Meet Animator Richard Bazley

Amisdst his busy schedules, ArtYears contacted the versatile Animator Richard Bazley to learn more about his profession and share his experiences and insights in the challenging world of animation. His detailed views on the medium he loves dearly, is a treat to all Animators, both professionals as well as amateurs.

Profile: Richard Bazley

ArtYears presents an exclusive interview with Animator Richard Bazley:

With an interest in animation from a very young age, you fulfilled your ambitions of working for Disney and achieved much more. How did you begin your career?
My interest in animation started from a very young age. When I was ten, I saw a BBC programme called ‘The Do-it-Yourself Animation Show’ hosted by Bob Godfrey, which featured various Animators including Richard Williams and Terry Gilliam. The show had a very big impact on me. Also at the same time I was given a book called ‘The Disney Films’ by Leonard Maltin the top US Film Critic and I poured over the illustrations (even though they were black and white). This book also had a similar impact. I was to meet the author over 20 years later who gave a great review for my very own film ‘The Journal of Edwin Carp’.

All these events were seeds that were planted for my interest in animation, which grew into a reality later on. However, where I came from, a picturesque part of Devon in the English Countryside, animation was not a career option, but the strong interest in art did lead me to Art School and a Graphic Design Degree. After this, I went to London and worked in advertising as an Art Director on Press and Poster campaigns. However, the urge to animate was still there and after discovering some of the animation companies in London, I started hounding them for information on how to learn animation. One of those visits included a visit to Pizazz and a meeting with Eric Goldberg, who showed me the basics of inbetweening. At the same time, Jill Brookes at Stuart Brookes Animation had arranged an inbetween test for me up at Disney in Camden where they were doing ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’. I did the test, where upon they asked me to do a series of evening classes and got the job! That was the first break that I got which set the ball rolling.

Can you name some of your favourite artists and those that inspired you in animation?
There are many artists that inspire me, some are fine artists while others are animators and art directors. I love the graphic quality of Picasso and his amazing sense of design. What is interesting is that he influenced animators like Milt Karle, one of the best Disney Animators of all time. He would play with the fact that we are animating in a two-dimensional medium and draw in a way that can never be duplicated in CGI even with all the 2D rendering options available. I also love Eyvind Earle, the Art Director on ‘Sleeping Beauty’, whose sense of dramatic contrast in colours is outstanding. His paintings have the intricacy of tapestries and show a combination of Asian and Gothic influences. Mark Davis, another Disney Artist was a great Fine Artist in his own right. I have a number of prints of his fine art, his dedication to continual study of the arts made him an artist of the utmost caliber. This came through also whilst he was in Feature Animation on characters like Cruella in ‘101 Dalmatians’. There are many more artists that I admire, but too many to mention here, it would go on for page after page!

You have met up with a whole lot of personalities in the animation industry. Could you describe a most memorable meeting?
I think one of the most exciting things was meeting Leonard Maltin, the US Film Critic and Animation Historian. I had just been to a screening of ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ in Hollywood and he had done a quick interview of Richard Willaims the Animation Director before hand. As I was going to my car later on, I happened to spot Leonard and have a quick chat. I told him about the book of his I had as a child and how great an influence it was. It was a special moment for me. I sent him a copy of my animated short film ‘The Journal of Edwin Carp’ and he gave it a great review. Therefore, I must say that this was one of the most memorable meetings that I had. Working in this industry does mean that you do meet some of your childhood heroes. I had the pleasure recently of meeting Gerry Anderson the creator of Thunderbirds, Space 1999, UFO, Captain Scarlet and many more. On entering his office in Pinewood, I saw a tank vehicle from the series UFO. As a boy I had played with that very same toy and now I was in a business meeting with the very same person, which was another special moment! Also meeting some of Disney's nine old men was special – Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnson, Mark Davis and many more.

