Exploring further for online evidence of Rowlf’s role on the shoe, I was fortunate to run across a seven-minute clip of Dean and Rowlf discussing music, courtesy of the always enlightening blog for the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. Why would an animation site cover the early work of a Muppet? As noted by the blog: “Animators can learn a lot from puppeteers when it comes to creating a living, breathing character.”

Check out the post, as it is almost as informative as the YouTube clip.

Eyeworks Festival 2010 trailer from Lilli Carré on Vimeo.

“The Eyeworks programs showcase a range of animation techniques, including paper cutouts, stop-motion, 3D computer animation, and a wide variety of hand-drawn methods. … Eyeworks celebrates animated moving images that express unusual vision, unusual approaches, and unusual style. …Saturday, November 6, 2010/DePaul CDM Theater, 247 S. State Street, basement level/Jackson stop, Red Line/Chicago (Admission: $5 for each program, $12 for all three)” Earlier this week, Carré was kind enough to do an email interview with me about the festival.

Tim O’Shea: What motivated the development of this Eyeworks Festival? And for those of the uninitiated, can you provide some background on the nature and appeal of “abstract animation and unconventional character animation”?

Lilli Carré: What sparked our interest in starting a festival of specifically ‘experimental animation’ was having had the opportunity to view a lot of great classic experimental film and animation pieces on film at Cal Arts and Chicago Filmmakers this past summer—works by Jules Engel, Adam Beckett, Robert Breer, Sally Cruikshank, Oskar Fischinger, etc.– and we decided that we should make a reason to show some of these wonderful films on 16mm ourselves, and to create a new venue for current work in this same vein.

We don’t feel like there is a strong festival presence particularly for that kind of work, yet there are so many wonderful films of that type that are rarely shown, as well as a good amount of current experimental and unusual animation work that is being made. There are a batch of experimental film festivals, and a good number of straightforward animation festivals, but as two animators ourselves who make work that falls into the grey area in-between the two categories, we thought it would be a good and exciting challenge to try to start up a small festival for exactly the type of animation that excites us—work using abstraction and/or more unusual or surrealistic narrative to tell stories visually.

So we decided to create this new film festival just a few months ago! We’re keeping it small scale this first time around, just a one-day event, in hopes that we can expand it in future years once we see how this one goes.

O’Shea: What was the criteria for making being a piece included in the Classic Shorts?

Carré: For the Classic Shorts program, we wanted to show animated works made by more established filmmakers, and preferably on 16mm film from the Chicago Filmmakers and Canyon Cinema film collections. We chose a selection of work made between the 70’s and the 90’s that we liked and that we thought worked well together as a program, with a fair balance between abstract work and character animation.

O’Shea: How did you go about selecting the pieces included in the new shorts program, such as Dash Shaw‘s The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D? Care to divulge how many people submitted pieces for consideration?

Carré: In the spirit of trying to keep it a clean and simple process, we curated the festival rather than having a call for submissions. We contacted people whose work we liked and invited them to take part.

O’Shea: In a struggling economy like the one we are currently in, how challenging was it find festival sponsors–and how important are festival sponsors to an event like this?

Carré: The festival is completely out of our pockets, money-wise. We have several in-kind sponsorships, so we didn’t get any money for the festival, but we did get a reduced rental rate on the films from Chicago Filmmakers, DePaul School of CDM generously allowed us to schedule this in their theater, we were able to silkscreen our flyers and programs at the Spudnik Press printshop without studio fees, and we got access to several larger email lists for promotion. I don’t think we could have done it without that help. So we are keeping our costs pretty low, and are hoping to simply make back the money we’ve put into the festival through the admission we get, which we’re also keeping cheap, at $5 per screening or $12 for the whole festival. Everyone wins!

O’Shea: Despite the fact this is a new festival, you were able to garner festival guest David O’Reilly. Can you talk about the process of getting him to participate and what about his work made him an ideal fit for the festival?

Carré: My co-director of the festival Alexander Stewart is an Assistant Professor at DePaul University, and he had been planning for some time to fly David O’Reilly in from Berlin to be a visiting artist at the University. Once we knew he was coming, and once we had decided that we wanted to do a festival this fall, we realized that we would be crazy not to try and include O’Reilly. We asked him what he thought about being part of Eyeworks, and he said sure! We’re very lucky to have such a talented animator come to the US to show his work for these events. I think his work fits well with our festival through his sense of visual design and formal experimentation, as well as the darkly humorous emotional punch of his narratives. His work leans more toward the narrative character animation side of our spectrum, but he seems to be simultaneously exploring new territory in his visual style and with the emotional impact of the narratives. We’ve both been fans of his since we saw Please Say Something; he makes really strong and unclassifiable work. His character design seems to give a nod to the style of some early animation characters, and also seem to me to have a bit of Chris Ware influence, the latter especially visible in Please Say Something, which you can watch here.

We’re especially excited to show a preview screening of his new film The External World, which just won the Grand Prix prize at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. He’s only 25 or so, and is making such good work at an alarming rate.

O’Shea: What have been the biggest logistical challenges of organizing a festival of this type?

Carré: I don’t want to hex myself by saying this, but everything’s been going pretty smoothly thus far. I think that’s largely due to the fact that we’ve kept it pretty simple. We could do a lot more with more time and some money, but I think the scope of the festival as it is matches the amount of time and resources we have right now. We’ve been working hard to promote it in different ways, including some neat projects like working with Sonnenzimmer print studio to make these silkscreened Eyeworks posters that they designed and printed and that we animated and posted around town.

