The city of Seattle hosted it's first-ever animation festival this past Fourth of July weekend. Attendance could have been stronger, but those who were there, fans and animators alike, gave the event across-the-board rave reviews. Animator Marv Newland said it reminded him of Annecy in the late seventies: no hype, no self-promotion, just a heartfelt display of craft and opinion. The low-key nature of the festival, perhaps typical of Seattle, more than made up for its lack of glitz by providing attendees with an unprecedented chance to mingle closely with some of the top animators in the world. Most of the guests made themselves available after their presentations, holding informal Q&A sessions in the lobby of the Seattle Art Museum. Ray Harryhausen lingered for nearly two hours after his session, taking questions, signing autographs, and posing for pictures. Barry Purves did likewise, even allowing fans to pass around and manipulate several of the original stop-motion puppets he had brought along.

Amazing Events
With 25 animators and 29 separate events, where does one begin to summarize this festival? Here are a few examples. On Sunday there was a remarkable panel composed of Mamoru Oshii, Rene Laloux, Marv Newland, Igor Kovalyov, Craig Bartlett, Bill Plympton, David Silverman, Jim Blashfield and Maurice Noble. You could hardly ask for a wider cross-section of animation backgrounds and styles. At times, a question from the audience would spark an interchange among the panel members, leading to the somewhat comical sight of Rene Laloux posing a question in French that was translated into English and re-translated into Japanese for Mamoru Oshii, whose response in Japanese was translated into English and.. you get the idea. While the panel members disagreed about many things, they concurred that commercial distribution remains a big problem for animation. Oshii maintained that even in Japan, the domestic audiences prefer Disney films, and regard their own Japanese anime as somewhat disreputable. Naturally, independents Marv Newland and Bill Plympton know all about the difficulties of getting their work seen, but even Maurice Noble had some marketing horror stories about the later work he and Chuck Jones did together.

Looney Tunes veteran Maurice Noble entertains an attentive crowd in theSeattle Art Museum lobby. Photo courtesy of Susan Purton/Scarecrow Video.

On Monday, an impressive panel of stop-motion animators was assembled, including Bruce Bickford, Stephen Holman, Barry Purves, Henry Selick, Ray Harryhausen, David Anderson, and Janice Findlay. The dominant theme was the increasing competition stop-motion animators are facing from computer animation. Naturally, there was plenty of criticism of the shortcomings of CGI. Barry Purves, in particular, waxed bitter about putting in nine months of puppet work for Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!, only to see it thrown out in favor of CGI. Even Burton collaborator Henry Selick criticized Burton's decision, pointing out that you can't do a real homage to cheesy Fifties sci-fi stop-motion by using hyper-realistic computer animation. The general consensus was that, Nick Park notwithstanding, puppet animation is getting harder and harder to sell.

One of the biggest draws of the festival was the Sunday night Simpsons show with director David Silverman. He talked the audience through two hours of clips, including some early proto-Simpsons work. Big crowd-pleasers were a compilation of "couch gags," and a censored "Itchy and Scratchy" sequence. It's hard to believe, but there are some things beyond the pale even for Itchy & Scratchy, in this case involving chewing his own leg off to escape a trap. Silverman laid out the entire history of the show and talked the audience through the production process of a typical episode. After experiencing two and a half hours of his intense, quick-witted personality, it's easier to see how Silverman's show maintains its creative edge. Even during the Q&A period, he never let up, and more than one insipid question was answered with a tart, though not nasty, response.