Animator! Carpe Diem! (Part 3)

Animator! 

Carpe Diem! 

(Part 3)

Sachi showed me into a small office and gestured vaguely towards the work piled upon an animation desk. 

“Take a look at the scene,” she said. “See if you can figure out what it needs. Nobody’s touched it since the animator left this morning. We’ve got to finish it by 10am tomorrow and get it to camera. Okay?”

“Okay,” I answered, sitting down at the desk.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” said Sachi. “Want a coffee?”

“Yes, please.” 

Show business, there really is no business like it. 

That morning I’d been at the right place at the right time and showed up with my demo reel, looking for a job. Now here I sat, at another man’s desk to finish his scene. 

A scene urgently needed in a timely manner.

Aha! It’s always better to be lucky than good! 

I rolled through the scene. It was an action scene of a big, burly guy throwing a body into the trunk of a car. I rolled through it repeatedly, trying to visualize it, get familiar with it, seeking its essence. It was quality work. The drawings were solid… the animation smooth and fluid. 

I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a good scene to show what I could do. The animator had used a system I could understand and the drawings were interesting without being too difficult. 

By the time Sachi returned with the coffee I was feeling confident I could finish the scene before the deadline, provided I could work all night.

“Well, what do you think?” asked Sachi.

I sipped my coffee. “Yeah,” I said. “I think I can handle it. It’s a fun scene, and it’s mostly done. All I have to do is not mess it up.”

“Good,” said Sachi. “Anything you need?”

I mentioned working all night and asked if that would be okay. Sachi nodded, saying, “Sure, a few of us will be.”

“Mind if I use the telephone?” I asked. “I’d like to call my wife and let her know what’s up.”

“Help yourself.”

“Thanks.”

Sachi left me to it, and after telephoning I began working on the scene. It was interesting in that the drawings were done straight onto frosted cels with colored pencils. Not graphite on paper, as I was used to. One had to be precise and clean with the drawing, rather than my usual scratch and search technique. I had never seen a frosted cel before and I quickly learned I had to be careful, as any erasing would leave smudges, destroying the drawing and meaning time lost in making another. Also, when handling the cels, soft cotton gloves had to be worn to avoid fingerprints, but I had used gloves before and was used to that.

I got down to work. After a while, I fell into a rhythm and began enjoying myself. I love animating. More than that I love making movies. And if you love doing something, it’s hardly work, is it? When I first started my working life, back at the Ministry of Works in New Zealand, we worked in muddy ditches at the ends of picks and shovels with our muscles and our backs and the sweat of our brows. Physical work! Dangerous and manly, with plenty of cursing! I wondered what the ghosts from my past would think of me now, sitting here in New York drawing little drawings in a Broadway film studio built to resemble a child’s playroom. For sure I knew, wherever they were, my ghostly workmates wouldn’t think that sitting on your ass drawing little pictures with colored pencils was anything remotely like working. 

Rest in peace, brothers. Your work is through.

I stopped for a late lunch, ducking out for a slice of pizza, a bottle of Rolling Rock and a cigarette. The beer was a most appreciated luxury, but I was working now and could afford it. A further luxury was a second cigarette, sitting on a bench in the sunshine, resting my sore leg and watching people go by. 

Funny how much friendlier New Yorkers looked after I’d had a meal, with a full belly and a job to go back to. 

Back at the desk working, I had an idea. The action by the burly guy when preparing to throw the heavy body into the trunk of the car (in animation, this preparing type of action is called anticipation) could be exaggerated more, or ‘pushed’ as we call it, to good effect. The body that was supposed to be heavy would have a much better chance of looking heavy this way, and the viewer would have slightly more time to appreciate what was happening. It would mean making the scene longer to accommodate the extra time that the action would take (a few tenths of a second), something that wasn’t always possible in a tightly edited film, so I would have to check with Sachi about it.

“Okay,” she agreed. “Let’s try it and see what it looks like. But, for now, don’t throw out any drawings and don’t change the original X-sheet. We can shoot it both ways and see which we like best. We’ll change the sheet later if it works out.”

