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Maureen Furniss, Ph.D. is on staff at the world-renowned California Institute of the Arts, or Cal Arts, in Valencia, California. Dr. Furniss also publishes the scholarly “Animation Journal”, and much much more, like so many of our guests.

Dr. Furniss is one of those key mentors in many animator’s life, someone who’s helped guide them through their early passion for animation. Maureen teaches animation history, theory, and production, at Cal Arts, and by most experts is considered one of the most important scholars in the animation world today. She’s President of the Society for Animation Studies.

Besides being the founding editor of Animation Journal, the cover of one issue is down there on the right, she is the author of a number important books and articles, including, just to name     a few, Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics, The Animation Bible: A Practical Guide to       the Art of Animating from Flipbooks to Flash, Chuck Jones: Conversations (editor), and “Animation” (2,500 word overview), “Osamu Tezuka,” “Chuck Jones,” “Max Fleischer,”   “Jirí Trnka,” and “Hanna-Barbera,” for the Encarta Encyclopedia.

She’s also an Editorial Board Member for The Moving Image (journal of the Society for Moving Image Archivists, published by University of Minnesota Press), and was a Content Expert for a multi-part television series on animation history and aesthetics, green-lighted by The Learning Channel, as well as a consultant for the Library of Congress, Genre Guide Document Update division, invited to formulate categories pertaining to the area of animation.

“A Brief History of Women in Animation,” is an essay she was invited to write, along with a number of people who are well known in the field of animation, for The Complete Guide to Animation and Computer Graphics Schools, edited by Ernest Pintoff, who she met to do the article, “The Personal Side of Ernest Pintoff, Filmmaker,” for the Ottawa 1994 festival program. See a portion of the Violinist storyboard, by Pintoff, in the Flip Board, on the home page

We don’t have enough room for all her many accomplishments, but, let’s wrap this up with some of her grant awards … California Council for the Humanities, Valerie Scudder Award, ASIFA-Hollywood, and a Mary Pickford Scholarship.

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This episode is sponsored by The UPA Legacy Project.

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Barrie Nelson has worked with some of the greats in animation, such as John Hubley and Rod Scribner, to hone his own delightfully independent animation styles.

And, Barrie can be, and often is, a one-man-band animator, not only animating, but designing, directing, and writing, as well. He’s probably best known for his personal films, such as Opens Wednesday, Twins, and Keep Cool, which have won him many awards, including ones at major animation festivals (Zagreb, Ottawa, Chicago, New York, and others) and he was an American Film Institute Award Grantee.

Barrie was also a Key Animator on four of John and Faith Hubley’s Oscar nominated films, including the classic, Windy Day. He directed and animated two wonderful National Film Board of Canada films called, Oh Canada, and Propaganda Message, or Message de Propagande, the French Title. The later film can be seeing out on our home page in the interactive image bank, we call the “Flip Board”. Also for the Canadian Film Board, Barrie animated Ten the Magic Number, a frame of which you can see just here on the right.

He’s also done a number of Charlie Brown specials with Bill Melendez, including, A Boy Named Charlie Brown and This is America, Charlie Brown, plus episodes of Garfield and Cathy, as well as Watership Down, the Doonesbury Special, Shinbone Alley, George of the Jungle, and many others, as well as Heavy Metal the Movie, in which he animated the B-17 Bomber sequence.  In fact, he still has the model he used as a guide.

It’s hard to imagine that Barrie Nelson is able to turn out such a huge body of work, because his home studio sits on a hilltop, overlooking the coastline of Malibu, California … on the other hand, maybe that’s why he is able to do so much, and be so creative.

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This episode is sponsored by The UPA Legacy Project.

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Ray Pointer began animating as a kid and started his career in Detroit’s Jam Handy studios, before coming to Hollywood. He formed and now heads Ink Well Ink.

Ray Pointer was born in Detroit, attended Special Ability Art classes at The Detroit Institute of Arts, and received a B.A. in Broadcast and Film Production, at Wayne State University, as well as a Post Bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California. A self-taught filmmaker, Phil experimented with animated cartoons from 1963 to 1973. Then began his professional animation career at Jam Handy. Pointer received the first Student Oscar in 1973 for best cartoon short, Goldnavel. He also won a Cine Golden Eagle for the documentary, West Africa: A CNO Special, and a Gold Screen Award for the animated television spots; Pride and Professionalism and Shore Patrol.

Pointer’s career has been long and varied, and includes; assistant animation on Tom and Jerry for Film Roman, Bebe’s Kids and Itsy-Bitsy Spider for Hyperion, Post Pebbles, Sugar Bear, and Polly Pockets commercials for Playhouse Pictures, and storyboard artist for Madeline, Hurricanes, Ultra Force for DIC, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Sinbad The Sailor for Fred Wolf Films and All Dogs Go To Heaven for MGM. Also, he was Animation Director on CatDog for Oh, Yeah! Cartoons and Animation Timing Director on Dora The Explorer - Season 1 for Nickelodeon … and, the list goes on.

