According to a note posted by PaulD on this message board, veteran animator and director Andy Knight, died last Thursday, April 10, at age 46 after suffering a stroke. He was the co-founder of Toronto animation studio Red Rover, and had a long animation career in Europe and Canada. His early years are summed up a bit on the Red Rover website: “Launching his career as an animator at Gaumont in Paris he worked on many feature films, television shows and commercials across Europe and the US. Andy’s abilities were quickly noticed and he was asked to join Passion Pictures in London [1989] as creative director.”

Feature animator TotalD offers some thoughts on her blog about Andy’s work, including this comment: “Even so I think he was one of the best, if not the best board artist I have ever known and I know he was just a terrific person.”

Animator Ken Duncan offers photos of a young Andy Knight and a gag drawing by Knight.

Chris Stewart share a few thoughts about his mentor and former boss, Andy Knight, on his blog Grit My Teeth.

A Facebook memorial page has been set up where a lot of his friends and co-workers are sharing stories.

If you’d like to share memories about Knight and his work, please do so in the comments below. Artist Rich Dannys emailed some memories to us about working with Knight. Rich writes:

I worked at Andy’s studio, when we worked on episodes of Spumco’s Ripping Friends. But his studio was probably more renowned for its always excellent animated commercial work.

I sat next to Andy, while working on Ripping Friends. He could be a little shy and quiet. Which sometimes got confused with aloof & arrogant. But he was an unbelievable artist. And I really respected him a lot. He had a small office space. But for the most part, enjoyed working right in amongst the rest of us. Very much in the old style of the smaller New York studios, from yesteryear.

I believe he was Canadian-born but met his wife Linzi overseas. His wife Linzi is an Art College grad and a very successful live-action commercial director. I thought he mentioned, they met in Holland. But I believe she’s from England originally? He was working at his own studio in England, when Disney asked him to direct the sequel to Beauty & The Beast,, at their “new” Toronto studio. He balked, until Disney agreed to pay all of the expenses to move his studio to Toronto. He eventually set up in the Spadina/Adelaide area.

I don’t know alot about what Andy has all worked on. I know he had a friendship with Mike Smith from (Colossal) Pictures. And that they worked on the animated sequences in the live-action Tank Girl feature. His studio, Red Rover, did a lot of service work-type jobs. But they were also instrumental in “developing” a lot of properties that eventually ended up elsewhere like Pig City and RoboRoach. But I’m sure there were others.

When we worked on Ripping Friends, I saw him put together a small ad for home security that featured a very classical Disney-esque “Big Bad Wolf & The Three Pigs.” Beautifully done. All of his work was always very polished and finished-looking and worked within the Budgets given. And for the most part, he turned down the really “cheap” stuff.

Honestly, I didn’t know him all that well. But my buddy Jens Pindal (son of Kaj) worked at Red Rover, so, I used to drop by there now and then. I’ve been looking for more online reports about Andy’s passing, but haven’t been able to find any.

A 1982 mini-doc about how the impressive CG-less HBO intro was made. The entire spot is shown at the end of the film. Apparently it’s all stop-motion and old-school in-camera optical effects. (via)

I’m obviously excited about the release next Tuesday of Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection Vol. 2. It’s an excellent companion to the first volume with 75 restored cartoons including classic Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Andy Panda and Swing Symphonies cartoons, and well as a dozen of those Walter Lantz behind-the-scenes films demonstrating how his studio made cartoons in 1957 — and much much more. Hours of fun. Best Buy will be selling it for $29.99 with an exclusive 4×6 inch limited edition “cel” from Wet Blanket Policy (above). A bargain! (Oldtimers, remember when Castle Films sold only one color Woody Woodpecker cartoon (with magnetic sound) on Super 8 for $22.95 and in 16mm (optical sound) for $49.95?).

Here are a few frame grabs from this set to whet your appetite (click to enlarge).

Blue Sky animator Jeff Gabor recently posted on his website a comparison reel from Horton Hears a Who! that shows his live-action performance alongside the scene blocking, animation and final render passes of his shots. The bad news is that Fox made him take down this wonderful behind-the-scenes look at his work, but the good news is that plenty of people saved the file and have posted it online. Go to this video sharing site for an embedded Flash version, and make sure to download the file located on this site to see it in all its hi-res Quicktime glory. As to whether using this much live-action reference actually helps or inhibits an animator’s performance…well perhaps that’s a discussion for another post.

Just when you think everything that could possibly be done with old-school flipbooks has been done, along comes a refreshing example of the technique’s versatility. The new Kraak & Smack music video, “Squeeze Me”, is directed by Dutch filmmakers André Maat and Superelectric.

Animation historian/author and voice actor Keith Scott, a foremost authority on Jay Ward, old-time radio and cartoon voice actors, has published an article on the origin of Foghorn Leghorn that is a must read. The common story of how Foggy’s characterization was based on Kenny Delmar’s radio character Senator Claghorn is only half true. Keith has finally cleared up the published misinformation which was mainly propagated by the animators themselves, including Bob McKimson, Chuck Jones and, in particular, Mel Blanc. Keith has allowed me to post the article online, and you can read it here.
The article is an excerpt from Keith’s ‘zine, (cleverly titled Eh… confidentially, Doc – I AM A WABBIT!!!), published in the current edition of Apatoons (#150, April-May 2008). Apatoons is a long running amateur press association publication, a private mailing for members only. If you are interested in joining the apa, or buying a sample issue, check its website for more information.

I was getting ready to junk a flyer I’d received for the Hiroshima International Animation Festival when I noticed a tiny image printed on the back of it that I hadn’t seen before: a still from the new Pixar short Presto that will open in front of Wall-E. It marks the first directorial effort by supervising animator Doug Sweetland.

Readers may recall that last year I posted about a group of Brazilian film students who had created a scene-by-scene live-action remake of the Oscar-winning Pixar short Geri’s Game (download from iTunes). Since then, there’s been a mini-online phenomenon in which fans of the film have been creating lots and lots of live-action remakes and parodies of the film.

Some of these films follow the film’s original scenes very closely while others are more parody-oriented taking liberties with the acting and staging. Is there any other example of an animated short being remade into live-action by fans of the film? I find the whole thing fascinating because this is not some contrived top-down corporate effort soliciting fans to do this for a contest or some such. It’s simply a bunch of people who enjoy and identify with the film’s character and want to try their hand at recreating him.

Here’s the original live-action remake from Brazil:

Amos’ Game

Don’s Game

This person remade the film with their grandfather in the title role:

A version made with a kid pretending to be Geri: