Iron Giant was arguably one of the greatest animated films of all time, yet it fell on it’s feet at the box office due to executive fear and suppression of advertising which is odd since Warner Bros was literally frothing at the mouth to get an animated feature off the ground. Enter Brad Bird who WB execs reportedly allowed to make the film essentially unsupervised and once they saw the film and how good it was they feared for their jobs and suppressed it as best they could.
What is your name and current occupation ?
M name is Andy Ice. I’m currently working at Walt Disney Television Animation as lead background designer on “Kick Buttowski”.
What are some of the craziest job’s you had before getting into animation ?
I stumbled around for awhile after graduating college. The oddest job was hauling parts for assembly workers in a Doorknob Factory ! I also worked in a precision metal grinding plant, responsible for setting up, and running a centerless grinding machine that made parts that went into NASA ships. They had to be crazy to trust me with that.
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of ?
I will always be thankful for “Kim Possible” at Disney. I came on as a background designer early in the first season, and wasn’t sure if I would make it. I wound up staying all four seasons, and was the sole designer for the last two seasons.
I loved working on “Cats Don’t Dance” for Turner Feature Animation. It was one of the last traditional animated films, done completely in house, and I worked in an amazing layout department, where I learned something new every day. I started doing rough layouts, and some clean ups, then being put on workbook, which I really loved.
One of the earlier jobs was background layout on “Taz-Mania” at Warner Bros. That’s where I really learned the ropes of animation, as we were laying out every scene, and our art was shot for actual production. A great experience.
I could say things about every project , but those stand out.
Where are you from and how did you get into the biz ?
I grew up in Continue reading
Polygon has a nice post about a cool new joint project between Bruce Timm and Machinima called Gods and Monsters… it’s NOT your daddy’s Batman!
From the article:
We spoke to Timm a month ago about the critical differences he’s thrown into Gods and Monsters. This universe’s Wonder Woman is from the realm of Ares; its Batman is Kirk Langstrom, who transformed himself into a vampire with weird science; and itsSuperman was adopted by Mexican immigrants to America, rather than farmers in the heartland, and exposure to racial bigotry at a young age has significantly altered his perspective on America as a country.
An old friend of mine is selling some traditional Animation discs:
I  have 10 of the 16 fld animation disc I am looking to sell. They are the same ones being used at Warner Brothers they are really nice discs came from the Bluth Studios.
All discs are without the Glass and are $150.00 each with two peg bars.
There are a few that are missing one set of pegs these I can sale for $100.00 each
Mental Floss has an excellent article up about the development of Animaniacs after talking with Tom Ruegger, the shows executive producer and creator.
I was fortunate enough to work for Tom on Tiny Toons, Tazmania, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain as well as Histeria, first as a character layout artist and then as a director, and I still count them as some of my very best years in the industry.
One idea Spielberg suggested was to make the popular Tiny Toons character Plucky Duck the star of the new show. Meanwhile, Ruegger had been developing characters based on the personalities of his three young sons. These two concepts were combined to create three brother ducks. However, the team soon realized that, between Disney’s Donald Duck, DuckTales, Darkwing Duck, and Warner Bros.’ own Daffy Duck, there were already plenty of animated waterfowl on the market. Spielberg agreed, but said they needed to come up with “a big marquee name†to help sell the show.
Ruegger was inspired by the large “WB†logo on the water tower at the Warner Bros. studio. He proposed a group of siblings drawn in an animation style reminiscent of anthropomorphized animal characters from the 1930s, and called them the Warner Brothers. Although they have dog-like characteristics, the exact type of animal the Warners are meant to be is unknown. According to the show bible – a book filled with background information for the creative team on a TV show – their species is labeled as “Cartoonus Characterus.â€
For a brief period, there were four Warner siblings—Yakky, Smakky, Wakky, and little sister, Dot. As the studio artists honed the designs, Yakky became Yakko, and Smakky and Wakky were melded into Wakko. After getting clearance from the Warner estate to use the family name, the show was off and running.
We also interviewed the multi-talented Bob Doucette who did all those cool posters above (and in the article). Bob was my producer on Histeria while I was directing on it. Bob was one of our very first interviews on Animation Insider, and you can read his interview here!
