We’re back in LA, and we’ve just added the first eight shows, out of over 40 waiting in the wings, which we hope to have completely up within the next few weeks.  These eight episodes offer a good cross section of what we have in store for you.

Just the three from DreamWorks Animation give us an idea of our variety.  Steve Hickner (Episode #29, seen here, holding the first Bee Movie script from Jerry Seinfeld) is the director of a major animation feature.  Sharon Colman (#28) is an independent filmmaker, who won an Oscar nomination for her animated short, Badgered, and is a Story Artist at DreamWorks, and Justin Brandstater (#33) is a matte artist, something most of us know little about.

From Pixar we have two of the six interviews we did in the San Francisco bay area recently; Brad Bird (#27) this years Oscar winner for Ratatouille, and Lou Romano (#32) primarily a concept designer, is also a performer and voice artist. Also we’ll be bringing you many interviews we’ve done at animation festivals, where we’ve presented UPA programs.  We met Mikhail Aldashin (#34) a prominent independent Russian animation filmmaker, at the Anima Mundi festival in Brazil, and Borivoj Dovnikovic (#31) a pioneer cartoonist and animator, we met at the Zagreb festival, which he helped organize.  And, finally, we will be dipping into the 100+ interviews we’ve conducted for the UPA documentary, the first one being Dave Hilberman (#30), one of the founders of UPA, and an important promoter of the Cartoonist’s Union, which was an uphill battle in those early days, prior to World War II.

So, that’s it for now.  Hope we have more up, by the time you’ve finished listening to these Episodes.

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Mikhail Aldashin (interviewed July 2007) is a highly regarded Russian animation filmmaker, was one of the presenters at the Anima Mundi International Animation Festival, in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, in 2006, where we did a UPA presentation.  I attended Aldashin’s presentation, where he showed a number of his films, spanning many years, many styles, many techniques, and many moods.  I was struck by his exuberance in trying new things with every film.  During the ten-day festival, the presenters were all bused around to various sites in Rio and São Paulo, and got to know each other in the process.  In Rio, we all stayed at the Luxor Regente on the old Copacabana beach.  Toward the end of our stay, we interviewed Mikhail Aldashin, or Misha, or Mishka, as he preferred, in the busy lobby of our hotel.  It wasn’t the most ideal location, as you’ll hear, but our busy schedules, made it impossible to arrange anything quieter. The other person at our table, sipping the Brazilian National drink, Caipirinha, was Milana Minaeva, a Russian documentary filmmaker, who you can hear pipe in with some translations now and then.

Misha was born Mikhail Vladimirovich Aldashin, in the sea side town of Tuapse, in the former USSR, Aldashin attended Navy school, and served in the Navy, before becoming a set designer for live action films.  While studying at the All-Union State Cine-Art Institute, in Moscow, he became interested in animation, partially because he felt he could combine all his interesting in design, music, and writing, into one art form.  His early knowledge of international independent animation, of which he is now a vital part, was limited to the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.  But, soon he began to attend international animation festival, where he was able to watch films from all over the world, and now has a close friendship with animators from many countries.  He particularly enjoys visiting art museums during his animation festival visit.  In fact, I was able to tag along with Misha and Milana, at a fascinating exhibit of Chinese art, sculpture, and films.  So, if you have a chance to see any of Aldashin’s films, don’t pass it up.  They include; Bukashki, Poumse, Kele, Putch, Ivan-durak (Ivan the Fool), The Other Side, The Hunter, and Rozhdestvo (The Nativity).  A frame from Rozhdestvo is up there on the right.

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This episode sponsored by The UPA Project

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Justin Brandstater (interviewed November 2007) is one of the leading artists in the little known area of Matte Paining, although there is a bit of wrestling going on as to what the job title should be.  Is it basically CG backgrounds, or more?  After interviewing Brandstater I’m convinced it’s quite a bit more, in fact, he, and many of his fellow artists are leaning the new title, Environment Artists.  We interviewed Branstater, at the DreamWorks campus, in Glendale, where he had just finished working on the Bee Movie, with the credit of Lead Matte Painter.  I found the conversation fascinating, as it involved an area of animation I knew little, or nothing, about.  We talked quite a bit about the history of matt painting, and the variety of ways he works on a project, and particularly Bee Movie.  He hasn’t been at DreamWorks long.  He was a matte painter on Over the Hedge and Flushed Away, before taking the helm as lead matte painter on Bee Movie.

His first experience in animation was at Disney animation, where they all went by the more traditional title of background artists.  He worked on Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Tarzan, and the Emperor’s New Groove.  However, for me, one of the fascinations with Brandstater’s work is that he also has a substantial live action background, and has brought much of what he learned there into the animation field.  He says he prefers animation because in live action a matte painter is supposed to not be notice, their work is supposed to look so real that the viewer thinks that the picture must have been shot in Egypt, or China, or some lost little island in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean.  But, in animation the background/matte painting/environment is stylize, like the characters they support, so he finds it much more interesting.  A matte painting of inside the hive, from Bee Movie is to the right, and some of his other works will soon be in the Gallery and Flip Board.