Ronald Searle is a highly respected name and an idol to many? How much has the hugely successful illustrator influenced your art?
Ronald Searle has influenced a whole generation of artists and he is a very strong influence on me. If you watch many of the Classic Disney Films such as ‘101 Dalmatians’ or ‘Aristocats’ you will see that the artists borrowed heavily from his style. I have 80 of his books and have poured over the illustrations (wish I could say the same about all the text!). He would go out and sketch quite often on location and use a fountain pen. He would use an old one where they used to have more flexibility in the nib. I too would go to antique fairs and get similar pens where I could get a flexibility and variance in the line. You can also see how he is exploring whilst drawing and incorporate that into his drawing. Searle also has an incredible sense of design. His characters would not have a traditional bone structure. He would stretch, elongate limbs and give them their own sense of anatomy not found in any Life Drawing book. You can liken his drawing the way a Jazz musician will take liberties with traditional musical structure. There is also a sense of fun to his drawing, most obvious in his drawing of the ‘Girls of St. Trinians’.

What essential qualities are required of an artist to take up a career in animation?
I would say perseverance and determination is probably the main quality. Also, the ability to absorb and learn, to be an eternal student and open to all aspects of the arts. A good sense of observation and the ability in the end to entertain is what animation is all about.

How do you compare animation done in different continents around the world, besides the big names in America? How much does Europe contribute to the art of animation?
Europe of course contributes an awful lot. Where there is lack of finance, it is usually made up with invention and then within Europe, the various nations have different identities that come through in the work. There is also the rich heritage of Fine Artists to draw upon.

Disney infact, drew a lot of influence from European Artists. Gustave Tengren was a European Illustrator brought over from Europe in the 30’s and his style heavily influenced ‘Pinnochio’. The ‘Dance of the Hours’ in ‘Fantasia’ where crocodiles and hippos dance, was influenced by Henriech Kley, a German Artist. Where the Americans have excelled has been character driven performance animation. Europe is starting at last to catch up in this area due to the large number of Europeans that have worked in the USA in the last 20 years. They have brought back skills that can only be developed in the type of large studios that can afford long investment in continual training of animators. They can now use those skills to express themselves in new ways without being limited in their knowledge of animation as I felt it has been before.

How and when did you decide to set up your own studio and start Bazley Films?
Working on the big Features such as Disney's ‘Hercules’ or Warner Brothers’ ‘The Iron Giant’ is very satisfying, but I got to a stage whereby I wanted to make my own statement. I had pitched various projects, including a version of The Iron Man before Warner's did theirs, but getting a 2D Feature off the ground is no mean feat. I started by doing a short film and did it in a software programme called Flash, because I knew I could make something fairly quickly, in my spare time and cost effectively. Macromedia saw some of the work in progress and agreed to sponsor it, as did Wacom. I put the whole film together with another animator and a Producer within a year and a half. It was featured on the cover of Televisual, the main Film and Television magazine in the UK. It also lead to me Co-Authoring a book on Flash called ‘Flash-Cartoons and Games’. At about this time my wife and I were looking to return to the UK.

Neither of us wanted to go back to London, so on the off chance I sent an e-mail to The Bath Film Office. They informed me about a new venture called the Corsham Media Park near Bath and I went back to check it all out. It was established by Jeffrey Thomas, an entrepreneur who also runs a number of other ventures, such as Hartham Park (www.harthampark.com) and Rudloe Manor besides various other businesses. We had lunch at the Mansion and he described his vision for both The Media Park and The Bath Studios. I was hooked immediately. It had everything I was looking for. It offered the lifestyle I preferred and had some other more spectacular benefits that I could not have dreamt of. The Bath Studios has a massive data communication connection, capable of transmitting 56 films simultaneously, anywhere across the World! This was more than enough for me to send and receive animation to any location. The need to be in Soho, in London was no more! Also the environment of many media and film companies under one roof appealed enormously as I had collaborated on numerous projects of my own with writers, Producers and Editors. Now it was all going to be here at The Bath Studios. Bath, by the way, I consider to be one of the most beautiful cities in the UK and ever since the industry has found out my whereabouts, I get e-mails and calls from all over the World which include Producers and Artists who would like to work here.