It’s been hard predicting what the attendance might be, so we’ve been trying to get the word out as much as possible. These are some great animations, and I hope people take advantage of the rare opportunity to see some of these works on film, as well as to see new work that otherwise might slip under their radar.

O’Shea: Can you talk about the looping program of silent works that will run throughout the festival?

Carré: There were some pieces that very short or that we thought would work well as looping pieces rather than being shown in the screening programs, so we compiled about 10 pieces that will be looping on monitors in the lobby from 12:30pm through 9pm the day of the fest. There will be everything from an animation of moss beating like a heart in stop-motion, to fast-paced abstracted security envelope interiors, to a classic hand-drawn animation of a 1930s cartoon that looks like it’s melting.

O’Shea: How have you and fellow co-director Alexander Stewart divvied up responsibilities on this project?

Carré: We’ve both been spending time being in back-and-forth contact with the different filmmakers for the programs, getting materials and their information, etc. Alexander’s handling a lot of the promotions as well as tech aspects of building up the film reels, making sure the videos are the proper formats, etc. I’ve been doing a lot of the design and the writing/printing/assembling of the programs and promotional materials. The day of the fest I’m sure we will both be equally stressed and excited and whizzing around. I can’t wait!

Archer on FX

I think it would be better to see more than just two episodes of FX’s new animated comedy/adventure series, Archer, before making a full analysis of the show. But after only two episodes (the show premiered at 10 PM with two episodes on January 14), I find myself giving it a Season Pass status on my Tivo and looking forward to the next new episode. The show’s premise as defined at the website is “an animated, half-hour comedy set at the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS), a spy agency where espionage and global crises are merely opportunities for its highly trained employees to confuse, undermine, betray and royally screw each other.”

The animation is incredibly rudimentary, possibly in an effort to emulate the vibe of a great many of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim shows. In fact, the show’s creator, Adam Reed (according to Wikipedia) has been an actor/writer/director/producer on Sealab 2021 and Frisky Dingo at Cartoon Network. But I could care less about the animation–the appeal to this show is partially its writing, but mostly the voice casting. Fans of 2003′s Arrested Development will be pleased to see Jessica Walters cast in the show, she plays the head of ISIS, as well as Archer’s mother. Walters plays the character almost as acerbic, witty and dysfunctional as her character on Arrested Development. As a fan long ago of Comedy Central’s Dr. Katz, I was pleasantly surprised to find that H. Jon Benjamin (best known as Ben Katz [the doctor's unambitious, quirky son]) was cast in the lead role of Archer.

In the episode’s premiere (described here), Archer is training another series cast regular, Cyril, on how to be a spy. Cyril asks if he will be taught karate as part of training, leading to my favorite bit of dialogue so far, when Archer responds: “Karate: : The Dane Cook of martial arts?”

It’s a quirky and great show so far, but be advised, to say the show features adult themes and language is an understatement.

Tim O’Shea: How do you go about tracking down obscure audio like “Actual audio from the 1947 educational film Using The Bank“. And from there, how do you typically go about writing the script that you run in parallel with the animation. Do you write the script before starting the animation work?

Scott Bateman: There is a wealth of amazing material in the Prelinger Archives at archive.org, a web site that hosts a vast array of public domain material. The Prelinger Archives specializes in short educational and industrial films from the 1940s and 1950s–hygiene, cold war propoganda, juvenile delinquency, it’s all there. Man, I can spend hours on that site!

My writing process for these animations goes something like this: I’ll end up watching a film several times while I animate it, because I’ll go through once and animate bodies, then another time through for mouths, another for hands, etc. So by the time I add the commentary, I already have a ton of snarky comments about the film at my disposal. I’ll put in the comments I most want in the movie first, then fill in the holes between.

O’Shea: As of August 3, according to you “The “10,000 3×5″ project is 8.5% done–that’s 850 drawings!” What motivates you to take on ambitious projects like that and Bateman 365? How do you avoid getting in over your head, with your various project commitments–and do you make due with less sleep than some folks?

Bateman: For some reason, I like to take on a project like making an animated film every day or making an entire feature film all by myself just to see if I can do it. That’s the fun.

O’Shea: Some of your work appears at Salon.com, while other work appears at True/Slant or Daily Kos. Do you develop unique content with one site in mind, or do you develop it with the thinking it could appear at any site?

Bateman: Sadly, Salon.com is restructuring, so my animations won’t be appearing there anymore. I’m actually pretty happy about this, because I’ve been doing way too much political work the past 18 months. I’m looking forward to taking a break from watching Chris Matthews every day. It’s a chance to think about other sorts of projects. But, I always get drawn back into politics again eventually.

O’Shea: When you and King Features parted company back in 2005, you wrote this Daily Kos piece explaining why. The essay concluded with the line: “So now, I’m out of work, and nobody’s beating down my door to hire me.” How worried were you when you wrote that–and is your livelihood more stable and/or rewarding than you might have imagined back in 2005?

Bateman: Actually, I’m right back in that position now! But this time, I’m not worried at all. Something always comes up. I’m much more prepared mentally for sudden unemployment these days. I used that period of unemployment in 2005 to get the heck out of politics for awhile, and it did me a world of good, and I was tanned, rested and ready when the 2008 primaries got under way.

O’Shea: You have developed animation for TV in the past, but I’m curious–as hulu.com and YouTube.com as well as other streaming video grow in influence, are you as keen to develop for television?