If you’d like to see some of his live action work, he created matte paintings for The Time Machine, The Borne Identity, Star Trek: Nemesis, The Notebook, and Casanova, among others.  But, for now you can listen to Justin Brandstater, by clicking the Listen Here link above.

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This episode sponsored by The UPA Project

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Lou Romano (interviewed April 2008) was on the designer panel at the UPA tribute/screening at the Egyptian Theater, in Hollywood, in 2006. Ever since that time we’ve been trying to find a time to sit down together to do a proper interview. He’s an incredibly busy fellow, but, we were finally able to do this interview, over two years later. We met in his backyard, across the bay from Pixar, with birds chirping, cars passing by, and his two little puppies, Cookie and Beanie, periodically barking, drinking Lou’s water, and at one point, tripping over his mic cable. But, they were pretty good compared to me, who once again found myself off-mic. At least Lou’s mic was hot. Both, Lou and his wife, Ellen, work at Pixar, but live in this “quiet” community far from the bustling Emeryville, but close enough that it’s not a commuting nightmare.  Lou Romano has such a varied career, that it was impossible not to get into tangents … acting, improv, art shows, web blogging, voice overs, book publishing, and taking time off to pursue personal projects, as he was doing at this very time. He was gracious to allow us to interrupt his “down time”. And, we did manage to explore his animation career, as a graphic designer and concept artist.

Hitting the milestones, Romano was born and raised in San Diego, drawing and painting from an early age. He began taking theater arts classes in his magnet elementary school, and continued on through high school, at San Diego Junior Theatre, and later SCPA (School of Creative and Performing Arts). His introduction to animated filmmaking, as a serious profession, came when he was admitted into Cal Arts (The California Institute of the Arts). As he’s done throughout his life, he took a break from animation to attend workshops at the Groundlings Theater in Los Angeles. He has combined his varied talents by starring in an independent feature film, The Trouble With Lou, based on a monologue he created at the Groundlings, as well as, several short films and voice acting for Pixar Films, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille, as the lead character, Linguini, a frame of which can be see to the right.

Romano has worked as an illustrator and designer on various animated projects including The Powerpuff Girls TV series, and The Iron Giant feature. His Production Design for The Incredibles earned him an Annie Award. His artwork has appeared on the cover of The New Yorker and has been published in several books including The Art of Pixar (The Incredibles and Monsters, Inc.) and The Ancient Book of Myth & War. His work has been exhibited at the Nucleus Gallery in Los Angeles and the MoMA in New York City. Lou Romano continues to both illustrate and perform, and bring two little puppies into adult dog-hood.

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This episode sponsored by The UPA Project

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Borivoj Dovnikovic (interviewed June 2006) or “Bordo” as he’s more popularly known, was one of the first members of the extraordinary Zagreb Films creative machine.  Bordo began as a print cartoonist, and his first animation work was at Rainbow Films, which then morphed, sorta, into Zagreb Films.  This interview was recorded in the lobby of the Zagreb International Animation Film Festival, in 2006.  It is another of the interviews taken from of our UPA documentary interview library, which we are dipping into, for those interviews that have a general audience interest.  The UPA interviews tend to average around an hour, and the host is frequently off-mic, so we cut out most of the UPA references and off-mic questions.  Sometimes we even replace the hard-to-hear questions with newly recorded ones, but in this interview you’ll hear the questions in the background, slightly above the din of the crowd.  Oh, yes, this interview has a little more background noise than most of our interviews, as a crowd began to grow, assembling for an upcoming film program in Theatre #1, off the lobby, where we were quietly chatting.

Fortunately, as you will hear, Bordo is quite enthusiastic about the cartoon and animation world, and the history he was a part of.  His voice is passionate, and animated, albeit his accent is strong at times, but the overall adventure comes through loud and clear, about a group of young artists working in the near-void of their young country of Yugoslavia, stretching down along the Adriatic coast.  Just a few years earlier, after World War II, it had been hobbled together from a variety of different cultures, back in the days when Marshall Tito had them sitting precariously between the politics of the United States and the Soviet Union, not totally Communist or Democractic.  It’s hard to image how these artist manage to create such ground breaking films, because, as Bordo relates, they had very little exposure to other animation around the world … some books, articles, a few films, but not many, outside Disney from the west, and children’s films from Moscow.  And yet, one of their very first short films, “The Big Meeting”, in 1951, won a number of international awards, and immediately put them of the fast track to fame, if not fortune. His own personal film, “Curiosity” was included in a program of the 84 best animated short films in history, entitled “Jewels of a Century,” and shown at Annecy 2000.  He’s now become an elder statesman, so to speak, of the international independent animated shorts world, and travels to animation festivals around the world.  We were lucky to connect with him at the Zagreb festival, of which he was one of the original organizers in the early 1970s … and, he’s still a totally delightful ball of fire.

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This episode sponsored by The UPA Project