What is your name?
Tony Craig
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
“The animation project I’m most proud of is the DVD video Bobs Gannaway, Jess Winfield and I did to wrap up the Lilo and Stitch tv series. Â I know that it is relatively unknown, and I won’t get into the reasons for why I think the release of it was handled inappropriately, but the name of it is “”Leroy and Stitch””. Â The reason I am proudest of it has to do with how it all turned out. Â Usually, as a director, you have in your head what you think it should look like, and then when your show comes back from being animated overseas, it is not even close. Â Then you get used to what you do have, and start molding it into the final show. Â This project was the closest to what I had in my head. Â I know that it is not feature quality, but when you consider the time and the budget we were given to do it (1/4 the time the Disneytoons folks got for Stitch has a glitch, and probably 1/8 or less of what they spent), well, I’m proud of what we pulled off.
“The animation project I’m most proud of is the DVD video Bobs Gannaway, Jess Winfield and I did to wrap up the Lilo and Stitch tv series. Â I know that it is relatively unknown, and I won’t get into the reasons for why I think the release of it was handled inappropriately, but the name of it is “”Leroy and Stitch””. Â The reason I am proudest of it has to do with how it all turned out. Â Usually, as a director, you have in your head what you think it should look like, and then when your show comes back from being animated overseas, it is not even close. Â Then you get used to what you do have, and start molding it into the final show. Â This project was the closest to what I had in my head. Â I know that it is not feature quality, but when you consider the time and the budget we were given to do it (1/4 the time the Disneytoons folks got for Stitch has a glitch, and probably 1/8 or less of what they spent), well, I’m proud of what we pulled off.
The storyline is good too. Â Bobs and Jess did a great job with the script and the transitions of emotion from scene to scene, action sequence to quiet sequence, musical parts, score…all of it came together.
House of Mouse was another fun one, because we were able to utilize any character from the history of Disney animation. Â We were pulling the most obscure characters from old Silly Symphony cartoons and sticking them in the show, just for fun.
A personal project that I enjoyed doing was photographing old country and general stores across the state of North Carolina and compiling them into a book, “”Country Stores in North Carolina”.
How did you become interested in animation?
“I remember an evening at my grandparents’ house with my parents. I was still in a high chair, and I know this memory wasn’t based on photos or anything like that. Â We went to see Disney’s “Pinocchio” that evening. Â I fell asleep through most of it, but what I saw must have made an impression, or clicked in at that developmental stage of my infant mind. There was a copy of Christopher Finch’s book, “The Art of Walt Disney” in the reference section of our library. Â Every family trip to the library, I would be at the end of that row, poring over the artwork. Â I worked in the yard, saved my nickels, dimes, and quarters, until I had the $35 to buy my very own copy of that book, and I copied the pictures out of it regularly.
“I remember an evening at my grandparents’ house with my parents. I was still in a high chair, and I know this memory wasn’t based on photos or anything like that. Â We went to see Disney’s “Pinocchio” that evening. Â I fell asleep through most of it, but what I saw must have made an impression, or clicked in at that developmental stage of my infant mind. There was a copy of Christopher Finch’s book, “The Art of Walt Disney” in the reference section of our library. Â Every family trip to the library, I would be at the end of that row, poring over the artwork. Â I worked in the yard, saved my nickels, dimes, and quarters, until I had the $35 to buy my very own copy of that book, and I copied the pictures out of it regularly.