I got down to work again and the hours flew by. I couldn’t see the day ending and the night beginning from the windowless office, but the tempo and noise of the busy studio during the day was gradually replaced by an eerie quiet. 

Around five in the morning, that dreadful hour after working all night when everything is gray and uncertain, including the animator, I struck a drawing I couldn’t get right. It should have been a simple drawing, too, making it all the more frustrating. I tried over and over, wasting cel upon cel, but still it wouldn’t come. I was tired. I decided to take a break. It would do me good to get up and stretch my legs for a bit, to focus my eyes on something further away than the end of my arm, maybe have a cigarette and another cup of ... 

“Coffee! Hey, Rusty, wake up! Fresh coffee.”

I had fallen asleep at the desk. 

“Huh? Who?” I lifted my head from my crossed arms on the desk, blinking in the strong light of the Luxo lamp, which I had neglected to turn off. “I wasn’t asleep,” I lied, and I heard Sachi laugh. My mouth tasted of pencil shavings and pink erasers. The side of my face was hot where it had been exposed to the drawing lamp.

“Coffee?” repeated Sachi.

“Oh, yeah. Thanks.” I accepted the hot coffee with gratitude. “It’s been a while since I’ve pulled an all-nighter,” I said. “Working, that is.”

Sachi smiled and asked how it was going. She looked fresh and awake.

“What time is it now?” I asked.

“Seven-thirty.”

“Two more hours, no more,” I promised.

“Perfect!” she said. 

To be continued…

Three More Zen Poems

Three More Zen Poems

(2)

“Zen Only Takes a Minute”

Good morning, fellow traveller.

Or afternoon, if that applies.

Care to join me 

In a little zen?

Okay, get comfortable.

Relax.

Empty your mind.

Now, take a deep breath.

Hold it…

Breathe out.

Breathe In. 

Hold it…

Breathe out.

In.

Hold…

Out.

Think of nothing 

But your breathing

Breathe In… 

Hold it…

Breathe out.

In… 

Hold…

Out.

There. 

Feel better?

Perhaps for a moment

You’ve stilled the monkey noises

In your head.

That was easy, wasn’t it?

Zen only takes a minute

To learn.

A lifetime to master.

(3)

“No Internet, Plenty of Zen”

No internet this morning.

But surprise surprise we didn’t panic.

Our world didn’t collapse.

After all, we’ve still got our health

And our golden house 

With rocket car in the garage.

There’s a nice

Zen garden in the back, too,

Just a few steps from my office,

Where I’ve spent many happy hours.

So, I put my computer to sleep

And went outside

With an eye of zen

(Which is to say an eye of love!)

To take photographs

Of flowers and plants 

And things from nature,

So close at hand.

Because beauty is everywhere,

If we would just see it.

Like zen is.

Hmmm, no internet, eh?

Good!

Think I’ll knock off

And head for a garden.

See you tomorrow.

(4)

“Morning Zen”

With the morning sun 

I feel my zen rising.

I suppose I’m a morning person, 

As they call it.

But really I’m just a person.

Morning, noon or night.

I have my victories and defeats.

Like you do.

One day I’ll be dead.

Then it won’t matter 

Which was which.

And if it won’t matter 

Which was which after I’m dead,

Why would it matter now?

Zen!

Animator! Carpe Diem! (Part 2)

Animator!

Carpe Diem! 

(Part 2)

Sachi stopped halfway down the corridor.

“Well,” she said, turning to me. “Today’s your lucky day!”

“Oh yeah?” I answered hopefully. “I like the sound of that!”

I had just been interviewed and had shown my demo reel, hoping to land my first animation gig in New York with the company Sachi worked for, Broadcast Arts.

Now we stood chatting in the corridor.

Sachi said they had a problem, and maybe I could help. Nothing to do with White Cloud bathroom tissue, the job they had called me about which started next month. This was something else, an emergency, but if I did well, then the White Cloud job was as good as mine.

