Animation &Animation Artifacts &Commentary &Illustration &Independent Animation 31 Aug 2013 08:27 am
Getting Old
You see the problem is that when you get older, priorities change. Take a look at Mike Barrier‘s blog. He knows what’s important amd surely it’s the ghsts of the past. Yes, we want to know who did what and when and where, and we move heaven and earth to get that part right. For the most part it is.
Then you have to look for and preserve those beautiful drawings of our youth. We get all the help we can, and we get it right. But there’s still so damned much work to do.
I’ve been digging into the archives, and lord knows most people aren’t ready to admit they’ve already viewed these drawings a half dozen times before. It’s not like saving Savannah or moving some extraordinary pictures. So they were moved on, then 0n again, before being devoured,
I love this work; I love animating it even more. When some semblance of life shows up in those drawings.
Getting older means it’s harder to get the point across. The message engines more seriously, and people all about watch for the brim of your head. They want to see you, too, so you’re on display like as not. The cartoon you planned has turned into some kind of “Art” and you try harder.
Then you really get tired. But you go on,god bless you. You try hard.
on 31 Aug 2013 at 5:03 pm 1.Stephen Worth said …
It’s hard to get old when you surround yourself with ambitious young people. I have no interest in the past except for how it informs the future. I’ve opened my library, archive and screening room to the local independent animators and students, Every week I have kids digging through my books and scans discovering great things for the first time. And every weekend, the projector is hard at work screening Keaton, Fleischer and film noir. It’s exciting to see their excitement, and I expect that some of these kids are going to go on to do truly great things.
You only get old and tired when you stop caring about the future. When you can only look backward and not forward, you might as well be dead.
on 01 Sep 2013 at 12:44 am 2.Paul Penna said …
What Steve said. One of my regular movie night groups consists of people in their early 20s. Despite what we always hear about young people not liking old films or anything in black-and-white, I’ve shown them such things as “It Came from Beneath the Sea,” “The Thing (from Another World,” “Casablanca,” and Fleischer cartoons, and they’ve loved them all. And they eat up my commentaries about the historical events, personalities and cultural context these bring up. One said that she wished she’d had teachers like me because unlike them I made these things actually interesting. I like watching these things with people of my generation too, but with these guys, I really feel alive.