Børge Ring - mentor and playmate.
Working with Børge was fun, hard, boring, exciting, unusual, normal, and most of all educational. Over a year before leaving high school, in March 1978 I found out he lived in my neighborhood from a tv program about him and his wife Joanika. So I found him in the phone book (remember those?) and called him up. While studying art history, for a year I was his "pupil" doing animation tests, dropping by and having him correct them. Then, fed up with my art history professors, I moved my animation desk with my Neilson-Hordell disc into his Blaricum attic! (I am pointing at it in this photo taken last year:) Here, for almost four years, from March 1980 to November 1983 I smelled of his Douwe Egberts Red Amphora pipe tobacco and every day incl. weekends, Christmas and New Year from 10 to 6 we worked to the sound of BBC World Service if there were no jazz songs he had to listen to over and over again for an upcoming gig. I started doing simple non-production tests from his animation...



I remember once while working at the Hubley studio that John and Tissa David were arguing (jokingly) over pan speeds of a couple of overlays. John ended the argument by saying he had just received a phone call from someone in Europe who had praised him for creating one of the greatest multiplane scenes ever. The coach ride. He told Tissa that she had to listen to him since he was obviously the master of the multiplane.
ReplyDeleteThanks again for posting these Hans.
I remember hearing a story about Walt fuming over how people praised the "boat on the water" shot in this scene more than the expensively-shot opening scene of Sequence 2. I believe his words were "Never again.".
ReplyDeleteI think this was about the time Frank, Ollie, Ward & Milt began to surpass Fred Moore. Almost like the baton was passed on to them at this point. Moore's animation of Lampwick, although very funny, well executed & full of emotion, is a lot broader & lacks subtlty, unlike Milt or Frank's animation of Pinocchio. I'm not badmouthing Moore in any way here, I admire all of his work & how it has affected animation to this very day.
Once again, thanks for the drafts, Hans.
Fred Moore's drawings of Lampwick are very amusing, funny and well drawn, but I think ever since Walt Disney started work on features, I think that it made Fred Moore start doing less work, because I mean Fred Moore didn't do as much animation on "Pinocchio" as Ollie Johnston did, or Art Babbitt, Milt Kahl, Bill Tytla, Woolie Reitherman, Ward Kimball, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut yet, I think he still brought some great animation in Pinocchio, I mean in Sequence 10.1, he handles Gepetto winderfully!!