“An audition, eh?” I answered. “Sure, if I can help.” 

What else was I going to say? 

“Call it a chance to prove what you can do,” answered Sachi. She explained that the animator who had been working on the scene, after working more than two days and nights straight, told the boss (Wolf) to shove his deadline, and had gone home to get some sleep.

“I totally sympathize with the guy,” said Sachi. “The hours on this one were murder and getting worse! But, you know art directors, we had to change something at the last minute and now the schedule’s all screwed up! Wolf! He took this job knowing the deadline was crazy. Hope he’s charging them plenty.”

The problem was, said Sachi, they needed the scene now. Right now.

I nodded my head. Sounded like animation in America wasn’t any different from animation in New Zealand… a job fit for lunatics, optimists, geeks and dreamers.

I’ll let you decide which of those I might be.

“I want to ask you something,” I said to Sachi. “I wouldn’t want to steal someone’s job or anything like that. He went home to take a break, right? And here I am, in the right place at the right time. A miracle! You know, like those old movie musicals, where the star twists an ankle and the understudy, in this case me, gets his big chance!” 

“Yeah,” laughed Sachi. “That’s pretty much it.”

My life wasn’t about making movies, I told Sachi, my life was becoming a movie!

“Let’s hope it’s not a tragedy, where we all die in the last act,” said Sachi, and we laughed together.

We had stopped in the middle of the corridor and people streamed past in either direction. The buzzy energy of the studio was very positive, and I felt myself becoming energized too, and swept up by the rightness of the moment.

Now was my chance, I must seize it!  

“Don’t worry about John,” said Sachi. “You’re not taking his job, you’re helping him out.” She looked me straight in the eye for a moment, before adding, “If you can do the work like you say you can.”

“No worries there,” I bragged, trying not to look worried. 

What else was I going to say?

“Hey! Sachi!” Up rushed a young man wearing lab coat and white gloves. He nodded to me before turning to Sachi, saying, “Wolf says where’s the polarizing filters for the big Mitchell? He was sure we had some and I can’t find them anywhere!” 

He didn’t look very well, kind of clammy and quivering. But you see that a lot in the animation business. His gloved hands (he wore soft white gloves for handling cels) were trembling slightly and he had that odd, greenish cast one gets from lack of sleep and too much caffeine. He must have been a camera operator, I figured, because he was looking for polarizing filters for a Mitchell, which is a type of animation camera, and he had an X-sheet (exposure sheet, the guide to how a scene will be photographed) on a clipboard under his arm. With a deadline approaching he’d probably been working long hours, too, like everyone else. Maybe longer. Hours of tedium alone in the dark, adjusting the camera incrementally and photographing cel after cel, frame after frame, painstakingly building up a movie one-twenty-fourth-of-a-second at a time.

Camera operator. I’d done that too, when making my own films. You had to be crazy to do it. Crazy, and geeky because it requires an incredible amount of focus and accuracy.

“We need the polarizers for 18B!” he explained excitedly, adding, “It’s the scene with all the elves!” as if that made all the difference.

“Okay,” said Sachi. “Take it easy.”

He appeared to be a geek on the edge of exhaustion, green and trembling. Just wait till the rest of you starts twitching, I thought. Better ease up, brother, or curl up somewhere and get some sleep. 

I recalled how my dad, exhausted after a ridiculous number of hours on the job, would curl up under his Disney animation desk and take himself a well earned snooze. (He had proudly hauled that desk from the Disney studio in Burbank, where he’d spent seven years animating, all the way to New Zealand when we immigrated there in the 1960s. Later, in one of life’s strange twists, at my dying mother’s request I became my father’s apprentice, and learned animation from him.) When, from exhaustion, his eyes could no longer see and his hands could no longer draw, dad would curl up in the spacious footwell of the giant desk, the chair rolled back out of the way, and have a nap.

“Call me at three o’clock, please, son,” he’d say before closing the door to his office. “I’m going to get a little shuteye.” Inside, he would lift the phone off the hook (purely habit, for who was going to call at three A.M.?) switch off the Luxo lamp above his drawing disc and lastly, turn off the music he always had playing as he worked. 