Flash is a delight to countless professional animators as well as amateurs. How would you describe the macromedia software?
I dowloaded a trial version of Flash, to try-out. I had a storyboard for my short film sitting on my desk and thought I would try a few scenes in the programme and see how it looked. What I liked was the spontaneous quality I could get in the line work on the Wacom Tablet, to imitate Searle's style. I could then effortlessly take this line work and animate, distort and stretch these lines in any way imaginable. It was quite a revelation and very exciting. I emailed Macromedia and it seemed they were excited at what I was doing too. Within weeks the Product Manager were down from LA to my office, to see what I was doing. The next thing I knew they were sponsoring it. Macromedia has so many wonderful tools and the interface is very user friendly. You can also get very good results very quickly.

How much of quality work, do you feel is produced on the Internet, using Flash?
One of the things that I was frustrated with, was the general poor quality of Flash Animation on the Internet. This is nothing to do with the software, but due to the lack of training in the artists using it. It also seemed that companies were less willing to pay a good rate for Flash animation, which also brought the quality level down. I am no guru on Flash, but it was interesting for the response I got once I started animating in it. I would get reactions such as "I didn't know you could do that in Flash”. This is because most of the animation being done was by designers, not classically trained Animators. When I made ‘Edwin Carp’, I always considered it a film that just happened to be made in Flash, not a Flash Film.

From hand-drawn cels to CGI, how much has the art of animation evolved in recent times?
The most obvious evolution is the development of technologies in animation. Originally, all the animators drawings were hand inked and hand painted onto cell on such classics as ‘Snow White’ and ‘Fantasia’. Then during the 60s a method called xerox was evolved, where the clean up drawing could be copied onto cell by mechanical means taking out a lot of the drudgery of hand inking.....but the cells still had to be hand painted. The next major breakthrough was computer ink and paint which started at the time of ‘Rescuers Down Under’. Then John Lasseter was instrumental in taking computer animation, which had largely been revolving logs, to new heights by applying the traditional animators skills to computer animation. With the success of ‘Toy Story’ and a succession of other very good CGI films, suddenly CGI has become the main medium of animation and sadly 2D has taken a back seat. This is due to a number of factors. One of the problems has been the failure of the big studios to:

(1) come up with consistently good storylines for 2D Features

(2)To keep costs down in development time and money wasting by senior management (and micro-management)

(3) Lack of promotion on spectacularly good 2D films such as the Classic ‘The Iron Giant’.

CGI for some reason has been blessed with the better scripts. Combine this with the novelty factor of CGI and the lack of backage of what expectation a 2D animated film should be and we find 2D in a dire situation. It will take a new visionary and a very brave Executive, to go out on a limb to create a great new 2D Feature, to get things back on track, so that 2D and CGI are running parallel, in their appeal to audiences.

Can you describe the job designation of a lead animator, along with the animation teams they work with?
The Lead Animator will get on board a film at an early stage so that they can develop the character. They are made to incorporate the design look of the film, the nature of the character, the way they behave or move and react. I was assigned the character of Drix on ‘Osmosis Jones’. It was a character based on a pill that had to go into the body to destroy a virus. It had no legs, it floated and had a gun for an arm with a perfectly symmetrical body. I recommended that in this case the character should be CGI whilst all the others were 2D and suddenly found myself in charge of a CG Character. I tried to incorporate the mannerisms of David Hyde-Pierce (Niles in Frazier) who was doing the voice. I would go to the recording studios to observe him. In the case of ‘The Iron Giant’, instead of taking a character the Supervisors took sequences. The advantage of this is that instead of doing scenes all over the place in the film, you put your head around an entire sequence and you get a real consistency and flow to those sequences. It can work extremely well as it did in ‘The Jungle Book’ or it can create a competition in the Supervisors to out do each other as they did in ‘Alice in Wonderland’, a great but very disjointed film as a whole. So there is for and against doing it this way. Also, you have to look over a team and make sure that the character is consistent in the way it is drawn and moves, which is no mean feet.

