Another Giant Leaves Us

This morning I received the news that Selby Daley Kelly passed away over the 4th of July weekend.

Selby was a pioneer woman animator and a tireless campaigner against the discrimination that relegated her and other talented female artists to the anonymity of the Ink and Paint pool at the Disney studio.
Selby was the head of the paint mixing department at the studio at the time of SNOW WHITE. She is pictured in the original 1938 program from Radio City Music Hall.

Selby is also pictured in many of the 'strike' photographs at Disney in 1941; at the time, she was dating Art Babbitt and so was very active in the union.
She was once President of the Screen Cartoonists' Guild and ran her own animation studios in the USA and Mexico with Roger Daley, her first husband.

Selby was a published children's book illustrator when she applied to Disney in 1936 as an animator. "They laughed at me and told me to go across the street to the Ink and Paint department."

A conversation:
Selby: "They paid me $15.00 a week."
me: "It was the Depression."
"Well, I gave up a job at the drugstore that paid twenty."
She described Walt Disney as a 'benevolent despot' toward the women and told me that if a woman walked into the Animation Building for any reason, she would be fired. Animators could visit Ink and Paint.

"We were told that women can't animate."
"Why?"
"We just can't."

Inkers could not afford the commissary on their low salaries, so they had a 'sandwich wagon' instead.

"I met my first husband in Chuck Jones' unit, and I also met my second husband in Chuck Jones' unit."
Walt Kelly apparently used to watch Margaret Selby walk to the Ink and Paint building, but though they worked in the same studio, they never met until thirty years later.

Selby told me something once that I have never forgotten.

"My first husband was as talented as my second husband. But he was a perfectionist and was never happy with the result. Kelly was satisfied to get it 80% right, and leave it at that."

(Arguably, 80% of Walt Kelly is 150% of most of our efforts...the man was a drawing dynamo.)

Selby was a very good friend of mine for many years after we met at Zanders'.

I interviewed her in 1983 for Cartoonist PROfiles magazine. The interview will be posted on this blog.

Farewell, Selby. I hope in the Big Studio in the Sky, the women can and do work with 'the boys'.

ANIMATION ANARCHY ON SUBSTACK

 Hey.

Frank and Ollie were right.

And I have a new blog on Substack. Why? Well, I might want to sell something there eventually. You can never tell.

Read all about it here.

Fantasy-Animation Interview October 2022

I was interviewed for this podcast and they asked excellent questions.  Look at some of the others, too, it's a very interesting site.

The picture of me was my official Disney portrait, taken in 1995. If you look carefully at my shirt, you will see little Mickey Mouse hands and feet and pants in the pattern. Subtle.

A nice shout out from a nice site

 If you aren't visiting the Animation World Network site regularly, you should be. It covers 'worldwide' animation, not just the usual suspects. There are articles, reviews, and blogs...and today, there's this: along with a review.

Writing a book or making a film and showing either one publicly means you listen to people who say its mom wrote it funny. (I left out the ugly part, and I want people to think I wrote it funny.)

So, we'll see what develops.

 Leonard Maltin and Jessie Maltin were kind enough to mention HOW I  FINALLY GOT TO LIVE A CAT'S LIFE on their  October 2 HAPPY SUNDAY livestream.  The review comes at 1 :01 :30.    Thank you, Jessie and Leonard. 

No More Teachers...No More Books...except that last part isn't true.

 The book launched on October 1, and since it is the weekend, some things only will appear on Monday.

The first: Shipping. This is already happening, or so I am told. Good.  The second: Ebooks. Now, I know very little about the latter object, but they are the modern way to read a book. So, they are available. They are also listed at two different prices on ebook sites. This is a mistake. The higher price is the correct one. Just so you know. Ah, Mondays.

There are fifty 'diary entries' and four Pandemic Postage Stamps in How I Finally Got to Live A Cat's Life.  I drew more than fifty cartoons during the past two years. Many more. There wasn't a whole lot else to do, and not all the scary stories involved viruses.

But the other cartoons weren't cute little diary entries with cats. They were about an 'influencer' who wasn't imaginary like Sleazy Homemaker-- he was real.

He even got elected to high office.

