Production Organization
Dori Littel-Herrick, Dean of the Animation Department at Woodbury University, in Burbank, California, called us one bright spring day wondering if we’d like to have our documentary feature be the focus of a summer animation class, offered only to seniors in animation, who showed great promise. Of course, we agreed, and the class was formulated not just with senior animation students, but with some of our own crew members, so the class became quite large, as you can see by the image. The initial idea was to create characters, backgrounds and animation that might actually be used in the documentary, giving their students and our crew a regular schedule to start creating the necessary elements, and a sense of what it is like to actually participate in an animation production. Although some of the materials will be going into the documentary, there were other even more important results that came out of that summer class.
First of all Dori asked us to assign an Art Director. We had no Art Director at the time, but one of our early crew members, G. Allen Black, was not only a terrific character designer, but very knowledgable about UPA design, so he seemed to be the perfect person to head the design elements of the documentary, and he took on the new assignment with gusto, and connected with the class for almost ever session, via Skype, from NYC to Burbank. Kevin Cannarile, who had taught animation design earlier, stepped into the roll of the hands-on instructor and reviewer of all the designs and animation that was produced, with Mr. Black as the final word. Tee Bosustow also had his say, as well as filling the roll of bringing class members up to date with UPA, showing UPA films once a week, and answering questions about the studio, much like he did at animation festivals. Gwendolyn Arreola, who graduated from Woodbury animation a couple of years earlier, was given the roll of Production Coordinator, which was perhaps the best element that came out of the class, our first real detailed organization of the complex production schedule of our unique documentary on a unique animation studio, UPA.
Category: Production
