Indiana’s Perennial Pictures has produced animated specials, pilots and pitches since 1979. Its short, Handycat, will premiere soon on Nickelodeon’s Random Cartoon Show. All Handycat images © 2006 Viacom Internati

Seen from the street, Perennial Pictures Film Corp. looks much like an ordinary storefront in a strip mall. If not for a small sign on the door, one might pass it by entirely. If so, one might never discover that this small, but spunky animation studio in Indianapolis has been producing animated specials, pilots and pitches for domestic and international markets since 1979. One might further find out that Perennial Pictures created a sprightly short called Handycat that will premiere on Nickelodeon’s Random Cartoon Show in the near future. Last month I dropped in on Perennial to give our readers a look at this rarity. Nestled in the Midwest, far from the animation haven of Hollywood, Indiana’s own animation studio has quite a tradition and is hoping that greater things lie ahead.

Perennial’s founders and brain trust are G. Brian Reynolds, 54, and Russ Harris, 52. The two met during their time in local TV at Indiana’s Channel Four. Both knew that they wanted to work in film. Brian was determined to have an animation career from an early age: “I knew by the fourth grade that’s what I wanted to do. The first cartoons I ever saw were the old black-and-white Max Fleischer Popeye cartoons — hey, that’s all they had on TV! Hanna-Barbera were my heroes; it was so fresh when it first came out. In 1966, when I was about 14, I wrote Bill Hanna, told him what I wanted to do and sent him some of my stuff. Not only did he write back with a very encouraging letter, he sent me an autographed Flintstones cel.” Brian lifted the framed cel from the wall and proudly showed me the gift that launched a career. His enthusiasm turned out to be infectious. “I wasn’t drawn to animation,” recalls Russ with a laugh. “I really wanted to go into live-action filmmaking. After I met Brian, things changed. I began to realize that animation was just a great medium. Every action is so controllable.”

Russ readily admits to a fondness for early Hanna-Barbera and Jay Ward cartoons, as well as the specials produced by Bill Melendez. Brian concurs. “I couldn’t wait for the Charlie Brown Christmas special to come on every year. Especially after we got a color TV!” As a creator of numerous Christmas specials, Brian can name his favorite without hesitation — “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962). I have it on DVD and watch it again and again. I have some original art from the special and I really treasure it.”

Perennial’s founders G. Brian Reynolds (left) and Russ Harris are fond of Hanna-Barbera, Jay Ward and Charlie Brown.

A tour of the Perennial studio reflects the impact of Flash animation on modern production. In one nearly empty room sits a forlorn, backlit ink-and-paint desk and above it, long shelves holding colorful bottles of cel paint that have not been opened for a very long time. “We ought to give them away to a school or something,” jokes Russ, “if they haven’t solidified by now.” At the rear of the studio, space is taken up by an ancient Kem 35mm film editing machine that has seen busier days (perhaps in the 1970s). A rear storage area is crammed with a Frankenstein’s lab of camera and editing equipment that might have been used in making Mr. Bug Goes to Town. Beneath their mantles of dust is a virtual history of how animation used to be done; I wryly suggested that the studio could be kept afloat for years through the judicious use of eBay.

The heart of Perennial is a long, rectangular room in which three powerful PCs utilize Flash techniques and software to produce the studio’s modern output, including Handycat, their latest short for Nickelodeon’s Random Cartoons. Over the past decade, Flash has helped to level the playing field for smaller animation producers and studios and Perennial has been an economic and artistic beneficiary of this advance in computer technology.