Originally, I was going to have my diary be a novelty 'two books in one' like FLIPSVILLE/SQUARESVILLE  by Stan and Jan Berenstain.  *Yes, that is how their name is spelled and any 'alternate' is not from a 'mandela effect' --it's from functional illiteracy. You're welcome.  (And the line from SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS is "MAGIC mirror on the wall." You're welcome.) 

I believe that the Berenstains invented the technique. One character's viewpoint was seen on even numbered pages; the other's was there too, on the odd pages,  upside down, and you'd turn the book over to read the second version on the odd numbered pages. The back cover would become the front and vice versa.

So you'd read cute cartoons about cats on one side of my book, and a horror story about a horrible man on the other side. And no publisher wanted anything to do with this concept. Actually I didn't, either. I could have done this version when I self published, but I thought...the cartoons would be dated by the time the book came out. And I couldn't stand to look at the ugly faces.

Sadly, they aren't dated at all. A friend said that he, and perhaps others, would be willing to look at the ugly faces. Eager, even.

So, they will be posted here. You're welcome.

This one was just updated, because this record WILL NOT stop repeating, and it's being played by an entire party. (actually, we're the ones being played). The reference, for those of you Not In the Know, is to Leslie Gore's hit IT'S MY PARTY AND I'LL CRY IF I WANT TO. 

I'll get to the others later on. There are about twenty of them. I can't stand drawing any more...but someone wants to see them. You're welcome.

Retired From Sheridan Today

 But that's NOT all, folks!  The book is released tomorrow, and there will be some exciting new announcements next week!

Stay tuned. This page is easy to update, and I have a link from  my portfolio site,

nancybeiman.com

Go there to look at films. Come here to see stuff I can't put on that other page, including over fifty cartoons about...well, you'll have to wait for the update.

A NEW BOOK OF CARTOONS AND A NEW WEBSITE

 This wasn't supposed to be a book at all.

I started drawing cartoons in the winter of 2020 to cheer up family and friends as we adjusted to the new 'normal' in 2020 and 2021. 

The cats took over the book because they insisted on helping. And they cheered everyone up.

A neighbor asked for printouts of each cartoon and assembled them in a sort of book. I saw that there was actual continuity, and the neighbor loved the cartoons, so I decided that maybe this could actually become a book.

But no publisher wanted it. So I did it myself. 'Little Red Hen Editions' is a good joke if you know the story.

HOW I FINALLY GOT TO LIVE A CAT'S LIFE is available from online booksellers worldwide. Ebooks will be available on google play and apple in the near future.

And there's my new website.   

So enjoy!

NEW BLOG

Hello everyone!

I know it's been a few years since I updated this blog. I have been rather busy, but the efforts have borne fruit: there is a third edition of PREPARE TO BOARD which contains images from a film I wanted to make, OLD TRICKS. I was that confident that the picture would be finished by the time the book was published, I actually put some of the model sheets into it.

a poster for OLD TRICKS

third edition cover

Well, surprise, surprise....my life took a dramatic turn when I met author Thomas King at his presentation at Sheridan College, and he immediately announced that he wanted one of his short stories animated.

And so I made an animated cartoon called A SHORT HISTORY OF INDIANS in CANADA.

Poster for the film.

You can read about it on my new blog.

This one will still continue...hell, I may still blog on it...but if you want to learn about the book and the films, here's the address of the new one. See you there.
https://nancybeiman.com/

http://www.skwigly.co.uk/prepare-to-board-book-review/

Here's the first review of the second edition of PREPARE TO BOARD!, from Britain's Skwigly animation site.

Best Design Book of 2012

Roland Wilson's last book is a stunner.  Susan Lemieux Wilson edited a lifetime's worth of knowledge into the new book

Rowland B. Wilson's Trade Secrets: Notes on Cartooning and Animation.

I bought it at once and am going to be recommending it to my students. Wilson's color theory is specifically adpated for motion pictures, specifically animation. While his compositional tips are from an illustrator's perspective, they can still be applied to the animated image.

This is a wonderful book.