He would pause for a few seconds with his hand at the recording machine, listening with pleasure, before turning the volume down and off with a soft click.

My father loved music. Country and western music, mostly.

You’d think that I, after listening to my father’s music all those years while I learned animation at his side, would love country and western music too, wouldn’t you?

Well, you’d be wrong.

It was a bittersweet day for me when for the first time I stayed awake and carried on while my father had to succumb to exhaustion and take to his desk for some sleep. Yes, I was proud of myself for having the strength to carry on where I saw my father stumble, but I was also sad because I had crossed an invisible line I knew I could never recross. For the first time in my life, my father seemed smaller than me. 

I hadn’t seen the line or even noticed the crossing of it, but I knew I would never think of my father in the same way again. 

“Okay,” said Sachi to the young cameraman. “Tell Wolf I’ll be right there.” 

He hurried off. Sachi leaned against the wall and breathed a deep sigh. She was tired, too.

“There’s no business like show business,” I said, trying to indicate I understood.

“How would I know?” laughed Sachi. “I used to be a school teacher. Now I work in an insane asylum!”

   To be continued…

"No Foolin!"

New York City. Winter, 1987.

I’d arrived from New Zealand a couple of weeks before and was crashing on my friend Andrew’s couch. It was a nice couch and life was a whirlwind of fun in the big city, but…

Things weren’t going too well, financially speaking.

I was broke. Every day I went out looking for work as an animator, but there was none to be found. 

So to make ends meet I applied for a job at Empire Messenger Service as, what else? A messenger. 

No experience needed, read the flyer taped to a lamppost on 8th Ave.

That’s good, because that’s just what I had. 

The head office for Empire Messenger Service resided in the basement of the Empire State Building, so it was pretty easy to find. After filling out a brief but surprisingly invasive questionnaire, I sat on a wooden bench with many others in the overheated room and awaited my turn for an interview.

It was good to sit down. I was tired. The night before some idiot (me) had borrowed enough money from somewhere for a couple of eight-balls and we’d been all over town, drinking frozen margaritas and jabbering like lunatic monkeys until dawn. 

Tired as I was, I fell asleep.

“YOU! Next!”

Someone elbowed me awake and said it’s your turn, so I rose and walked towards the manager’s office. 

I stepped through the open doorway into the tiny office and stood where I was, facing a middle-aged, balding man who sat behind a cluttered desk. 

‘Vinny’ read the plastic nameplate in front of him.

“Where’d you get the suntan, buddy?” he asked. 

He was suspicious from the start. 

“Suntan?” I answered. “What suntan, mate? I’ve been freezing my bloody ass off since I landed in this godforsaken shit-hole you freakin blankety yanks call the Big bleedin Apple!”

My sudden rant surprised even me. I didn’t mean to answer that way, it just popped out of my mouth! 

I really wanted a job. I needed a job. I should have simply explained how I got my suntan… that I’d recently arrived from a land down under where summer was winter and winter was summer. 

But no, not me. I was half asleep and I let loose!

(I’m never at my best when I first wake up. I’ll bet some of you… are like that too, sometimes.) 

But it was also something else, this letting loose of sour apples and freezing shit-holes into the face of Vinny the hiring manager. 

Something deeper. More personal. It was frustration! I was an out of work artist down on his luck… looking for a job every day up and down New York City… and getting nothing but rejection! 

Oh sure, they liked my work, those that looked at it, but they couldn’t use me at present. Animation? Not much call for that! Maybe in the future. Leave your name with the girl at the front desk… and don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out! 

Hear me, Struggling Artist! You had better love your art, and love it madly, passionately, even desperately, because sometimes it’ll feel like that’s all you’ve got.

“You’re not from around here, huh?” asked Vinny. “You speak English? That was English, wasn’t it?” 

“Yeah,” I answered, calming down, waking up. “That was English.”

“Ya got a funny accent. You a Limey?”

