Heil Hickner : [a cautionary tale for 'toonists]
-----or: HICKNER by name; HACK by Nature, and other Movie-Business Horror Stories
Being a cartoonist is MOSTLY a good thing: despite what many cynics claim, most folks can't do this task--at least not very effectively: but if you can draw decent cartoons, it is easy to impress most people, break the ice with strangers [ and yes, the opposite sex can use reference to your drawing ability as a chat-up line---this has certainly happened to me]----and it is a good feeling being in a position to draw these images: as you age and lose your youthful looks, assuming we ever had them--------- but usually yer drawings actually IMPROVE through experience !------- of course, there can be occassional skirmishes related to cartoonery---cartoonists are just as flawed as anyone else, naturally------but really they are quite minor: for example, I have been banned from a UK cartoon site, but the people who done this only have the very limited power of stopping me from adding to their semi-obscure website: it is not as if they can damage my actual drawing ability, or stop me from doing my best work....... this stuff can still be 'broadcast ' on here and elsewhere.
It can take a good few years to get good at cartooning, even if you have the required potential in the first place---just like most other things in life that are worth pursuing.
HOWEVER! In the following paragraphs I will outline in fair detail the [by far!] worst-ever experience I ever encountered within the cartoon field, which up until now I have kept very quiet about......this was far, far, worse than being banned from any site, basically what happened was that I was employed by a [very] specialized cartoon company, -------they deliberately stopped me from doing my best work [I was more than keen to do my best stuff for them] ---then blamed ME for their lack of artistic vision and subsequent poor results I was forced to put out, under their blinkered regime.
The company was:
AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT [a lot of these same folks are now employed by DREAMWORKS SKG] ---the project I was employed upon was then actually bankrolled by UNIVERSAL PICTURES.
The Timeframe: the very early 90s, when traditional celulloid, hand-drawn cartoon animation was making a real comeback, after decades in the doldrums. Computer Imagery was only just coming in at around this point.
BACKSTORY:
I have a lifelong real love for hand-crafted, celluloid animation ---not just the obvious Disney material, but also the excellent M-G-M output as well as Max Fleischer and Tex Avery Meisterworks---there are others, also. I was born too late, though--by the time I got 'any good' at cartooning, all we had in the Industry was the limited, jerky, TV animation output that never especially floated my boat: the absolute classic Great Theatrical Animation style had as good as ground to a halt from the late 50s onwards. Nevertheless, I picked up a fair bit of comic-drawing skill doing strip work for Scottish publisher D C Thomson in the 80s, then applied these principles to 'moving drawings', turning out an early test of original animation, which I mailed in [a pile of about 200 drawings] to the only TV cartoon animation company I knew that actually existed in Britain at that time.
They wrote back, encouraging me to experiment further, but I hit a [unusual for me] creative block, finding their model sheets a bit intimidating. HOWEVER! In early summer 1990, an extremely rare, once-in-a-lifetime large advertisment appeared in the National Press:
'WE NEED EXPERIENCED CARTOONISTS!
SPIELBERG IS MAKING A FULL-BLOWN THEATRICAL
ANIMATED CARTOON HERE IN LONDON--- RIGHT NOW!"
--------[or words to this effect]: this, of course, was a real bolt from the blue, the sort of thing one would never really expect to find in the UK, and so obviously I fully grasped this opportunity, mailing them the test drawings I already had done directly in to them: within a week I was offered a job and an invitation to come down to London and join the Production. I am not exaggerating when I say I was literally jumping for joy when I recieved this news: this could well be a Golden Opportunity to find real work in the 'proper' film industry, maybe even finding an outlet to 'draw like Disney'.
Traveling down over 500 miles from Scotland [and not yet any digs sorted out] I found the studio location on the top block of an inner-city flat quite near the BBC Centre: once up there, it looked pretty much like what you see in archive footage of the old Disney studios: cubicles of animators---- at least 300 artists , [more than I ever witnessed in one place, either before or since]: a real hubub of activity, including a few ex-Disney staffers. I found an empty desk and started to animate one of their lead characters: one guy in charge asked what I was doing and demanded I do a 'fill-in' test tracing-drawing, essentially an 'inbetween' exact mid-point drawing between two existing cartoon stills.