Blogimation

I think I should mention some blog sites where you (students especially) can learn something about animation in other parts of the world. The industry was Hollywood-centric for so long that it's a positive pleasure to see the center of gravity shifting, or at least evening out. The Internet is a huge aid to animators: not only for communication, but for actual production. How many of you realize that you now don't need a distributor, or a studio, to get a short film made? Thanks to YouTube and Facebook and Kickstarter, we can network, fund, and distribute indie animation online. That's a pretty powerful set of tools for a bunch of crazy artists to handle.
But on to the blogs. First and foremost I would like to talk about the British site Skwigly . This was revived recently with a series of amazing podcasts with people like Barry Purves, Billy West, Fraser McLean (author of SETTING THE SCENE, the first book on layout history--really) and yours truly.  (You can hear me starting at 18:00 in Podcast Number 3.) They have just posted a podcast from the Annecy festival. Take a listen!
Raul Aguirre, Jr.'s MAN VS. ART is an eclectic blend of interviews, reviews, and articles about working in the biz, and is also very entertaining.
One of my favorite bloggers is Steve Moore, whose FLIP magazine was actually written by and for animators. (Yes, I have a couple of articles in there but Steve is unquestionably the best writer on the site.) He's now revived FLIP as a blog and has a British contributor as well!
Elliot Cowan's Sandwichbag chronicles, among other things, its owner's production of an independent feature film.  Read about it there, and view some more of Elliot's stuff. He's drawing, but everything is done on computer. This is the way cartoon animation is developing and (frankly) I don't think I will miss paper much if the results look like the ones I've been seeing here and elsewhere. (by the way, I've been drawing on a computer since 1997 and produced two animated films without paper; it's not such a big deal if you have the right tools.)
Jenny Lerew is a story artist and author whose Blackwing Diaries blog is an interesting combination of history and industry news.
Lastly, there is the blog of Animation's Editorial Cartoonist, FLOYD NORMAN...whose autobiography is being published in about a month's time. Don't miss the Gag Wall!
I know there are other blogs out there, but these are the ones I visit regularly. I hope you enjoy them.

Well, I have to tell you, it is just WONDERFUL here in my new apartment. I enjoy the neighbourhood, I like the vibes, and most importantly, I enjoy coming home to the place. That can be a very important thing when your life is basically divided between work and home, during the school term.  This is Gizmo, in the eat-in kitchen. I haven't had one of these since I was a kid. It took a little getting used to but it is fun having breakfast in the charming, well lit place. Even though the building is old and rather ugly on the outside, it has a beautiful interior. I suppose there is something profound to be read into this except that I cannot figure out what it is.

I'm on summer break now but that does not mean I've stopped working. There are people (not just Sheridan students) who ask for help on various projects. I do what I can.

There are some interesting developments in the Toronto animation scene as well. This weekend is the first TAAFI ANIMATION FESTIVAL . It's about time that Toronto had its own animation festival, and the Tiff Bell Lightbox is an excellent place in which to have it. They have a number of events, masterclasses and so on, that might be fun. Truth to tell, I'm only attending the opening screening and party, but I think that the other events should be really good, and I hope that they are booked solid.

And I'm going around camping and traveling in Canada a bit this summer, so there will be pictures. The bicycle trails here are just gorgeous, and I plan to use them as much as possible. So stay tuned...

The winter 2012 semester ended well. There were a lot of motivated and interested students in the classes, and it's a pleasure to teach when this is the case. Sheridan has a tough selection process and that's good preparation for our courses, and for real life.

I'm teaching my 'acting for animators' workshop again, beginning this Monday. It was fun last year and I'm looking forward to seeing the scenarios the students come up with.
We're also doing some retraining, ourselves. This should be quite useful and interesting.

now, unfortunately there is some bad news about the book. Its publication is delayed again since Focal Press was purchased by another publisher. I'm told they are excellent, but it nevertheless does make me a little unhappy that I cannot use the new edition for the fall classes. It really is quite an improvement over the original. But that's the way it is. The  publisher will 'push' sales in the spring, but I don't know how many schools actually would buy the books at that late date.

So, the second edition of PREPARE TO BOARD will have to be used in the fall, 2013 classes at this rate. The original is still useful, but I have supplemented it with so many handouts over the years. I'd like to not have to do this any more. One more year should do it.

I had to take a short visit to see my parents due to illness in the family, and it's almost over now.

The move to the new apartment will take up all the remaining time not spent in retraining and teaching the workshops.

At least Gizmo is healthy. I hope she stays that way.