Bateman: Here’s the thing about TV: if you’re a musician, you can start an indie band. You can make a good movie outside the Hollywood studios. But there’s really never been an “indie TV” scene (well, Public Access, but that’s not at the same scale as an indie record label with national distribution; plus, it’s really goofy-ass). The Internet finally levels that playing field. Generally, to do a TV show you need a few dozen people and the support of the netwrok and its advertisers. Lots and lots of money. Online, you and your friends can do some short videos without the network middleman or much cash. The size of the audience won’t be the same, of course, but the good stuff generally finds its audience.

I would do TV again if I could do it with as little interference as possible from The Suits. That is nearly impossible these days; I was really quite fortunate to have had a TV experience where I could make a show on my laptop, drop it off at the network, and they would just air it–no meetings about ratings, no pleasing advertisers. It’s unheard of to have that sort of freedom in TV, especially for a newbie. Sadly, that only lasted three episodes, but still. I don’t expct it’ll happen again, but wouldn’t it be awesome if it did?

O’Shea: Has the level of political comedy fodder increased/decreased or stayed the same for you since the U.S. presidential transition?

Bateman: In a way, I don’t feel like the tenor of the campaign ever really went away, and in fact the oppostion has gotten louder. It’s also gotten more moronic, so there’s lots of humor there. There’s also humor on the other side, with the Democrats being too timid to use their mandate and 60-seat Senate majority to actually do this thing that over 70% of the public wants, a public option for health care.

O’Shea: Have you heard from anyone involved in the 1960 original film of Atom Age Vampire? What was the response to your reworking of the film when it showed late last month at the Woods Hole Film Festival?

Bateman: I have not yet heard from anyone involved with the original film; they would have to be pretty old by now. Plus, I imagine they let it lapse into the public domain for a reason (that reason being: they’re not so proud of it).

The response to the film at screenings is amazing and humbling–it really helps to see the movie with a big audience, because everyone starts laughing and had a great time.

O’Shea: What other festivals will the film be shown at–and do you intend to do a full-length project like that in the near to long term?

Bateman: Atom Age Vampire is screening at the Tacoma Film Festival in October, and I’ll probably do another New York screening towards Halloween. I’m starting to think about the next feature film, but this time I want to raise a little money first. I spent literally zero dollars to actually make Atom Age Vampire, but I’ve had to spend a few thousand to try and get it out into the world. So I want to raise some of those funds beforehand this time. Not a lot; probably a nice, mid-four-figure budget.

O’Shea: Looking at your music posts like this one, when you really have to get a great deal of work done in a short amount of time, are there certain motivational songs you rely upon to pull you through?

Bateman: It’s not so much that particular songs motivate me, but merely the fact that certain bands exist and make a career doing exactly what they want to do: Stereolab, Sonic Youth, tons of others.

O’Shea: How did you go about selecting the guest essays that were featured in your 2006 book, Sketchbook of Secrets & Shame? Would you ever want to do another book like that down the road?

Bateman: There are about a dozen essays in that book–about half of them were people I knew, like John Kovalic (Dork Tower), or friends of friends (Wil Wheaton). The other half were people I approached because I was a fan of theirs, and had this strange idea that if I was a fan of theirs, they might also become a fan of mine. This is why I approached Dr. & Mr. Doris Haggis-On-Whey, which is a pseudonym of Dave Eggers. I emailed a request for a short essay, and I received back one of the funniest single sentences ever.

O’Shea: Any other projects on the horizon for you that you’d like to discuss?

Bateman: Well, with my Salon.com gig over, I’m trying to launch a number of things–seeing what I want to do, and what I can make a small amount of money doing. I’m also still trying to find a broader audience for Atom Age Vampire; I know from indie film-making friends that it can take two years or more of constantly getting it out there. Fun!

Tim O’Shea: You’ve been a fan of Pixar since the late 1980s, but how long had you been considering an examination of the Pixar company?

David A. Price: I became a Pixar fan after I saw an unfinished version of Tin Toy at a conference in ’88. But I didn’t start thinking about writing their history for another 15 years. In 2003, I had finished my book on the Jamestown colony and everyone was telling me to tackle another story out of the colonial period. That’s the standard advice — to build on what you’ve already done.

There were a couple of things that pushed me in a different direction. The kind of nonfiction I like to write has very strong characters at its center. As I pondered ideas for another book on early American history, I came away with the feeling that most of the really important and interesting figures had already been covered ad infinitum. I wasn’t confident I had anything to say that was worth saying.

At the same time, I was feeling drawn to the idea of a company book that would be heavy on reporting and that would have some literary ambitions. Pixar bubbled to the top of the list very quickly. I liked that it would give me the chance to write about art and technology in addition to business.

O’Shea: Who do you think is the target audience for this book–fans of computer animation; business students with an interest in working in Hollywood; or both?

Price: Certainly animation fans seem to be a big part of it. But I’ve also found the book has connected with a lot of business people. This doesn’t surprise me, because what the founders of Pixar went through in the early years was pretty much the standard small-business drill with lots of fits and starts, good and bad decisions, lucky and unlucky breaks.

There are also people working in technology who are drawn to the story. The biggest audience I’ve had for a book talk was at Microsoft Research.

O’Shea: How many interviews did you conduct for the book, and were there some interviews that were much more challenging to gain than others?

Price: I think I interviewed 30 or 35 people for the book. There were some I interviewed once or twice, and others I was in touch with many times by phone and e-mail.

