We're animators, designers and teachers. From a very young age, we've been fascinated by animation. Working professionally for the past thirty years, we’ve illustrated national telecasts for ABC and PBS, produced projects for IMAX, TV advertising, industrial videos, and the internet.
Our work has appeared in festivals with the likes of Chuck Jones, Lynn Smith, Bob Kurtz and Bruno Bozzetto.
On this site, we’ll showcase what we’ve done, reflect on other animators and animations amazing to behold, and on Animation, itself, the youngest of art forms.
Beyond the business of making money, animation is an art form that’s expensive, time-intensive and frustratingly slow to bear fruit. The history of animation details the relentless application of technology to speed up the process of creating imagery, whether it’s hand-drawn or computer-generated imagery. What animator doesn’t dream of freedom from the medium’s time constraints? As Jeff Scher observes, “Animators create time,” and as Richard Williams notes, animation is “…the most expensive medium that takes the longest time…” see Piano-Forte: Fluid, Hand-made, Low-tech Animation
What animator doesn’t ask, constantly, “Is it possible to work in this medium through smaller art, and still achieve big motion and impact?” … or words to that effect? Read more »
As a graduate student in 1973-74, I first watched the animation of Robert Breer, most memorably his wonderful 1957 abstract short, “A Man and His Dog Out for Air.” The playful changes of direction, thrust and scale, the abstract elements in constant transition, the brief but riveting appearances of the titular Man and his Dog, all left an indelible crease in my brain.
Reared on the raucous action of cartoons by the Warner Brothers and Fleischer Studios, and amazed by the technical heights the Disney studio scaled, I found in Breer’s “A Man and His Dog Out for Air” a great draught of freedom, a scruffy, energizing revelation.
“In addition to everything else, animation can do this, too?!” I thought…
My animation teacher, Eric Martin, introduced the class to Breer’s highly effective, low-tech approach: Breer used 4”x 6” index cards with a minimum of technical clutter. For maximum smoothness and minimal expense, I’ve championed this approach ever since.