Gizmo the Survivor Kitty

I had no idea, when I got this unwanted little cat in November of 2005, that she would prove to be (a) a wonderful animation model and inspiration for many illustrations in two books; (b) as friendly and loyal as any dog; (c) so sickly that her grievous illnesses would cost me much more than mere money. Gizmo is not just a cat; she is a friend. And when friends get sick, you help them.

Fortunately Gizmo is also a survivor. Her nicknames "Tenacious G", "Iron Kitty" and "The Fighter" (this last one, admiringly, awarded from her vet) were awarded after she survived large cell malignant lymphoma that entailed the removal of most of her large intestine in March of 2010. This is a picture of her recovering just after she came home from hospital on March 20, 2010.

Her operation took place on the 18th. Does this look like a sick cat to you?

Since then Gizmo has had another close scare in December of 2011...this one, (a nasal polyp) nonfatal, though just as pricey and difficult and painful to remove.

But she seems to have beaten both of them.

And this is quite an achievement, because the vet did confirm that all of the other cats with large cell malignant lymphoma have died within two years of diagnosis.

Gizmo even beat this cancer without chemo. I wouldn't get it for her and it wouldn't have helped anyway. But she is still here. The anniversary of her surgery: March 18th, 2012. It's been two years. She is possibly the longest lived survivor of this condition.

She is indeed a Fighter. And I say this with great admiration.

Publication date for PREPARE TO BOARD second edition

Well, since I got the text and illustrations for PTB's second edition done early, the tentative publication date has been moved up a month to August 2012 (formerly September.) This seems like a good idea, since it is, after all, a textbook; and September is when most of the books would seem to be needed.

There will be a website for the new edition and I've sent in several videos to go on it; none of them can be presented here for obvious reasons. Sheridan students Mincheul Park and Bram Cayne very generously allowed me to use two projects completed in my class using exercises from the book; and podcaster Raul Aguirre, Jr. allowed me to excerpt some of the fine interview he got with me in December 2010.

I had to film myself pitching, and while it was a distressing experience seeing myself in front of a camera (especially after a week of viewing over 500 portfolios--) I did manage to complete the pitch successfully, albeit a bit tiredly.

Term is winding down now and the group Leica projects turned out quite well this year. I wonder if it is possible to post them?

Let's find out.

More anon.

Happy Year of the Dragon!

Oh yeah, then there's this.

The second edition of PREPARE TO BOARD will be published this year. There's a lot of new artwork in it...and I've revised or rewritten about a third of the book. So anyone who wants to buy it will not feel that it has merely received a cosmetic makeover. I think that it is very much improved, not that the original is junk, you understand; but I write better now, and have fixed some parts that I found needed fixing. Here's the new cover, once again featuring cover girl Gizmo.

The Moon Never Sets on the British Empire

A friend of mine is doing some writing for this new version of Sherlock Holmes...and since I was curious, but still don't have a television, we watched an episode or two in a coffee shop in an undisclosed location. The infamous "Scandal in Belgravia" episode had aired the night before, and when I saw the 'sheets to the wind' scene I had the idea that it could have been staged more like this. I guess I'll never get my Canadian citizenship now.

I have Been a Naughty Person

Well, it's that time of year when we make new year's resolutions, and mine is: to start keeping this blog in some kind of shape again. You just never know who is going to read it.

Here's what has been sort of going on here: thanks to this blog (yes), two of my caricatures are going to appear in the NATIONAL POST on Saturday, January 7. The first one is the "Potato Head Ford" cartoon that appeared here in 2010. The other one is...this.

Yes, Mr. Ford's cuts are being implemented as we speak. Subway/streetcar fare is going up. Garbage pickup has been 'privatized' (and surprise: there were no bids on it; it was awarded to a company that is doubtless in someone's good graces.) Libraries, the arts, everything that makes Toronto pleasant, is being cut back. As I said to the journalist who spoke with me last week...the only thing not being cut back in Toronto is...the mayor.

He's certainly good copy, and very easy to caricature.

I drew this thing while waiting to hear whether Gizmo had survived her latest bout with surgery. Unfortunately this charming cat has been prey to some alarming illnesses for the past two years, and is probably down to her last one or two lives. I get the biopsy result tomorrow. The article will be in the TORONTO section of the paper in an article called "Ford as Muse."