Some people were harder to find than others. Pixar’s former CEO was hard for me to find. Other than that, I don’t consider any interview “challenging” to get. I’m not of the school that says you pester people or charm people into talking with you. Basically, my m.o. is that I write somebody one time to explain who I am, what I’m doing, and why I want an interview. If they say yes, great. If they have questions, I try to answer them. If they say no, I wish them well and move on.

Fortunately, most people I approached said yes. Love and Hate in Jamestown gave me credibility with some people. Some just liked the idea of an independent history of the company.

O’Shea: How did you go about getting access to personnel files (such as employment agreements) or was that information you gained from the SEC?

Price: Ed Catmull’s and John Lasseter’s employment agreements from the Toy Story era were part of the file I got from the SEC.

O’Shea: In terms of pacing of the book, did you trim out a great deal of the pre-Toy Story/formation of Pixar history, in order to get to Pixar’s mainstream success days, or did you think people would be as interested in the early history as much as the popular days, so pacing was not a concern?

Price: I enjoyed writing about the years leading up to Toy Story as much as I enjoyed writing the stories behind the feature films.

Probably more so, in fact, because there was this great sense of constant temporizing. They couldn’t make a go of it as part of Lucasfilm–George Lucas sold them off. Then they couldn’t make it as a computer company. When that didn’t work, they tried software and couldn’t make it as a software company. They tried making commercials. They were doing great work at all of these things, but there was never enough cash coming in. Steve Jobs was in a constant state of angst over the red ink. Ed Catmull stepped down as CEO for a while because the stress of dealing with Steve was starting to affect his health. At the same time, Pixar’s employees had the feeling of being on an artistic and technological frontier, which they loved.

O’Shea: As you examined the history of Pixar, I’m sure you encountered many of the same names that have always been associated with its success–but is there a person (or people) who you think was/were pivotal to the success who may not receive as much credit as they deserve?

Price: John Lasseter and Ed Catmull and some of the other early people at Pixar really do deserve tremendous credit for pursuing their vision with the persistence that they did. They could have walked away any day of the week and gotten more money and security–or at least the feeling of more security.

As for under-recognized people, I’d say one of them is Joss Whedon. Most people don’t know he was one of the writers of Toy Story. The point when that film really started to come together was when Joss started working on it. Obviously, there were other very talented people on the story team at different times, also.

The other person, and I’m going to get in huge trouble for saying this, is Jeffrey Katzenberg. When he was running the Disney studio, he pursued the Toy Story deal with Pixar at a time when every major studio in Hollywood was shutting its doors in Pixar’s face. Pixar approached Paramount, Columbia, one studio after another, and got turned down. He saw what computer animation could be, and what John could do with it, at a time when other people in the industry couldn’t.

O’Shea: Do you expect to hear from Jobs about your take–I would imagine if he read it, some of it (for example, the struggle over his Woodside residence) might be awkward for him to read.

Price: I am absolutely certain I will never hear from Steve about the book. You’re right, parts it are awkward from his point of view.

O’Shea: In researching the book, it seemed you did not leave many stones unturned. How intimidating or stressful was it to conduct the interview with Mike Hoover the only survivor of the 1994 helicopter crash in which his wife and Frank Wells, among others, died. Why was it important for you to interview him rather than use the archival information that is readily available?

Price: There isn’t much out there on the helicopter crash other than the NTSB accident report. I sent a letter to Mike asking for an interview and I didn’t hear back. Then a year later, out of the blue, I got an e-mail from him saying, “Sorry, I’m sure you’re finished with the book, but if there’s any info that you think I may have, call me anytime.” Naturally I called him that day.

I did feel apprehensive because he’d lost his wife in the accident. Until then, I actually didn’t have any experience at all interviewing somebody who’d lost a loved one. Mike was gracious and made it easy.

The crash turned out to be important to the book in a different way than I expected. I started out wanting to include it because the death of Frank Wells set in motion Jeffrey Katzenberg’s departure from Disney and the founding of DreamWorks Animation. But talking with Mike, I learned how Frank had put other people first–there was another helicopter that got out ahead of the storm.

At that point, I was unhappy with the pattern that seemed to be emerging in my story–that if you want to be successful in business, you have to be self-centered and difficult like Steve Jobs or Michael Eisner. Frank Wells was a good guy on a personal level, which came across in his actions that day. So I was glad to have him as a counterpoint.

O’Shea: Was it hard for you to enjoy Pixar films as much when you began writing about and doing research on the company on a 24/7 basis?

Price: The films I liked, I liked more as I was writing the book because I could better appreciate the artistry and technical genius behind them.

Before jumping into the interview, here’s the official bio on the storyteller:

“Enrico Casarosa has been in the animation industry for more than ten years, drawing storyboards that fit into large animated feature films. Currently a story artist at Pixar Animation Studios Enrico continues his quest to create more hours in the day by drawing alternate realities. Sooner or later his experiments will break through and we’ll all have to buy new watches. Meantime he just published an art book “3 trees make a forest” with partners in crime Ronnie del Carmen and Tadahiro Uesugi. Other times he pursues his muse by traveling with his watercolors and sketchbooks. Enrico is the founder of ‘SketchCrawl’, a worldwide drawing marathon event that gathers artists from all around the globe.”

Once you finish reading the interview, be sure to go here to buy the book directly from Casarosa.

Tim O’Shea: In addition to this new book, the Venice Chronicles, you work at Pixar. I was struck by something you recently wrote in your blog: “It’s become tradition for us selfpublishing friends here at Pixar to take photos of the opening of the first box of books.” How many selfpublishing friends are at Pixar and can you name some of them (and their projects)?

