Cartoon Brew TV #10: Sunbeam

This week on Cartoon Brew TV, we’re reaching back to 1980 and rediscovering Paul Vester’s animated short Sunbeam. The independent short, which is an homage to early cel animation, was released in UK theaters with the feature film Chariots of Fire. It was produced at Vester’s commercial studio Speedy Films inbetween commercial gigs.

Paul Vester, currently a Guggenheim Fellow, is working on a new short film, In the Woods. He is also repped for commercial work by DUCK Studios and teaches in the Experimental Animation department at CalArts.

Here is a bit of background about Sunbeam from Vester:

In 1974 I was taking time out from my studio in London and working on a film in Portland for an entity that I think was called the Energy Institute of New York. We got paid for the first two weeks and then the money dried up. For some reason we believed the promises we were given, and we all kept working on the film and did finish it, and were rewarded at the end of the job with all our back pay. I drove down to LA and rented a quarter of a small house on Cabrillo in Venice, which was very cheap then, and started work on a comic strip (unfinished) called the “Non Adventures of Nellie Nada.” I also did a lot of drawings and took many photographs of Venice. Sunbeam comes out of this period of my life.