Animated Thoughts: Back to class...

Max Fleischer's "Rotoscoping" patent

Well, Fall semester begins next week and I'm currently wrapping up preparations for my class. This year, I've added an assignment that had me delving into the history of animation patents. What started out as a plan whereby the students read five patents and answered a ten question assignment quickly got scaled down to three patents. Since they're already reading two chapters per week, I figured giving them three weeks to read three patents and do the assignment was probably the better choice--those patents can get pretty dry.

I'm having them review the following from Earl Hurd, Max Fleischer, and Frank Lyle Goldman (in order):

• 1,143,542: Process and Apparatus for Producing Moving Pictures (cel animation)
• 1,242,674: Method of Producing Moving-Picture Cartoons (rotoscoping)
• 1,715,127: Means for Producing Animated Pictures (three-hole registration)

I've actually wanted to include this information for quite a while, ever since I read the about Bray-Hurd patents when I was writing this course. So, it feels good to finally have added this assignment. Hopefully, it hits that sweet spot of useful historical information yet not overwhelming.

There's so much to the history of animation, you just can't fit it all into a semester.

* * *

Animated Thoughts: It never hurts to ask...

So last fall, the Ottawa International Animation Festival changed the format for their Festival program book. In the past, they offered print versions for the in-person event, and some years even had PDF versions on Issuu.com so you could download and read them after the fest. Since 1994, I've been maintaining an archive of these program books. Some have had additional material, like interviews and articles, but all have had listings of the films in the competition and retrospective screenings--along with their creators' names and companies.

In 2020, since we were in lockdown, the OIAF uploaded a PDF version of the program book for the online festival--which I immediately downloaded, printed, and had coil bound. This was mainly for my archive but also so I could peruse it during the online screenings and write down the names of my favorite films, or the ones that I wanted to see again, or make a list of animators whose work I wanted to explore in greater depth.

Unfortunately, last year's online festival saw them move to a different website format and they didn't issue a program book. All the screenings and festival information was on the website but the site itself was pretty clunky with regards to locating the film and animator information. After the festival I had planned on making my own program book. Unfortunately, it would've required a lot of copy-and-pasting. But, it would've been worth it just to have that information.

Well, time dragged on and I got busy, so by the time I was ready to commit to the task, the festival had migrated to their new website and a lot of the information simply wasn't available anymore.

However, having attended the OIAF for twenty-eight years, I've gotten to know festival Artistic Director Chris Robinson. So I shot him a quick e-mail asking if this information would be archived and presented anywhere in the future. Within a couple hours, Chris e-mailed me a link to the Festival's public final report for 2021. And while it wasn't a program book as I had seen them in the past, it had all the information that I was hoping for!

As it's now been printed, coil-bound, and inserted into my archive, clearly, it was well worth taking the time to ask.

Thank you, Chris.

 * * *

Animated Thoughts: Erik Timmerman

As I've probably stated before, Erik didn't shy away from teaching me life lessons apart from what we learned in classes. And he was pretty honest about his mistakes, especially the occasional unintentional gaffe. One lesson that he spoke of, I really took to heart.

Erik was friends with one of the Computer Science professors who taught computer graphics. Although I don't remember her name at this point, she was the person whom I had met online back in the day and had introduced me to Erik. I had made an inquiry on a CGI BBS about furthering my studies in computer animation and she was the one who responded. After I replied to her e-mail, she said that Erik's program would be a better fit for what I wanted to do since her program was more geared to the hard-core programming end of computer graphic imagery--basically people who would end up becoming Technical Directors in the programming department of animation studios or doing scientific visualization, things of that nature.

Well, Erik mentioned that during a jovial conversation they once had, he made an off-the-cuff joke about having a crush on her. This was after it was made clear from the conversation that their senses of humor were pretty similar. As she was married, and he didn't have a thing for her anyways, it was obviously a joke. However, he felt that she kind of ghosted him after that. Erik stated how he wished he hadn't said that to her. And it wasn't a 'being unprofessional' thing, after all it was just a humorous remark told during a friendly conversation between two colleagues who were kidding around at the time. But he still felt pain over missing out on a good friendship because of how his remark may have given her the wrong impression.

Simply put: it was a moment of light-hearted humor that unfortunately cost him a friendship with a respected colleague.

I had a similar situation with an associate about a year later while I was still working at the R.I.T. Research Corporation. We were all joking around over lunch and she said something that set the table alight with laughter, something that showed how in tune our senses of humor were. I chuckled and said "if you weren't married I'd be chasing after you something fierce." She laughed, I laughed, and the conversations at the table moved on. However, remembering Erik's story, I went to her later that day just to set the record straight--that I wasn't hitting on her, I just appreciated how in-sync our senses of humor happened to be. She laughed it off and said it was okay, she knew exactly what I meant. And I believe her as we remained friends/professional acquaintances throughout the rest of my time at the RITRC.

*  *  *

Photograph from Andrew Davidhazy's Retired Professors and past colleagues from the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences at RIT webpage.