Man , was this a drag [discovered by me on the very first drawing on the very first day]--------put it this way: the catch-line in attracting artists to this studio was; ''we will teach you to animate!' ---this sounds great, but what it really means is that this production needed hundreds of 'lesser' artists to finish off, clean up, and do the hundreds of thousands of 'fill-in' frames required for a feature production of this kind; this type of 'factory-line' approach was used to great effect by Walt Disney, even on Masterpieces such as PINOCCHIO or BAMBI. Many artists are perfectly happy to go along with this approach, of course---they get to see this sort of professional movie-making at first-hand, however this novelty can quickly wear off, especially if, like me, you are more used to creating your own original cartoons direct from imagination, and not just embellishing the work of others.
I myself get bored finishing off my own original drawings: so imagine the routine drudgery of having a job soley made up of producing endless fill-ins of other peoples' artwork. The only people doing real creative work in these Hollywood-backed studios are the actual animators who produce rough extremes in the form of sketches: the vast majority of artists left in these studios are simply tidying up and streamlining the work of the animators. Doing original animation roughs is a great way of drawing--it is very similar to producing rough pencils for comic-strip work, and is very creative indeed. Doing clean-up work of other artists' designs and ideas is a bore and a chore in my view: it takes all the fun and mystery out of creating original cartoon drawings.
Nevertheless, I tried to go along with this requirement they expected from me, and I done loads of overtime, but in all honesty I did not enjoy this job at all, and yearned getting back to controlling my drawings once again. The bosses were not pleased with my meagre output [I could draw a fast rough in minutes, even in 1990, but these soul-less tracing-drawings were wholly alien to me, and took me ages---the work was excruciating because it had absolutely nothing to do with proper creativity] : it was made clear to me that I was required only to do the fill-in work of others, but nevertheless after getting my overtime cut [it was a relief] they agreed to let me come in at the weekends and try out my own original animation roughs.
This seemed a definite move in the right direction: finally free of the shackles of being forced to draw fill-ins of other artists' scenes, my original cartoons flourished instantly, once again I had the freedom to belt out drawings very quickly---this spontanaeity of lightning-fast sketches is the very essence of effective cartooning, whether in film production or in comic-strips. However! Alarm bells started ringing when it became clear the time Studio Boss Steve Hickner passed me close by as I came in to work on my original test scene one Saturday: I said 'hello' to him but he made it very clear that he was displeased to see me there-----this was the moment that I truly realized that there was no prospect of me ever being able to do any real creative paid work there: all that Steve had in store for me there was endless mindless fill-ins ----------work I never especially excelled at due to it's drudgerous nature.
In my time at Amblin, only ONCE did I ever discover a real glimmer of hope, or even recognition that I may indeed possess some potential as an animator:
Another Saturday, I was working on my test scene of original animation roughs of one of their main characters----I was flipping through the pencils---and a seasoned Assistant Animator called Brenda came up behind me and observed:
Wow! ----Whos' stuffs' THAT?'
In other words, this experienced Assistant had mistaken my test roughs for actual professional animation: these were quick drawings of around 5 or 7 minutes apiece: my official job , remember, was spending at least an hour on tepid, lifeless clean-up inbetweens, a job that I hated doing and that nobody in the Studio seemed to care about, including me.
This was the reassurance and recognition I was looking for: and I embarked upon the original test scene with renewed vigor.
Not long after this, I was called into Steve Hickner's confidence for an informal chat in his studio office: I was informed , politely, that my standards of draftsmanship were not up to scratch, and I had one day to vacate the premises. The lifeless, soul-less inbetween drawings of mechanical tracing-drawings I had been cranking out were deemed unworthy of the Production [fair enough: they were useless junk in my eyes, too, but I was never satisfied working under these oppressive conditions], but here is the clincher, and all you ever really need to know about the workings of the mind of Mr Stephen Hickner:
He did not want to see my original test-drawings, lamely remarking that bosses were 'not obliged' to look at test footage by employees.
Below you will see an example of one of the test frames I did at the weekends in Steves' Studio, and you can draw your own conclusions about his motives and whether or not I was fit to be employed in his studio or not.
