Legendary animator, illustrator, producer, and author, who won an Academy Award in 1961 for his animated short, ‘Munro,’ passed away last Thursday at his home in Prague.
Creating the right name for a cartoon character can be a key* to its success. A clever name can often lead you to develop a clever character. Or maybe you have a great idea for a character, but you’re hung up trying to think of its name. You need a name that’s easy to pronounce, unique and copyrightable, inherently appealing, strong, or funny in itself. A great, original name will attract positive reactions even before people know what or who it is!
How To Succeed In Animation
This new forward, revised in mid 2010, includes a new essay by Gene entitled "Animators Belong To The Ages. Where We Fit In." As Gene starts this book, "Animation Rules, And Always Has!"
Animators Belong To The Ages -- The Da Vinci Daze
In the early days of the 21st Century, I was invited to be the keynote speaker at an event with the lofty title, "da Vinci Days." I suspected it was because they found that I'm left-handed. The theme of the affair, put on by the University of Oregon in Corvallis, was "Motion, Music, Magic." Those were things I figured I could fake a speech about.
Well, no one is perfect.
Hundreds of happy messages have come to me since the time AWN began publishing this book on line, and only one piece of hate mail. In that one the anonymous (natch) writer ranted in heavily bleepable language – that ALL of my films sucked, and wished I would promptly die.
Bill Snyder, who played the pivotal role in the 2nd stage of my career.
Bill Snyder.
Extravagantly optimistic: "Snyder & Deitch will rule the world!"
Supremely self-assured: "I never catch a cold. I refuse to believe in colds!"
Openly narcissistic: "I am a beautiful man!"
This is the kind of animation movie I've been talking about in this whole book!
Tom Terrific: "Mighty Manfred! This is the very most worst desperate situation that ever was!"
Manfred: "You're right, Tom. Let's go home!"
Tom: "And it calls the very most desperate action!"
Manfred: "Oh, no!"
Tom: "Therefore, I have decided to THINK!"Efx:B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-bbl-bbl-bbl-pssssssss-bgong-glong-ploshshshsshshshshshshs!
Iris out >
A Terrific utterance.
My fans seldom meet. They are few and they are diverse. I am virtually unknown in the mass media. My name rings no bells in the gossipy movie biz. My fans are isolated. They rarely know each other, but they do love me... YES! They really love me!
I may have the most diverse fanhood going.:
See for yourself. No one before has seen these drawings.
Here is the complete documentation of possibly my greatest creative loss. But my loss was nothing compared to what befell E.B. "Andy" White. Letters from him and his wife indicate the depressing effect the debacle had on his health. I know one thing for sure. No one ever saw the storyboard we created. No one rejected it. It was irrelevant to the powers that ignored it.
The great writer, E.B.White became my friend and regular correspondent until his death. That was my main reward from a spidery web of deceit that squashed a literary spider. Here, and in the next chapter you can read the never-before published letters that reveal the true story.
"0 what a tangled web we weave,when first we practise to deceive!"
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Peeing in the soup continues. The bladders of producers seem as continuous fountains. Here are a few hairy tales.
Weston Woods, that is. I feel that my best films are the least known. My greatest fans still are teachers and librarians, and I spent 25 years of creative fulfillment in pleasing them.
A whole new area of work opened up for me just as the Soviet forces were breathing smoke around the borders of Czechoslovakia, and I made a film called "The Giants" that the communists banned for 20 years. For me, it was a point of pride.
Our fun-films, and my personal best character. The 60s were probably our peak-Prague years.
We were first with this, but it became our most ignominious and unnecessary failure. Please weep with me as you read this chapter. I coulda bin a contendah…
What do you do when you have to make a living diminishing true works of art? E.C. Segar’s Popeye, and George Herrimans’ Krazy Kat, have been mauled by others, so I don’t need to apologize for my efforts at damage control. Here’s what we did with them.
OK, OK. I know what you think of our Tom & Jerries. But do you know the whole story? Let me tell you about it.
Who could have predicted this? I just read that Oscar winners live longer. In our case, the Oscar gave our life an instant boost, and a perpetual publicity handle. We managed five nominations, and have been living in the glow ever since. But was Bill Snyder able to melt that golden statuette down into real dollars?
That was the question I constantly had to answer while isolated from my old colleagues, and hunkered in this distant and seemingly God-forsaken communist-gripped misery. This chapter answers the question. Was I a pinko? A spy? An enemy agent? A CIA man? Or did I just happen to fall into something too good to be true?
In 1959, the Prague animation studio was a barely-noticed smudge in the world map of animation. In fact it was one of the great studios of the time, but darkly closeted behind the Iron Curtain. I was just summarily dropped into it, and was totally unprepared for what I found.
Gene Deitch Associates, Inc. -- possibly the most insignificant animation studio in the history of peg-holes, but MUNRO was born there, and it became my way-station to an entirely new life. Perhaps I am the first "Born-Again Animator!"
Terrytoons. Here was my locale that most interests the animation historians. So now I finally have the chance to tell it like it really was. I name names -- all the names, and print the pix. And all the production details about Tom Terrific. I tell you what I did and what I tried to do - a "renaissance" - a total make over... and I tell you why it failed.
Here is a faithful reproduction of the surviving actual production notes for the second series of Tom Terrific, as issued by me in March, 1958
Terrytoons. Here was my locale that most interests the animation historians. So now I finally have the chance to tell it like it really was. I name names -- all the names, and print the pix. And all the production details about Tom Terrific. I tell you what I did and what I tried to do - a "renaissance" - a total make over... and I tell you why it failed.
Terrytoons. Here was my locale that most interests the animation historians. So now I finally have the chance to tell it like it really was. I name names -- all the names, and print the pix. And all the production details about Tom Terrific. I tell you what I did and what I tried to do - a "renaissance" - a total make over... and I tell you why it failed.