“No,” I answered, “I’m a Kiwi.” I explained where I was from. 

He glanced at my questionnaire on his desk.

“It says here you’re an artist?”

“Yes,” I replied proudly, “I am.”

“Well,” he said magnanimously, “I think we can overlook that.” Then he asked simply, “Healthy?”

“Healthy,” I affirmed. Sure, I was healthy as an ox… and twice as smart, too, or would be later when my hangover was gone. 

To be continued...

Never Get Off The Merry-Go-Round! (Pt 3)

They announced our flight for the third time.

“Time to go, Suzie,” I suggested.  

“Just now,” she answered. Which if you know a South African means in a second or a minute or an hour or a day. If ever. Suzie cared little for punctuality, that must be said, but somehow it only added to her charm. 

“Keep your flaps down, dahling,” she added with a laugh. “Or you’ll take off without the plane!”

“I’m just excited, I guess,” I said.

Excited and a bit afraid. America was a hugely daunting idea. Would we succeed? Could we find work as artists? 

Would we crack the big time?

(Whatever that was.) 

Yes! We had talent and an innate belief in ourselves… and we knew how to work hard. 

What else does one need?

Except of course the most important element of all;

Dumb Luck. 

Suzie was a haute couture clothing designer and, because designing clothing is sketchy income at best, she was also a travel agent. 

I was a film animator. My income as an animator could also be described as sketchy, but that would be exaggerating my income considerably. 

We’d been together a dozen years, through thick and thin as they say yet everything Suzie and I owned was packed into just three suitcases, and was stowed in the belly of a Boeing waiting at gate seven. 

Proving, I suppose, that it really is Art for Art’s sake in this material world. 

“Good luck, mate,” Nick said somberly as he gripped my hand. 

Nick was one of our oldest friends. He was the last to see us off, the others having drifted off or left by way of setting an example when they heard the public address blare out;

“Would Mr and Mrs Rusty Pliers PLEASE REPORT to gate seven IMMEDIATELY!”  

As he shook my hand Nick wore a serious expression, which gave his face an odd look. He wasn’t usually so grave. Looking at him, I was more than ever convinced he believed Suzie and I had made a horrible mistake and were doomed to failure in America. 

America, the hard place where we’d end up like every artist that ever was or ever will be ends up… to lie upon a filthy mattress in some slummy hovel, too weak from hunger to rise, and stare with bitter irony at the unrecognized masterpieces painted in my own blood hanging on the damp walls all around— and with my last painful breath receive the cruel enlightenment to reflect back upon my life and wonder; 

“Where did I go wrong?”

To be continued...

Letter to Santa Pt 4

So I went to New York, Santa, to became an artist.

My world enlarged and opened up.

For an artist must first of all be an observer of life!

Christmas in the city was fun with all the lights and music and shoppers.

But I still didn’t believe in you.

Besides, which one would I believe in? 

You were on every corner!

I suppose most boys and girls outgrow Santa Claus for a portion of their lives… but most of us come back, don’t we, Santa?

Many Christmases came and went.

I worked hard in the city and did well, as they say.

For years I was a carefree bachelor.

Because I didn’t want to fall in love.

I was afraid to.

Then one Christmas I met a girl at the office party.

She was kind and had a great sense of humor. 

She also had nice legs.

I couldn’t help myself. I fell in love and guess what? 

She fell in love too.

We fell in love with each other.

That was my lucky year because guess what again?

She was the boss’s daughter.

We got married and travelled the world on our honeymoon. 

At Daddy’s expense.

Her father said take your time my son and enjoy, then come back and be a better artist than ever.

He loved his daughter very much.

It was easy to see why.

We saw in our travels that the world was a beautiful place, but not always a fair one.

And I filled my artist’s eye with the wonders of the world.

Boy! I must have drawn Barbara at least a million times while we were on our honeymoon! Posing on a rumpled hotel bed, her shapely limbs silhouetted against the sheets, her smile natural yet alluring…

That’s the name of my wife. Barbara. She’s on your Nice list for sure.