FRAME TWO is:
COPYRIGHT AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT/ UNIVERSAL PICTURES 1991
PLATE ONE: the studio bosses at Amblin, London, circa 1990: these people approached the 'art' of making movies with the same finesse as if they were mass-producing tins of baked beans.
The People who ran Amblin, but who sure as Hell never coaxed out the best of my particular potential personally, were:
STEVE HICKNER------his background is in low-budget TV animation, and that is where his qualities seem to belong---there was no signs that this chap was any sort of creative visionary by any stretch of his [limited] imagination: it is the talented people working for him that are putting out the real quality stuff. Steve recently had two books published on his advice to would-be animators---he illustrated these books himself, and his drawing abilities, at least going by what I saw in these books he authored, are pretty modest, to put it politely. This guy of moderate talent is doing well, apparantly.....he ain't no Walt Disney, though.
CINDY WOODBYRNE [see illustration by me, below] was the Production Manager at Amblin--she seemed a good sort who genuinely wanted the Studio to succeed---she never especially helped me to get on, but she had a lot on her plate-----I have no idea what Cinders is doing now, or what happened to her.
COLIN ALEXAN-DUH was the Production Co-Ordinator of particular lack of creativity and imagination , a pen-pusher/accountant of the worst kind, prone to sarcastic comments, and lapdog to Steve---I heard he sodded off back to Geordie-Land, rather than join Dreamworks.
There were definitely a lot of nice people who worked at Amblin, it has to be said, but I hope my experience at this studio will be of interest to some reading this.
PLATE TWO:
From 1990, one of the many frames of test animation I turned out at Amblin, in my attempt to get off the tedious job I had as an inbetweener there. The inbetween frames took at least an hour apiece---these original test drawings took roughly 6 minutes each.
Studio Boss Steve Hickner knew I was working on this original animation, but refused to look at this unseen extremes, booting me out the door with a days' notice.
AH-----the Glamor of Making Hollywood Movies!
[l-r: bonny specimens, all: Production Co-ordinator/ Studio Boss or Associate Producer/ Studio Manager.]
Being a cartoonist is MOSTLY a good thing: despite what many cynics claim, most folks can't do this task--at least not very effectively: but if you can draw decent cartoons, it is easy to impress most people, break the ice with strangers [ and yes, the opposite sex can use reference to your drawing ability as a chat-up line---this has certainly happened to me]----and it is a good feeling being in a position to draw these images: as you age and lose your youthful looks, assuming we ever had them--------- but usually yer drawings actually IMPROVE through experience !------- of course, there can be occassional skirmishes related to cartoonery---cartoonists are just as flawed as anyone else, naturally------but really they are quite minor: for example, I have been banned from a UK cartoon site, but the people who done this only have the very limited power of stopping me from adding to their semi-obscure website: it is not as if they can damage my actual drawing ability, or stop me from doing my best work....... this stuff can still be 'broadcast ' on here and elsewhere.
It can take a good few years to get good at cartooning, even if you have the required potential in the first place---just like most other things in life that are worth pursuing.
HOWEVER! In the following paragraphs I will outline in fair detail the [by far!] worst-ever experience I ever encountered within the cartoon field, which up until now I have kept very quiet about......this was far, far, worse than being banned from any site, basically what happened was that I was employed by a [very] specialized cartoon company, -------they deliberately stopped me from doing my best work [I was more than keen to do my best stuff for them] ---then blamed ME for their lack of artistic vision and subsequent poor results I was forced to put out, under their blinkered regime.
The company was:
AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT [a lot of these same folks are now employed by DREAMWORKS SKG] ---the project I was employed upon was then actually bankrolled by UNIVERSAL PICTURES.
The Timeframe: the very early 90s, when traditional celulloid, hand-drawn cartoon animation was making a real comeback, after decades in the doldrums. Computer Imagery was only just coming in at around this point.