Enrico Casarosa: Oh yes there’s quite a few of us. I’ve had the luck of sharing tables at more than a couple of conventions (and co-publish a book) with uber talented friend Ronnie del Carmen. Another long time friend here at Pixar is Bill Presing, artist of “Rex Steele Nazismasher”. We met a long time ago back in NewYork and both did stories for the anthology Monkeysuit. And the list of talented pixarian friends/co-workers goes on: Scott Morse (Tiger!Tiger!Tiger!, Magic Pickle), Ted Mathot (Rose and Isabel, Cora), Derek Thompson , Dice Tsutsumi (Out of Picture) and many more. There’s also been a couple of anthologies called Afterworks that gather comics for some of the folks here and they even a new volume in the making.

O’Shea: Will you be involved in the next Afterworks anthology?

Casarosa: I’d love to, they are doing some great stuff for it, but I unfortunately it’ll be hard for me to find the time in the next few months.

O’Shea: While you published the book yourself, you’re using Chris Pitzer’s AdHouse as a distributor, what about Adhouse made you want to have them distribute the book for you?

Casarosa: I’ve known Chris and his AdHouse books since he put out the excellent Project Superior. He asked me to be part of his Project Romantic but timing didn’t quite line up for that, so when I finally finished The Venice Chronicles I thought it might be a good fit. Also I’ve been self-publishing comics for a few years now and I really felt I could use his help and expertise in getting these books out there. It’s not an easy business and I love Chris’ approach to it, it’s labor of love for him.

O’Shea: What made you decide to develop the Venice Chronicles in the first place, and how is it similar and/or different from your past self-publishing efforts?

Casarosa: I’ve done a few autobiographical comics in the last few years (I’ve self-published a couple of small books called “Sketchcrawling”) and I’ve been more and more interested in what autobio can offer. First I enjoy self-deprecating silly humor and I think it’s interesting to unabashedly make fun of yourself. The embarrassing stuff makes for some good material … quite often. Couple that with a love I have for drawing from life and recording what’s around me (especially on trips) and you have the ingredients for these Chronicles.

More specifically, regarding the journaling aspect, there is something really interesting to me in telling a story at the same time as you are living it; as you embark on a travel, without knowing what right or left turns might come your way. I find that compelling and whenever I’ve hit pages where I was able to really record my experience just as it was happening, that is when I think I got to something fresh and honest. Hopefully that comes through to the reader.

Lastly on a more practical level this book happened simply because of the trip my girlfriend and I took to join her parents for a month stay in Venice, Italy (my homecountry). After a few days in this amazing city and some interesting and unexpected encounters (for example out of the blue I met Silvina Pratt, daughter of the amazing Hugo Pratt) I realized the experience would make some fun material and so I started drawing as much as I could right then and there. After the vacation I took a good part of the following year to tell the whole story and fill in the parts I couldn’t do on the spot.

O’Shea: You said part of what you enjoyed about creating the Chronicles was “telling a story at the same time as you are living it”. I’m curious, given that you took the better part of a year fleshing out the parts you could not do on the spot, did any of the scenes or elements change drastically from the point you experienced them to the point you put that part of the story on paper, months later?

Casarosa: Well it was really hard to retell things from such a distance, I struggled with it. It didn’t seem interesting to me and it got more and more difficult as time passed, it even kind of blocked me. My way of finding a solution was to make that block part of the comic too: by talking about the block I started drawing new pages, unblocking myself. Kind of silly, but that’s what happened. Also and perhaps even more importantly I made the rest of that year part of the book. So while I was retelling the italian vacation I was also trying to chronicle some of the real time events that were happening around me. So you’ll find pages recording a weekend adventure to Santa Fe’ in the middle of this book about Venice. Rather strange one could argue, but I think it’s ok … the main thread of the story is the relationship between my girlfriend and I and not only our vacation.

O’Shea: How did you end up meeting Silvina Pratt? Did you get to talk to her much about her father’s work? She would have great insight as his daughter, but even more so given that she co-wrote a book about him in 2005…

Casarosa: The book contains the encounter and how it happened, but in brief … we met her strangely enough through my girlfriend’s dad and a tennis buddy of his: Ivo Pavone. Ivo grew up in Venice with Hugo Pratt, and they made comics together in Argentina! They were long time friends. Pretty amazing uh?

We did talk about her father with Silvina yes, that is also in the book and it’s a really interesting story in itself. Her book “Avec Hugo” just got published in Italy, so I can’t wait to read it. I just sent her a copy of Venice Chronicles and she’s sending me her book.

I wish someone would publish it out here but alas Hugo Pratt might not be well known enough in the US for a publisher to take a chance on it.

O’Shea: In your bio at your blog, it says “Forever stuck between the gravitational pulls of Italy (his home country) and Japan (a cultural passion).” The pull of Italy makes sense, but I was curious what attracted you to Japan in a cultural passion sense?

Casarosa: Well I attribute my passion for Japan to all the Japanese cartoons most Italians of my generation watched growing up. I don’t know why but 95% of all japanese animation produced in the late 70s and early 80s made it to Italian TV. We grew up immersed in it. I could name you more than thirty different series that we all loved and followed through out our childhood and adolescence and so can most Italians of my generation.

So once I found myself starting out in the field of animation in my mid twenties I quickly found in the new wave of Japanese animation (and in Hayao Miyazaki’s work especially) a huge source of inspiration … with the added flavor of nostalgia.

