Bill Kroyer‘s detailed memoir Mr. In-Between scales the many rocky paths in animation from hand drawn to computer. Hear it from the guy who’s seen it all: a Midwestern animator who shot to Hollywood like a comet and to Disney Studios and abroad, finally landing back in Wisconsin where he serves as Professor Emeritus at Chapman University. An Oscar-nominated Director of films, commercials, and movie titles (including those dear to my heart, Labyrinth and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation!), he’s a pioneer in his field. Tron, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, and Animalympics are just a few of his acclaimed projects. When I quietly asked to interview him he responded, “Sure, I’ll do the show. I’d love to do the show.”
I had no idea that so much of your work secretly dotted my childhood and all of our lives. You created the ingenious opening credits of Christmas Vacation, which to me is the funniest animation ever created. I have been laughing through them for over 30 Christmases. And then there’s Ferngully, which played into and expanded my love of the natural world. You write, “In the end, we provided the opening titles of Labyrinth with what historically could be claimed to be the first photo-real animal in the history of computer animation.” What was your most challenging project personally? Professionally?
I would say that Technological Threat was the most challenging personally, not because it was creatively challenging – the ideas came pretty fast – but because of the stress involved. We had just lost our only contract, we had little money, we owed money to the software engineer, and we were betting everything we had on stretching our funds to make a movie that would demonstrate a process no one had seen before. I had to ask friends to work for free, I flew to Korea to finish it, and almost lost the negative in customs. If that wasn’t a nail-biter, there was the stress that no one would like the film. But it all worked out.
As far as most professionally challenging, I’d have to say Ferngully. Not only did I have to direct my very first feature film, but I had to build a studio from scratch to make the movie while I was making it. That has not been done very often.
You write, “There’s a saying that ‘there are no cigarette butts in animation,’ meaning no one accidentally leaves something around the set that shows up on film. If it’s in the frame of an animated film, someone intentionally designed it and put it there” (xi). While studying writing in graduate school I learned this very thing, that you have to treat each book as if everything in it was a choice. Did it get easier over the years to decide what to put in and what to edit out?
It gets easier in the sense that you have more and more experience at recognizing what would work and not work, or developing your skills at judging good story, good design and good animation. If you are blessed with an over-abundance of good work it can be difficult when you have to cut some of it. An obvious example in my case was the voice recordings of Robin Wiliams in Ferngully. Everything he recorded was brilliant, but I could only use a fraction of it.
You write, “That was a key requirement of the skill: preserving the illusion of life.” How do you build this suspension of disbelief?
This may seem counterintuitive, but there is almost no definitive guide or standard related to image or motion that must be met to achieve “suspension of disbelief”. Generally, it is true that if your skills are sloppy, and result in distracting the audience from the character, you will lose the ability to have them believe the character. But the more truthful answer is finding the way to connect with the audience through the character’s desires. No matter how simplistic or basic the imagery or animation, if the audience understands what the character is trying to do, and roots for it, you have captured their attention and they have suspended their disbelief that this thing is not real. To them, the emotion becomes real.
You tell your students to take jobs for the experience more than the money. What other advice would you give to early and mid-career artists?
I would first say: support yourself. Don’t be afraid to work at whatever you need to do to be responsibly healthy and secure. But beyond that basic standard, make the art that you personally believe in and that you find satisfying and fulfilling. It is a tough grind to seek approval from others. Do your best and be satisfied with that. Depending how honest you are about that plan, how high you set your standards, and how hard you work, success will follow.
You write quite a bit about the technical side of your industry and how it has shifted over time. Do you enjoy the process/new technologies as much as the art?
The good news is that there is no technology required for the most timeless and personal artform: drawing. But I found continual fascination on using new techniques to create characters that would still connect with an audience.
There’s a question on the back of your book, “What’s changed most in your lifetime?” What is your answer?
As far as my chosen profession – animation – no question. The computer. It changed everything about animation; how we make the films, who can make the films, what the films look like, even who watches the films. But thankfully it has, apparently, not completely eliminated the original way we made films.
For someone who has spent his life telling stories through drawings, what was it like to write this book?
It was a lot of fun to look back and take the journey all over again. My wife had warned me to write it all down before I forgot it, and I must admit, writing that first pass, with the memories fresh as I had always remembered them, proved to be revealing. When I went back over it to edit I could hardly believe how primitive and basic some of the tools were when CG animation was young. One gets so used to the computer being increasingly easy to use that it was almost unbelievable to review how it once was. I thought it was a good idea to tell that story, to let people know that transition from simple hand-made art to the increasingly complex world of CG was a long and winding road.
Do you still watch animation? Favorites?
Since I’m still a voting Academy member I watch a lot, including all the eligible short films and features. I still love original hand-drawn work, but occasionally a CG film will take me to a new place. I just loved last year’s Oscar winner Flow. Brilliant look, great story, great character portrayals.