A huge excerpt from an IGN interview with Ralph Bakshi on animation today versus classic animation.
A lot of the corporate mentality he talks about goes far beyond the battle between animators and executives:
IGNFF: So they really see it merely as a mechanical aspect of the production?
BAKSHI: Totally mechanical ? that’s why the computer’s taken over. The computer can’t do figure animation well, yet. But animators are just a cog in the wheel. They call full animation “2-D animation”? Do you know how wrong that is? 2-D animation was UPA? They don’t know what they’re talking about! I don’t know who coined “2-D animation” ? 2-D animation is UPA and stiff. “Full animation” is what the great guys do ? that was Warner Bros., MGM, the shorts, Disney in the 30’s, the old cartoon shorts? Snow White, which was brilliant? That’s called “full animation.” And computer animation is called “rotoscope.” All computer animation is is rotoscope, which I used a lot. But they have these rendering programs which renders everything very carefully, so computer animation is really just rotoscope animation, or machine animation, and full animation is what people are forgetting about…
…All the old great companies ? Fleischer, Disney, Warner Bros., Paul Terry ? they all were run by guys who animated or knew what an animator meant, and guys who knew how to draw. All the companies today are run by executives. Look what Disney’s done to their animation department. There wasn’t an animator in charge of their animation unit ? it was all these execs coming in. I don’t really understand how Michael Eisner could allow that. This disdain for animators. I animated 20 years at Terry Toons. You’ve got to know what the guys are doing at their desks so you can relate to them and they can relate to you. It’s important to know that animators like pizza and a raise once in awhile, and you’ve got to treat them with love. If you treat them like s***, they’re going to come in and not feel like drawing. So it’s like anything else, it’s all in how you treat these guys. I think American animators are being destroyed by machinery and these non-animators running major corporations. They’re spending more on sequences than I spent on all of my movies! Yet my movies continue to be found and be sold because there’s something going on in them, and basically it was as honest as I could be and not worried about what people might feel about what I’m doing. Because you can’t second-guess yourself as a filmmaker. Bob Clampett never second-guessed himself. Chuck Jones either. And those guys were off the wall. In a corporate setting, they got away with an awful lot.
Having said that, the one animated feature that I really dug from Bakshi was Spicy City.
It was gritty and sexy. It wasn’t patronizing. It had heart.
It was on HBO for a short run back in the late 90’s.
And surprise, surprise…it’s not released on DVD yet. I don’t understand how a movie like Supergirl (which had no redeeming moments) can be released and then re-released with a ton of extras and possibly easter eggs..yet stuff like Spicy City sits in purgatory and waits for its second chance to shine.
Ok. I’m done ranting.