So I started traveling to Japan often, learned a little bit of the language and really just fell in love with the culture. Incidentally, I have a sketchbook filled with watercolors from a Japan trip I took four years ago that is not unlike the notebook I returned from Venice with. I hope to publish it in the near future perhaps.

O’Shea: Do you think you’ll be more inclined to publish the Japan Watercolors collection sooner if response to the Venice Chronicles is strong?

Casarosa: Well, the Japan sketchbook is similar but also quite different to The Venice Chronicles. It only has drawings from life and thoughts. So it’s really a carnet de voyage without an actual funny story or characters. I was more internal on that trip I guess and I was also on my own. The inspiration behind it is the amazing “Paris Sketchbook’ illustrated by Ronald Searle and written by his wife. I love that book, it has a wonderful mix of drawings and written impressions.

I’d like to do something similar to that and maybe try and add an “travel help” side to it: adding drawn maps of the locations, so that someone could actually find it helpful and possibly even follow my specific itinerary. I like books about traveling and I love to take a book that can add some depth to a trip somewhere. I’d only be too happy if people took the Venice Chronicles on their trip to Italy.

My impossible pipedream of a job is “travel book watercolorist”. I’d be payed to travel the world and do watercolors of all that is around me. Eh eh … dreaming is cheap.

But to answer your question, I think if this book did well, yes, honestly it would be a nice overall booster and it certainly would make it much easier to invest more time and money in making these books. I love to do it, but it has to make some sense … even as a labor of love.

O’Shea: Does your work at Pixar help influence your approach in storytelling on projects like Venice Chronicles?

Casarosa: I think it does and it doesn’t. There are very specific sets of boundaries that our job involves, a storyboard artist is there to help a director tell his movie. We can creatively add to the story but we can’t make it our movie or you’d end up with too many cooks in the kitchen. These books on the other hand are a playground in which I can tell stories freely. It’s a great outlet in which you can play by your own rules.

In other respects though there is no way that my day job couldn’t find its way in my comics. We deal with stories and how best to tell them everyday, that is part of what I do and that certainly comes into play in my comicbook work too.
So I guess the answer is that it’s a bit of ying and yang thing.

O’Shea: How helpful was your blog audience in terms of developing Venice Chronicles, for example a look here reveals that you got a great deal of input on the cover approach for the book.

Casarosa: I released the Venice Chronicles online in the space of almost a year, I’d post more pages just as I was finishing them. Serializing it that way was a huge help, especially in motivation and drive. The idea of readers waiting for the next installment can really help keep things cooking. As far as the cover goes, I really enjoy reading about process, so I often share my way of doing things. It was very interesting to see the amount of feedback those posts got, but to be frank at the time I posted all the cover studies for the Venice Chronicles I was already finishing the final one.

O’Shea: When did you first realize that you had the knack for storytelling?

Casarosa: Ah, never. Eh eh. I don’t mean to be falsely modest, it’s just that story is hard. It’s not a linear process, it’s a lot of trial and error. Throwing things away and trying new ones. So, especially here at Pixar it’s a tough process made of many steps that most artists will find humbling. What I know I do have is a passion for storytelling. I enjoy the process of finding these stories, fumbling through them or not. I love when things start to click and you can get some emotion or laughter from your readers, listeners or viewers. That’s the fun part of it.

O’Shea: Are you already trying to plan a sequel work to the Venice Chronicles–or where would you like to creatively explore after Venice Chronicles?

Casarosa: There’s a couple of older projects I left half done that I’d love to go back to (Like the Adventure of Mia and Haiku5-7-5) but unfortunately the main challenge is finding time for these projects while still working fulltime at Pixar. It really depends on how much responsibility and time my dayjob will require.

There is one upcoming thing, a 3 men artshow coming up in January in Paris with my friends Ronnie del Carmen and Tadahiro Uesugi, called “Three Trees Make a Forest“. It’s a sort of reunion after an artshow we did in LA three years ago. So, I need 48 hours days … really.

O’Shea: What is it about the other two artists’ work in relation to yours that made you want to do another art show with them on “three trees make a forest”?

Casarosa: Ronnie and I have been huge fans of Tadahiro Uesugi‘s work for a long time now. He’s one of Japan’s top illustrators, if not the top illustrator. We’ve become great friends with him and his lovely wife after a few meetings in Tokyo. The three of us have shared the walls of two exhibitions and a book collecting our artwork (“three trees make a forest” published by Gingko Press). So when we were asked if we wanted to have an artshow in Paris (at Galerie Arludik), the idea of getting the “three trees” back together, in such a locale, seemed too good to pass on.

O’Shea: Can you tell us more about Like the Adventure of Mia and Haiku5-7-5?

Casarosa: Well, The Adventure of Mia is the first comic I ever did. I started it for the anthology Monkeysuit more than ten years ago and then I made two issues of it in a paperback format.

It’s about a young girl pilot in pre-war Italy, fascism, the Italian Riviera, lots of planes … oh and it’s a world of cats. It is very much inspired by Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso. A fun project that honestly I feel really bad I haven’t carried on with. My style and sensibility have changed and while I’d love to get back to it I am afraid of my style being a little too different from the original now.

Still I’d love to find a way. Some books change visual style half way through and you still go with it. Maybe I shouldn’t worry about it.

Anyway … Haiku 5-7-5 is an online comic that I started a few years back. I only got through a handful of pages of it but it’s a yakuza story … with a gangster with the heart of a poet at the center of it. I have a nice arc figured out for that story but again, I am gonna sound like a broken record here, it’s hard to find the time for all this.

O’Shea: What are you working on at Pixar at present?

