Production Characters

Many of the original crew members who joined us were designers, which was perfect, because we had decided to animate the stories our UPA interviewees told, so we needed characters to be designed to “act out” those stories.  There we several great character designers who signed up early on and took stabs at the first characters we wanted designed, like, Bobe Cannon, John Hubley, Bill Melendez, Steve Bosustow, Paul Julian, and Jules Engel.  Most of the designs were very good, but either didn’t work well as easily animated characters, or weren’t very close to any UPA style, or were just too serious for our needs.  We wanted the documentary scenes to be fun and elicit the memory of UPA.

The first one to nail our needs was G. Allen Black, from New York City.  Above are several stabs he made at Jules Engel.  The last one was chosen and when he colored it in with Jules wearing a multi-colored, paint splotched, apron, it became even better than anything we had ever imagined.  Next came Fenway Fan, from Shanghai, who had a different style than Mr. Black, but so much the better.  UPA had many styles, so we should emulate that in the documentary.  Others followed from Brazil, England, and right here in the US, and more are in the wings waiting for us to finish this website so they can get started.  You can see our present crew line up on the Crew page.  In fact, you may want to join us, at the writing there is still plenty to do.

Category: Production