In 1997, Ray formed a partnership with veteran animator, Ken Southworth, to produce the Ken Southworth Animation Instruction Series, winner of the Gold, Silver and Bronze awards in the Worldfest-Houston and Creative Excellence Award in the U.S. International Film and Video Festival.

Ray is now President and CEO of his own Inkwell Images. Through Inkwell Images, Pointer has produced numerous animation histories on DVD, including Before Walt, The Legendary Laugh-O-gram Fairy Tales by Walt Disney, The Amazing Alice Comedies by Walt Disney, Max Fleischer’s Song Car-Tunes, and Max Fleischers’s Famous Out of the Inkwell.

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This episode is sponsored by The UPA Legacy Project.

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Jerry Beck is a cartoon producer, historian, author, collector, and produces animation retrospectives. But, he’s most thought of as the LA co-creator of Cartoon Brew, with New York’s Amid Amidi, and they’ve now launched Cartoon Brew Films and Cartoon Brew Books.

At the 2008 Annie Awards, at UCLA’s Royce Hall, Jerry Beck won the coveted June Foray award for his contributions to many facets of the animation industry, and yet he had a rather humbling beginning. After a rocky start in the animation production world, he actually began questioning himself about whether he’d chosen the right profession. But, then, he began to gravitate towards books on animation, beginning as an invaluable researcher for Leonard Maltin’s “Of Mice and Magic”. From then on he’s been a force to be reckoned with. Along with his many other adventures in animation, he continues to turn out books at breathtaking speed; The Animated Movie Guide, Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide, and The 50 Greatest Cartoons, are just a few of many.

And, Beck has worn many hats … as studio executive with Nickelodeon and Disney, and as a consulting producer to Warners, Universal, and Disney, for their animation DVD compilations. Jerry has programmed retrospectives for Annecy and Ottawa Animation Festivals, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and he’s often seen as the moderator of animation programs and panels. Plus, Jerry Beck has taught animation history at NYU, SVA, the AFI, and UCLA. And, he’s the host/producer of the highly popular “Worst Cartoons Ever” screenings. 

Jerry Beck actually began his career in film distribution, working at MGM/UA, Orion Classics, Cannon Films and Expanded Entertainment (Tournée of Animation), which helped him gain his deep knowledge of animation through the years. In 1989 he formed his own company, Streamline Pictures, the first U.S. distributor to import anime features, such as Otomo’s Akira, and Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle In The Sky. Beck was instrumental in launching Animation Magazine, and has written for the Hollywood Reporter and Variety. Beck has also created, written and produced animated films for various clients. His latest animation project, Hornswiggle, aired on Nickelodeon last year. What’s next for Jerry Beck?

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This episode is sponsored by The UPA Legacy Project.

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Michael Schlesinger manages the Sony film library, MGM and Paramount were before that. His speciality is vintage films, which include animation. Since this interview he has been promoted to a Consultant at Sony, to develop DVD collections from Sony’s library.

Michael Schlesinger is best known for his last 20 years of overseeing classic film archives in major studios, such as MGM, known by many as the Ted Turner library. The last 13 years have been at Sony Pictures. But, he’s far more than an administrator. He’s instigated reconstruction of such diverse films as 1900, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Major Dundee, and he oversaw completion of Orson Welles’ It’s All True. He’s a Trustee of the American Cinématheque, and overseas some priceless animation, in the vast Sony library, which he’s hoping to help bring out in DVD box sets, under his new consulting role.

Schlesinger has also had a hand in writing, producing, marketing, distributing and even appearing in numerous documentaries, science fiction and horror films, including Spine Tingler: The William Castle Story, Imagining Heavy Metal, 13 Ghosts: The Magic of Illusion-O, Trail of the Screaming Forehead, and the American version of Godzilla 2000. In his 13 years at Sony, Schlesinger has gotten to know the massive animation library. Sony has already come out with numerous animation DVDs, and Box Sets, including such animation series, as Spider-Man, Stuart Little, Wind in the Willows, The Boondocks, Heavy Metal, the Real Ghostbusters, Roughnecks, and Creature Comforts, as well as animated features, such as, Monster House, Open Season, Eight Crazy Nights, American Pop, Cowboy Bebop, the Anima feature, Metropolis, and the recent Surf’s Up, and many others, including, Hellboy, with four UPA films in the special box set. The next round of Sony DVD box sets could even include some of their nearly 100 UPA shorts, as well as their first animated feature, “1001 Arabian Nights”, featuring Mr. Magoo.

Mr. Schlesinger’s has given us copies of two of his historic posters from his personal collection, to add to our site. One is just to the right … see. The other is in our Flip Board, on the home page, promoting “Color Rapsodies” in Full Technicolor.

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This episode is sponsored by The UPA Legacy Project.