Casarosa: I am finishing work on “UP” the movie directed by Pete Docter that is hitting theaters next June. We’re pretty excited about it, I’ve worked on it for almost three years.

Tim O’Shea: You recently wrote about Skidoo (the Otto Preminger film with Groucho Marx as a gangster named “God”). I have seen the film as well and I wonder would that be a film that the Cinematic Titanic gang might like to tackle? Or is it just so weird on its own merits that to mock it would dilute the potency of its sheer badness?

Frank Conniff: I don’t think we could ever get the rights to “Skidoo.”

On the one hand, it would be a fun film to riff on, but on the other hand, it is, as you say, bad on its own merits and maybe it doesn’t need the Cinematic Titanic treatment to be enjoyed.

O’Shea: What kind of criteria do you have for selecting a film for consideration for the Cinematic Titanic crew? Is your criteria much the same as it was during your MST3K days or do you think your standards have evolved (for lack of a more apt term)?

Conniff: It’s pretty much the same standards as the MST3K days. I think we have a little more leeway as far as “adult content” goes, but otherwise all of the films we’ve done so far at Cinematic Titanic would have fit right in at MST3K.

O’Shea: As a writer/performer in a collaborative effort like Cinematic Titanic, what do you consider to be the strengths you add to the dynamics? Do you think your humor works best in some sort of tandem
with particular cast members or does the humor just benefit equally from all cast members?

Conniff: I think the humor benefits equally from all cast members. As was the case at MST3K, at Cinematic Titanic our sensibilities are all in synch with each other.

O’Shea: What do you enjoy most about the visual comedy potential gained from the multi-tier silhouette (versus the standard single row format)?

Conniff: Well, in this case I get to be one of the silhouettes, so I really enjoy that aspect of it.

O’Shea: Of the Cinematic Titanic projects you’ve done to date–is there one line that a cast member has said that no matter how many times you hear it, you can’t stop laughing? For me it was a Casey Kasem scene in Doomsday Machine, when one of the cast said (in perfect Weekly Top 40 tone): “Now here’s Steely Dan”.

Conniff: I think the line in “Oozing Skull,” “Is that a small desk, or wooden pants?” was brilliant.

I don’t remember who said it, but I do know that Trace [Beaulieu] wrote it.

O’Shea: To fully enjoy comedy like Cinematic Titanic, I think it helps to have a Dennis Miller (in his prime/pre-9/11) level of pop culture knowledge. The gang pulls references from anywhere and everywhere. So, in the Doomsday Machine installment of Cinematic Titanic, one of the cast (yea, I’m lousy with voices, sorry) says “A gumball machine head on a robot? I’m sorry…that is lame.” Was that the first time the gang jokingly reference MST3K?

Conniff: It might be; I don’t really remember if we did other such lines before that.

O’Shea: In a recent blog post you noted that Neil Patrick Harris is a longtime MST3K fan. In all the years doing things like MST3K and Cinematic Titanic, can you think of your best encounter with someone famous and/or that you respect–that turns out to have been a longtime fan of your work?

Conniff: The fact that brilliant comedians like Dana Gould and Patton Oswalt love MST3K has always been very gratifying to me.

O’Shea: With the increasing popularity of Adult Swim type shows–is there ever any chance that Cartoon Dump could make it on to television–or is that a project best suited for live theater?

Conniff: We will always do the live show, but we would love for Cartoon Dump to be on Adult Swim one day.

O’Shea: How did Cartoon Dump come about–and what is it about the project that appeals to you most?

Conniff: The project came about after my friend Jerry Beck and I began talking about a new way to present the cartoons he uses in the “Worst Cartoons Ever” lecture that he gives at Comic Con and other venues.

What appeals most to be about “Cartoon Dump” is the freedom I have to write anything I want to write for the show. Also, the audience response that we’ve been getting at the Steve Allen Theater has been very gratifying.

O’Shea: Comedy is an ever-evolving craft, as you well know. MST3K and Cinematic Titanic-type comedy clearly influenced many comedians of today. Is there ever a movie or TV show that you watch and you realize the creators have clearly been influenced by your work?

Conniff: I think our influence has been real but subtle, so I don’t usually notice it overtly.

O’Shea: Creatively, what else is on the horizon for you in the near to long-term?

Conniff: My goal is to keep working on stuff like “Cinematic Titanic” and “Cartoon Dump”: projects where I am free to express myself with complete creative freedom.

First on the list of interests, Friend of Talking with Tim (FOTwT) Curt Holman sparks an interesting discussion when he details the bonding time he and his daughter enjoyed recently watching a majority of the DC animated series, Justice League (and its later Justice League Unlimited incarnation). Curt is a great critic and arts journalist, but for me, his best stuff is when he writes about his lovely family.

Every Wednesday, the New York Times book blog, Paper Cuts, has a feature called Living with Music. I relish these entries on two levels, first it’s a chance to be exposed to music I may not have considered otherwise. Secondly it affords me a glimpse into the mind of a writer I previously lacked. This past Wednesday the writer offering a view of his musical mind was John Rechy.

This Monday, the United States observes the birth of the late great civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. I have always feared that for many folks this relatively new holiday has become another Monday off from work and little else. I always try to observe the holiday in some manner (no matter how small) and this year, I was able to briefly reflect on the civil rights struggle, thanks to a link from the Librarians Internet Index. It is a KODAK online exhibition, Powerful Days in Black and White, which the site explains as: “Shocking photos brought the civil-rights struggle to all America. Relive it now through the eyes of photojournalist Charles Moore.” I was born in 1968, so to comprehend that in 1960 there were road signs made by the Ku Klux Klan welcoming people to the area amazes and upsets me. If you want to read about Moore, KODAK provides a great overview.