With the high production costs that forces major studios to downsize or even hire on contract basis, what scope do you predict for budding animators?
The landscape is definitely changing. What technology has enabled is the ability of the animator to produce their own film far more easily with all the software programmes that help you to edit. Studios have downsized but when I got into the business, Animation was not considered a career option until ‘The Lion King’ when Animation suddenly became a way to make great money. Animation goes in cycles and it will all come around again. It doesn’t seem so long ago that Disney were considering closing the Feature division and Don Bluth came out with ‘An American Tail’ and Disney woke up and started earnestly creating animated films again. It has just gone back down in a dip and will pick up again in the following years. The young artists that are good and persevere, will make it eventually. They must learn to be patient and keep trying.

Could you describe some interesting projects you plan to undertake in the new future?
I have numerous projects that I have developed with various Writers and Producers, two with Howard Kazanjian (Executive Producer ‘Raiders of the Lost Arc’ and ‘The Return of the Jedi’). I will be pitching them in the near future. The projects are 2D and CGI and a few are Live Action as well. Being located at The Bath Studios, the plans are to develop them, create and distribute, all under one roof, with the infrastructure that is being built here. The management team has an extensive background in film finance and with the development of digital cinemas, the 1.6 terabyte connection here, means they could transmit 56 Feature films simultaneously anywhere in the world, if they wished!

‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ was a major step ahead in animation. It was also the first film you worked on. What challenges did the film provide?
Yes, this was my first film and although I always had a keen interest in animation, I had not studies it at college. So this was my training ground, ‘straight on the battle field!’ as it were. It was an exciting time and we all knew that we were creating something special. There was no CGI at the time so it really stood out at the time as a technical achievement. I remember seeing the rushes come in from ILM each day and we were always amazed at the integration between live action and animation. It was a very quick learning curve and there were so many talented artists to learn from. I will never forget the excitement felt on that project.

A critically acclaimed film, ‘The Iron Giant’ is special to you in many ways. What happy memories do you take with you, from its making?
Out of all the Feature Films I had worked on, up until that point ‘The Iron Giant’ was far and away the best Feature that I had worked on. This was due almost entirely to Brad Bird the Director, whose absolute dedication to the medium has made him a visionary Director and ‘tour de force’ in the animation world. It was also one of the few times that I had seen a studio let a Director do what they should do and that is ‘Direct’ the film the way they wish to. Having said that, Brad was at the same time open to all manner of input from the artists, which he could then assimilate and add to the picture, without diluting it. There was a real collaborative effort on the Picture and again that environment would have been created by Brad so that all the artists felt that their input would be valued, which it was. At the end of the day, we created a Classic Film, a movie that will stand the test of time and be viewed by generations to come, unlike the ‘quick-buck’ films such as ‘Pokemon’ that made some money fast but will soon be forgotten. I got into the industry because of great films like ‘Pinnochio’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ or ‘The Jungle Book’ and to be a part of one like ‘The Iron Giant’ was a life long ambition. Despite having worked on far bigger commercial successes like ‘Hercules’ and ‘Pocahontas’, ‘The Iron Giant’ was the closest in terms to the type of movie that I wanted to make. My hope is that at Bazley Films and The Bath Studios we can achieve something of that greatness.

What working hours do you follow and how do you relax?
I have to let you know that animation does require a considerable amount of work and the field should only be entered by the dedicated. Having said that, after long hours and tight schedules, a few pints down at the local pub is a great way to unwind at the end of a week! When I lived in LA, there was no pub culture like the one we have in the UK, so it was more likely to be friends over for a barbeque!

— ArtYears feature

Richard Bazley is a respected Animator, having worked on a number of hugely successful Feature films. He carries his vision through his team at Bazley Films, his very own studio. You can find out more about his work by visiting his website www.bazleyfilms.com

All images in this feature are copyright © Richard Bazley and used with his permission.