An early drawing from Rabbit. Courtesy of Tom Sito.

DH: Animated shorts are expensive and usually don't turn a profit for the company, so there have to be other reasons to create them.

Certainly for the Roger Rabbit shorts, the idea was to keep the characters alive until the sequel could be prepared. The first and second shorts flowed pretty quickly from a series of original ideas that sprang up right after we returned from making the movie in London. The third short took a little while longer to produce, but it was made in our Florida studio at the time and was a terrific film. It became clear by the time the third short came out that the sequel was going to be years off and with three shorts in the can, it was time to hold for a bit until the second movie became a reality.

Of course, we are still holding.

Tom Sito
AF: How did you first become involved with the production of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? What convinced you to take on the project?

Tom Sito: I had been working on some TV series in L.A., but not feeling particularly challenged. I went to London to animate on some commercials with Eric Goldberg. The London scene then was jumping with interesting projects. While there, I went up to visit Richard Williams, who was an old friend of mine. Dick took one look at me and exclaimed, "Oh Sito! You must come work on this!" He hired Pat [Connolly] and me on the spot. And that was that.

This is Roger's "head shot" done as a piece of set dressing for Jessica's dressing room. Disney artist John Emerson modeled the artwork after the photographer Hurrell.

AF: How long had you worked in animation prior to Roger? How had your previous jobs prepared you for your work on Roger?

TS: I'd worked about 13 years. I had worked with Richard Williams on at least three other occasions, and we were good friends. Dick's standards were so high, I even took the fact that he talked to me as a compliment. He simply had no time for mediocrity. I knew working on this project would be an event. When I read the script, it was the best script I had read in years. I could already see the movie in my mind. I was so used to the bland, PC, homogenized Hollywood product, that when I read this, I actually went in the next day and said to Robert Zemeckis with incredulity:" This... is... good! Are we seriously going to make this?" Bob looked a little insulted, coming from screenwriting. " Of course we are." And I replied, "Far out."

AF: Disney animation underwent a renaissance with the release of The Little Mermaid, in 1989, but there are many who point to Roger as the big turning point for Disney's animation department in the late 1980s. Do you agree with that statement? Can you describe the pre-Roger and post-Roger Disney Studios?

TS: I do believe Roger Rabbit was the beginning of the great 2D renaissance at Disney. Before that feature animation was rudderless, stewing in its own juices and not knowing what to make of its new ownership. The Great Mouse Detective kept the doors open, but morale was not good on Oliver & Company. No one yet understood what Katzenberg & Co. really wanted out of them. There was resistance from the more hard-core Disney loyalists. There was the competition from Don Bluth and Spielberg producing An American Tail, which had great success that surprised everyone.

After Roger Rabbit's success, it seemed anything was possible. I think Andreas [Deja] entered his mature personal style on Roger and James Baxter was discovered out of school. Nik Ranieri also came from this group. A cadre of Dick's London animators returned to Burbank like a flu shot for the spirit of the crew. Oliver picked up, then The Little Mermaid convinced us that the success was no one-shot fluke.

AF: Which characters did you animate? What animators did you find yourself studying most often while preparing to work on the film?

TS: Because I joined the crew later than most, I asked Dick where was I needed the most. He answered: "Weasels. No one wants to do them." So I did a lot of weasels, including the scenes where they all die. I also animated some of the gorilla bouncer at the Ink & Paint Club, and a lot on the finale.

I animated Woody Woodpecker, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam and Dumbo. I did the last shot of the picture: sc.235/57, I'll always remember it. One hundred characters, 28 runs under the camera for 38 feet, (45 feet is 30 seconds), 14 levels. All singing, all dancing. Zemeckis wanted it to look like the last shot of Hitchcock's The Birds, except with toons. I also got to animate some of the last voice work of Mel Blanc, doing Sylvester. He died two months later. I studied Rod Scribner, Clampett's Sylvester from Kitty Cornered, Dick Lundy's Woody Woodpecker.

AF: How much time did you spend working on the film?

TS: About eight months.