Animation Legend Ken Mundie Pitches “The Match” on Kickstarter

Director and animator Ken Mundie, who is in his late-’80s, is probably the oldest animator to date who has used Kickstarter to fund an animated short. The project he’s pitching is something he’s been working on for years called The Match. Here’s a short test from the project for which he’s aiming to raise $10,000.

Mundie has had a fascinating career in Hollywood, walking the mainstream-indie tightrope for much of it. He is perhaps best known for directing the 1969 Fat Albert pilot, which has absolutely nothing to do with the Filmation crud that followed and ranks as one of the greatest TV specials in animation history.

One of his indie shorts, The Door (1967), was released by Warner Bros. in 1967:

He did lots of film and TV series titles like The Wild Wild West:

While working on lesser projects in Hollywood, he always did personal projects on the side, like this adapation of Homer’s The Odyssey which he was never able to get off the ground:

It’s exciting to see him with the desire to finish an animated film at such an advanced age. According to the campaign page, his son is assisting him, and they’re aiming to complete by September 2014. Unfortunately, the project is poorly set up and is basically a “what not to do” for crowdfunding. Every newbie Kickstarter mistake has been made, though it’s not too late to fix many of these issues, such as:

• It’s set up by someone who isn’t Ken Mundie and who hasn’t made his relationship to Mundie clear.
• There have been no updates in the first week.
• There’s no video of Ken Mundie explaining his project (seeing a ‘grand old man’ of the art form personally explain his project could make a crucial difference to many potential backers.)
• The descriptions of what the money will accomplish are vague. (They say the money will complete the ‘first act,’ but is that a stand-alone short and of what length?)
  

Even with these reservations, I felt the project was worthy of being highlighted because Mundie’s animation tests look phenomenal and the man is one of the unheralded renegades of the American animation industry.