Augenblick has extensive industry experience, having worked for MTV on such television series as Daria, Cartoon Sushi and Downtown, and having been involved with virtually every aspect of the animation process during his career. He now has his own company, Augenblick Studios Inc., in Brooklyn, New York, and produces animation for such clients as PBS, MTV, Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network. The writer/animator of Drunky, Frank Suarez, brings his own great expertise to the film, with a wide range of studio experience, including numerous credits on features, commercials and television series. Bradford Reed provides music, using an instrument of his own design called the 'pencilina,' described as "an electric ten stringed collision of the hammer dulcimer, slide guitar, koto and fretless bass with six pickups of varied types," which can be struck with sticks, plucked or bowed.

Thought Bubble. © Octopus Ink/Billy Greene, 2001.

Thought Bubble
In the stop-motion film Thought Bubble, director Billy Greene also takes a look at a down-and-out alcoholic, though without even a hint of comedy, dark or otherwise. This film depicts a clay character who lives within a world made of paper -- silhouetted characters walk around him, suggesting the world that he apparently will never rejoin. The main character's thoughts and desires formulate themselves as drawings within paper 'thought bubbles' emerging from within him. Particularly effective is a scene in which an attractive figure lures him into a thought bubble with the promise of pleasure; the only thing holding him back is the bottle he clenches in his hand, which cannot be admitted through the bubble's border. As a whole, the film provides a beautiful example of mixed media animation and clay animated imagery, in particular.

Greene played in several bands, including a 40-piece Brazilian percussion group. His love of Brazilian music is clear in his choice to feature the bossa nova guitar throughout his film. Actually, another aspect of Brazilian culture had an even stronger inspiration on the film. The concept of Thought Bubble developed after Greene took a trip to Brazil and witnessed firsthand the poverty and homelessness there. Despite these connections to Brazil, the film is not culturally specific; for example, there is no discernable dialogue, only some non-specific grumbling heard at times. The alcoholic in this film is a fairly typical 'drunk type': a middle-aged man, in need of a shave and bath, who apparently lives an impoverished existence, on or near the street, much like the character Drunky. The same type of character is found in Closed Mondays, the Academy Award winning claymation film by Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner.

In fact, there is another link between Thought Bubble and Closed Mondays. Greene's skill as a clay animator was developed in part at the Will Vinton Studio, where he worked as animator on The PJs television series. Thought Bubble was an independent project produced by Greene and shot at Vinton during off hours. Sadly, in 2001, after he moved from Oregon to San Francisco, Greene was killed in a still-unsolved, apparently random shooting. The film is being distributed in his memory by the film's director of photography, Jean Margaret Thomas, as well as friends and family.

Maureen Furniss, Ph.D. is founding editor of Animation Journal and author of Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics (1998). She teaches in the Department of Film and Digital Media at Savannah College of Art and Design, in Georgia, and is currently writing a book related to animation production.