YouTube. I saw it with the original voiced soundtrack - it was extremely moving. You can hear Noyes voicing his own poem here.

In quite a different style is a short crazy animation on evolution. I like it because it's original. simple and tells it's story well. One of Disney's key phrases to his team was "Keep It Simple" - so true.

I have always enjoyed any images (animated or otherwise) well edited to a sound track - e.g. the real two talking cats are great, and the re-dubbed sound track is terrific - highly animated!

In July this year I shot and edited a short movie about swallows nesting in our decking - this gave me as much enjoyment as actually animating the images (and it's a lot quicker!) and hopefully as much fun to watch.

I have only recently discovered the wonders of Russian animation including Yuri Norstein andbAlexander Petrov. Their style is much deeper and stronger than our "western" approach - well worth a look!

I'm currently working on "Quizi-Cat's Quest", a large multi-media project (book/DVD/animation/web site) to help children learn about the world and be creative at the same time, that will hopefully get every child in the country (and maybe the world) animated at school/home and use animation as a way into learning and having fun whilst they do it... watch this space!