BACKSTORY:
I have a lifelong real love for hand-crafted, celluloid animation ---not just the obvious Disney material, but also the excellent M-G-M output as well as Max Fleischer and Tex Avery Meisterworks---there are others, also. I was born too late, though--by the time I got 'any good' at cartooning, all we had in the Industry was the limited, jerky, TV animation output that never especially floated my boat: the absolute classic Great Theatrical Animation style had as good as ground to a halt from the late 50s onwards. Nevertheless, I picked up a fair bit of comic-drawing skill doing strip work for Scottish publisher D C Thomson in the 80s, then applied these principles to 'moving drawings', turning out an early test of original animation, which I mailed in [a pile of about 200 drawings] to the only TV cartoon animation company I knew that actually existed in Britain at that time.
They wrote back, encouraging me to experiment further, but I hit a [unusual for me] creative block, finding their model sheets a bit intimidating. HOWEVER! In early summer 1990, an extremely rare, once-in-a-lifetime large advertisment appeared in the National Press:
'WE NEED EXPERIENCED CARTOONISTS!
SPIELBERG IS MAKING A FULL-BLOWN THEATRICAL
ANIMATED CARTOON HERE IN LONDON--- RIGHT NOW!"
--------[or words to this effect]: this, of course, was a real bolt from the blue, the sort of thing one would never really expect to find in the UK, and so obviously I fully grasped this opportunity, mailing them the test drawings I already had done directly in to them: within a week I was offered a job and an invitation to come down to London and join the Production. I am not exaggerating when I say I was literally jumping for joy when I recieved this news: this could well be a Golden Opportunity to find real work in the 'proper' film industry, maybe even finding an outlet to 'draw like Disney'.
Traveling down over 500 miles from Scotland [and not yet any digs sorted out] I found the studio location on the top block of an inner-city flat quite near the BBC Centre: once up there, it looked pretty much like what you see in archive footage of the old Disney studios: cubicles of animators---- at least 300 artists , [more than I ever witnessed in one place, either before or since]: a real hubub of activity, including a few ex-Disney staffers. I found an empty desk and started to animate one of their lead characters: one guy in charge asked what I was doing and demanded I do a 'fill-in' test tracing-drawing, essentially an 'inbetween' exact mid-point drawing between two existing cartoon stills.
Man , was this a drag [discovered by me on the very first drawing on the very first day]--------put it this way: the catch-line in attracting artists to this studio was; ''we will teach you to animate!' ---this sounds great, but what it really means is that this production needed hundreds of 'lesser' artists to finish off, clean up, and do the hundreds of thousands of 'fill-in' frames required for a feature production of this kind; this type of 'factory-line' approach was used to great effect by Walt Disney, even on Masterpieces such as PINOCCHIO or BAMBI. Many artists are perfectly happy to go along with this approach, of course---they get to see this sort of professional movie-making at first-hand, however this novelty can quickly wear off, especially if, like me, you are more used to creating your own original cartoons direct from imagination, and not just embellishing the work of others.
I myself get bored finishing off my own original drawings: so imagine the routine drudgery of having a job soley made up of producing endless fill-ins of other peoples' artwork. The only people doing real creative work in these Hollywood-backed studios are the actual animators who produce rough extremes in the form of sketches: the vast majority of artists left in these studios are simply tidying up and streamlining the work of the animators. Doing original animation roughs is a great way of drawing--it is very similar to producing rough pencils for comic-strip work, and is very creative indeed. Doing clean-up work of other artists' designs and ideas is a bore and a chore in my view: it takes all the fun and mystery out of creating original cartoon drawings.
Nevertheless, I tried to go along with this requirement they expected from me, and I done loads of overtime, but in all honesty I did not enjoy this job at all, and yearned getting back to controlling my drawings once again. The bosses were not pleased with my meagre output [I could draw a fast rough in minutes, even in 1990, but these soul-less tracing-drawings were wholly alien to me, and took me ages---the work was excruciating because it had absolutely nothing to do with proper creativity] : it was made clear to me that I was required only to do the fill-in work of others, but nevertheless after getting my overtime cut [it was a relief] they agreed to let me come in at the weekends and try out my own original animation roughs.