Tim: It’s been a few years since we last did an interview. When we last spoke, a majority of your printed work was self-published. So I was surprised to see in more recent years that you have been participating in the Flight anthologies. What drew you to allowing your new Rex installments in Flight, rather than published by you?

Michel: I have a tremendous amount of respect for editor, Kazu Kibuishi and his vision in putting together the Flight anthology. When he asked me to be a part of it, I couldn’t refuse.

To date, the experience of being involved with Flight has been nothing but positive. All the artists involved are so talented and encouraging. I look at their work and I get inspired and hopefully they get inspired looking at my work too. We all feed off each other’s creative energy.

Since I started with Flight, a few publishers have voiced their interest in publishing the graphic novel of the completed story (the final chapter will run in Flight 7) so I’ll probably let somebody else publish that as well. To tell you the truth, I’m probably going to work more and more with publishers in the future. I enjoy self-publishing but it’s very time consuming and time is something I don’t have enough of already.

Tim: How much has your participation in Flight broadened your audience?

Michel: Flight has now become the bestselling comic anthology in America so Rex gets a heck of a lot more exposure then if I was publishing it myself. A lot of people are discovering my work through Flight which is awesome.

Tim: In that same vein, how many new doors of creative offers opened in the wake of your highly regarded and high profile work on Ratatouille?

Michel: Everything I do gets me some exposure in one way or another. Hopefully, I proved to Pixar that I could integrate my own brand of hand drawn animation in one of their movie. I’d hope to do that with The Incredibles but it didn’t pan out. I’m glad we were successful with Ratatouille. I’d love to do more work with Pixar if we find the right fit.

I’ve been very fortunate in the animation industry to work for and meet the right people. I always give my very best on every assignment and I am devoted to creating work that’s original and interesting. The word always gets around and every year, I receive offers to do the type of animation I consider really fun. I’m doing six shots right now for the upcoming Horton Hears a Who movie that are just totally the kind of animation I love to do.

Tim: Music has always been a major influence and/or role in your creative pursuits. How did your recent collaboration with the Victoria Philharmonic Choir go, and will you be collaborating with them again?

Michel: I was very proud of the work I did for the project although; the actual show for me was a bit of a mixed bag. In one hand, the musical performance was astounding, but the shadow puppet part was under-rehearsed and not to the level I would have liked it to be. Every one did the best they could but the resources were lacking. The problem when you work for the “arts” is that the budgets are very limited and most of the people involved work on a voluntary basis. To get things to look the way I had them in my head, we would have needed about 10 times the budget and 10 times the time.

As far as working with them again… Yes, I’d be totally open to it. Perhaps we can keep perfecting The Spectre’s Bride and make it really shine.

Tim: Did your upcoming 2009 work with the Vancouver International Jazz Festival result from your work with the choir?

Michel: Actually, I’ve been working on getting things going with the Jazz Festival for over a year. That’s way before I was approached by the Victoria Philharmonic. I’ve got a lot of stuff planned with them including some truly ground breaking animation projects. One of these projects is already completed and will have its premiere at the Festival in 2009. We’re talking about premiering the film by projecting it on the side of a skyscraper in downtown Vancouver! I can’t talk too much about all this because we’re still raising the funds to achieve everything I have in mind but I can honestly say that it’s going to be one of the coolest things of my career.

Tim: Am I correct in thinking that ZED is produced on an annual basis, and if so, when do you expect to finish the next installment?

Michel: I love doing ZED but it’s pretty tough fitting him in my schedule. ZED is for all intent and purpose, a hobby. I do it for fun. I’ve already started issue 9 and it’s coming along nicely. I’m planning on having it done for the summer of 2008. Then, issue 10 will be release the following year, and that will be a wrap. The complete ZED series will be 10 issues.

Tim: When was the first time you found out folks were getting tattoos made based on your work? Were you surprised by this development–of your insane character designs is there one that sticks out as one you hope you never see come to life in a tattoo?

Michel: I started seeing people with my artwork tattooed at conventions. At first, it took me a bit by surprise. One time, I walked into a store in Seattle and the girl at the cash register had one of my drawings tattooed on her arm. I didn’t expect that! Another time, I got an email from a guy who tattooed most of his upper body with my artwork. He didn’t want me to put his picture on my website though.

If people like my art and want to put it one their skin, that fine by me; any of it.

Tim: What can you tell folks about the potential for a new film project in 2008 and/or the video game you currently are developing?

Michel: The video game is called “Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet” and I’ve teamed up with an amazing crew to produce it. I’m designing the visuals and doing a lot of the animation myself. We haven’t signed with a publisher yet, but we should have a deal ironed out early in 2008. You can watch the trailer at http://www.insanelytwistedshadowplanet.com.

Starting in mid-January, I’m going to be production designing an animated movie produced by Gary Kurtz (Star Wars, Dark Crystal). I was contacted by the writer, Sabina Spencer, about a year ago and since then, the first phase of financing has come through which will allow me to begin the design work. I really like the story and I see a lot of potential there. A friend of mine, animator Richard Bazley (The Iron Giant), is also involved. All four of us, Gary, Sabina, Richard and myself, hung out in London for three days to brainstorm about the project and we’re all very excited. I really can’t say much more at this point except that the film is a perfect match for my design sensibilities.