She was way more fun to draw than a salamander or a horse!

Back in New York, I worked hard at my art and my marriage and my friendships, and life flowed along nicely.

The love Barbara and I shared for each other deepened and matured.

I put out a successful book of Barbara drawings.

You might remember delivering a bunch of them because it sold like hotcakes that Christmas.

Barbara was a bit embarrassed, most of them being nude studies.

But I thought they were pretty good drawings, and nothing to be embarrassed about.

So Barbara talked to my aunt Sissy on the phone about it. Aunt Sissy said the right thing again and we all felt better about publishing nude drawings of Barbara in coffee-table art books.

Art for art’s sake, I always say.

Then came a second volume of Barbara studies, called The Honeymoon Series. 

After that Barbara told me to find another subject.

So today I draw rare axolotls for museums and zoos around the world.

I still draw Barbara too, but I don’t publish those drawings.

Barbara and I had children and taught them to face life with bravery, honesty, and humor.

To treat it all as a bit of a joke and enjoy a good laugh.

As parents we taught our children all kinds of things.

And sometimes they taught us.

When he was sixteen I taught our eldest boy to make the occasional gin and tonic for my wife and I. 

We figured he could start to learn about alcohol that way.

Like I learned from my stepmother, only different.

Because children, as you know Santa, learn all the time from everything they see and hear.

He was very proud of his status as our personal bartender and Danny loved to please.

That’s our eldest son’s name. Danny.

Look for him towards the top of your Nice list.

“Lime or lemon in your G&Ts?” he used to ask.

“Doesn’t matter, son,” I answered. “Either one will be fine.”

“Dad,” he said one day as he handed me a drink, “I think I’m gay.”

“Really?” I said. We talked about it awhile. I never told my children about Boris or the art teacher, not because I was ashamed because I wasn’t, but because I didn’t want to make a big deal about it or change the natural course of my children’s own sexuality with the knowledge of it. Sometimes too much knowledge can be a bad thing to a young heart, like when I overheard aunt Tootsie and the milkman call my father a drunkard that day in the kitchen, so I didn’t tell my son about Boris or the art teacher then either. 

Instead I said, “Doesn’t matter son. Either way is fine. Just remember to respect yourself and when in love… always follow your heart.”

“Thanks, Dad,” said my son Danny and we hugged and something beautiful fell into place.

Well! I really got it off my chest, didn’t I Santa?

Rusty’s life story.

(You’d be surprised how much I left out!)

But I wanted to get in touch again.

And wasn’t sure if that was the real you on Facebook or not.

It looked like you, but I couldn’t be sure.

So I decided to write you a letter.

Didn’t know it would be such a long letter. 

Sorry, but you being Santa, I figure you’ll forgive me.

You wonder why I write, after all these years?

I’ll tell you. 

Because I have grandchildren now.

And they want to believe in Santa Claus.

And funny, but what they want, I want.

Because their laughter means the world to me!

We have an axolotl too, named Shakespeare.

But I don’t think he believes in anything.

I hope Santa you continue to share your gift of generosity and good cheer among people the world over. All the world’s people, please, whoever they are, because if one of us is hurting, all of us are hurting. 

That’s what you teach us, isn’t it?

That it’s better to give than to receive?

That we’re all human beings together, sharing our journey through the natural world towards eternity. That we should try to love and understand each other.

Yes even Boris and my cruel stepmother.

Whose spiritual pain must have been immense.

They’re gone now. Crossed off your Naughty list years and years ago. Dead in a car crash on La Brea down by the In-N-Out Burger. My father was behind the wheel. The car they were in was struck and exploded in flames.

Ironically hit by a drunk driver.

On Christmas Eve.

Life’s funny, isn’t it Santa?

Well, that about brings us full circle.

Say hi to Mrs Claus and the elves for me.

And please remember; 

I’ve been a good boy again this year.

Sincerely,

Rusty

PS. If you’d care to prove your existence by slipping a new iPad under the tree… I’ll leave out some milk and cookies.