This seemed a definite move in the right direction: finally free of the shackles of being forced to draw fill-ins of other artists' scenes, my original cartoons flourished instantly, once again I had the freedom to belt out drawings very quickly---this spontanaeity of lightning-fast sketches is the very essence of effective cartooning, whether in film production or in comic-strips. However! Alarm bells started ringing when it became clear the time Studio Boss Steve Hickner passed me close by as I came in to work on my original test scene one Saturday: I said 'hello' to him but he made it very clear that he was displeased to see me there-----this was the moment that I truly realized that there was no prospect of me ever being able to do any real creative paid work there: all that Steve had in store for me there was endless mindless fill-ins ----------work I never especially excelled at due to it's drudgerous nature.
In my time at Amblin, only ONCE did I ever discover a real glimmer of hope, or even recognition that I may indeed possess some potential as an animator:
Another Saturday, I was working on my test scene of original animation roughs of one of their main characters----I was flipping through the pencils---and a seasoned Assistant Animator called Brenda came up behind me and observed:
Wow! ----Whos' stuffs' THAT?'
In other words, this experienced Assistant had mistaken my test roughs for actual professional animation: these were quick drawings of around 5 or 7 minutes apiece: my official job , remember, was spending at least an hour on tepid, lifeless clean-up inbetweens, a job that I hated doing and that nobody in the Studio seemed to care about, including me.
This was the reassurance and recognition I was looking for: and I embarked upon the original test scene with renewed vigor.
Not long after this, I was called into Steve Hickner's confidence for an informal chat in his studio office: I was informed , politely, that my standards of draftsmanship were not up to scratch, and I had one day to vacate the premises. The lifeless, soul-less inbetween drawings of mechanical tracing-drawings I had been cranking out were deemed unworthy of the Production [fair enough: they were useless junk in my eyes, too, but I was never satisfied working under these oppressive conditions], but here is the clincher, and all you ever really need to know about the workings of the mind of Mr Stephen Hickner:
He did not want to see my original test-drawings, lamely remarking that bosses were 'not obliged' to look at test footage by employees.
Below you will see an example of one of the test frames I did at the weekends in Steves' Studio, and you can draw your own conclusions about his motives and whether or not I was fit to be employed in his studio or not.
FRAME TWO is:
COPYRIGHT AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT/ UNIVERSAL PICTURES 1991
PLATE ONE: the studio bosses at Amblin, London, circa 1990: these people approached the 'art' of making movies with the same finesse as if they were mass-producing tins of baked beans.
The People who ran Amblin, but who sure as Hell never coaxed out the best of my particular potential personally, were:
STEVE HICKNER------his background is in low-budget TV animation, and that is where his qualities seem to belong---there was no signs that this chap was any sort of creative visionary by any stretch of his [limited] imagination: it is the talented people working for him that are putting out the real quality stuff. Steve recently had two books published on his advice to would-be animators---he illustrated these books himself, and his drawing abilities, at least going by what I saw in these books he authored, are pretty modest, to put it politely. This guy of moderate talent is doing well, apparantly.....he ain't no Walt Disney, though.
CINDY WOODBYRNE [see illustration by me, below] was the Production Manager at Amblin--she seemed a good sort who genuinely wanted the Studio to succeed---she never especially helped me to get on, but she had a lot on her plate-----I have no idea what Cinders is doing now, or what happened to her.
COLIN ALEXAN-DUH was the Production Co-Ordinator of particular lack of creativity and imagination , a pen-pusher/accountant of the worst kind, prone to sarcastic comments, and lapdog to Steve---I heard he sodded off back to Geordie-Land, rather than join Dreamworks.
There were definitely a lot of nice people who worked at Amblin, it has to be said, but I hope my experience at this studio will be of interest to some reading this.
PLATE TWO:
From 1990, one of the many frames of test animation I turned out at Amblin, in my attempt to get off the tedious job I had as an inbetweener there. The inbetween frames took at least an hour apiece---these original test drawings took roughly 6 minutes each.
Studio Boss Steve Hickner knew I was working on this original animation, but refused to look at this unseen extremes, booting me out the door with a days' notice.
AH-----the Glamor of Making Hollywood Movies!
[l-r: bonny specimens, all: Production Co-ordinator/ Studio Boss or Associate Producer/ Studio Manager.]
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