ANIMATION

In 1968, after art school, I decided that animation would be my medium (really, a childhood dream). I bought an 8mm camera and started learning. A year later, I was offered a job as the animator for a commercial production company. I worked for them on staff for about a year, and then became an independent producer. For the next twenty-eight years I was a free-lance animator. The animation pieces presented here represent both commercial and personal work.

DIG MY GRAVE (2008) - During my first college semester half a century ago, I ran across in the university library the Library of Congress albums of field recordings of folk songs done in the 1930s. The song that stuck with me through the years was sung by three men from Andros Island in the Bahamas, recorded by Alan Lomax in 1935.

It had long been a plan of mine to use that recording as a soundtrack for an animated film. Here it is...I hope you like it. (The song is available on Rounder CD 1822 Deep River of Song: Bahamas 1935).

LOVER OF THE LORD (2007) - This was my first personal film in 25 years, and it was very exciting to make it. In May, 2006, I retired from the Texas State Library, and immediately began a house remodeling project. As soon as that was finished, I started on this film.

The soundtrack is a rendition of the shape-note hymn on page 124 of The Original Sacred Harp, sung at the Alabama Sacred Harp Singing Convention in 1942, and recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress (available on Rounder CD 1503).

SANDSCRIPT (1975) – I used a Bolex 16mm camera to film image sequences of sand animation on a light box in 1973-74. In 1975 Eagle Pennell asked me to put a film in a festival he was producing, so with the help of Charlie Sauer & friends, we produced a sound track and I edited the sand animation shots into this film in time for the festival at Austin’s Ritz Theater.

OPUS OCHO (1982) – So-named because it was my 8^th personal film, it was done with a grant from the Southwest Alternate Media Project (SWAMP). We worked on it between commercial projects and it took about 18 months. During that time, my first son was born, and John Ponder, who, along with David Everett, produced the soundtrack, said that the film was obviously about becoming a father… Bill Van Buren, Tom Guthery, and Paul Smith provided production help.

COMPUTER MOMS (1995) - Steve Corder of Independent Media asked me to work on a 30-second spot for Computer Mentors On the Move (MOMs). This is a version of that spot, reworked for presentation here.

WOMAN AND CHILD Based on a photographic sequence from the work of Eadweard Muybridge, this animation was originally done for Opus Ocho as line work. This is a silent colored pencil version.

TEXAS FLAG A rotoscoped animation loop of a flag waving. A larger version of the animated .gif above, it was first used in a spot for a country music radio station. I don't remember what station, but the ad lady was Carolyn Allen AKA Candie Kicker (her DJ name from the old KOKE-FM Progressive Country days).

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