"THE OLD MAN MAD ABOUT ANIMATING"
The film is multi-dimensional in it's approach and content - in the sense that it contains many personal stories, animated in many styles, each one pushing the creative boundaries of traditional 2D animation. They will represent the amazing events and people that Tony has experienced throughout his long life in animation - both in the real world and the imaginative inner world that he values just as much. The following pieces of "Concept Art" are just some of the diverse and innovative design styles that will be used to animate Tony's storylines and encounters throughout the film...
“The Old Man Mad About Animating” is a love story.
It is a story about one artist’s lifelong love for the tradition of hand-drawn animation, which still continues to sustain and inspire him after over 5 decades of work! Tony White is a British Academy Award-winning animator, author and teacher who currently, works and runs his own ANIMAKERS animation network in Seattle. He also hosts live and self-taught online courses for students of animation, under the banner of the "2D Academy". Through all these efforts - and especially through "The Old Man Mad About Animating" film - he seeks to keep the wonderful artform of traditional hand-drawn animation alive, which is currently in significant danger of being lost forever in this digital age!
CONCEPT ART:
CONCEPT ART: The core storyteller of the film will be Tony himself, at his animation desktop - somewhat aided by his companion, "ARNIE". ARNIE is Tony's animated muse & alter ego. ARNIE challenges, inspires - and sometimes even tries to scare him into action!
CONCEPT ART: A great deal of "The Old Man Mad About Animating" will feature Tony drawing at (or around) his desk - reminiscing about his past life, sharing his techniques of the present or interacting with "Arnie" in terms of the film's title sequence. (Which Tony will be animating throughout the movie.) As he recalls many of the significant and remarkable moments in his life, the camera will cut away to a diverse range of animation styles and treatments - animated by Tony or other animators he has a great respect for. This will create a unique animated adventure through the worlds of Tony's life and imagination, all emanating from his desktop.
CONCEPT ART: Tony's childhood was plagued by two terrifying nightmares that lasted for a period of several years. The most fearsome was his "Tiger" dream, recreated through animation in the film. This is a Color Model of the tiger to be animated.
CONCEPT ART: Back at the very beginning of his career, at art school in East London, Tony painfully learned the secrets of art and life drawing the hard way - primarily through the tough love handed out by renowned illustrator, Ralph Steadman!
CONCEPT ART: At the beginning of Tony's career he was privileged enough to apprentice with the late, great Richard Williams in the London animation studio. Dick was Tony's finest animation idol and mentor and he fully acknowledges that he owes everything he has done in his career as a result of the unique learning experience that Dick and other master animators gave him at the studio during this time. 30 years later Tony had the additional privilege of presenting Richard Williams with a "Roy E. Disney Award" at his own "DRAWTASTIC Animation Festival". Working with an audio track recorded at that event, Tony will re-create in animation this special moment in his career - as well as several other significant moments he spent in the company of Richard Williams. Although the style for the Richard Williams sequences are not confirmed yet, the above design is by Andrew Sharp, who submitted it for a drawing challenge competition that Tony is currently running on his Animator's Sketchclub website. The winning design from this challenge will be announced in the New Year, 2021 and will hopefully become the final styling to be used in the Richard Williams sequences in "The Old Man Mad About Animating" film.
CONCEPT ART: At the same time as his animation apprenticeship with Richard Williams, Tony also met another amazing individual - although this one was not at all connected with animation. The now late Samuel H. Weir was an Irish herbalist, working in London, who miraculously saved Tony's mother's life when the medical profession had entirely given up on her. In awe of the process that he witnessed during his mother's progress, Tony got to know Samuel H. Weir very well - an experience that ultimately transformed Tony's inner understanding - inspiring a number of "mystical" illustrations and stories - at least one of which will feature in "The Old Man Mad About Animating". This was a very profound time in Tony's life, where both his outer and inner life journeys were established through his associations with two remarkable teachers - Richard Williams and Samuel H. Weir.
CONCEPT ART: Several decades ago Tony commissioned the late, great Professor Stanley Unwin to record an audio track for his showreel. Sadly the full track was lost. However,the opening section - "How To Make An Animated Film" - was not. This will therefore provide a wonderfully eccentric track, upon which a very Max Fleischer-style sequence can be created for Tony's film!
CONCEPT ART: When climbing the 40-storey high, Great Pyramid - as research for a TV Special project I was working on - my tripod and camera were carried all the way to the top by a feeble and very old Egyptian guide who was probably 20 years or more older than me! While I floundered and struggled with each chest-high rock that makes up the pyramid, he would leap up the stones like a gazelle, seven or more at a time, and then would sit, light up a cigarette and smoke it until I finally caught up with him. At the top he told me that he'd done the same thing for a filmmaker when he was just a young man. I asked him who the "filmmaker" was and he told me that it was Cecil B. Demille!
CONCEPT ART: In addition to his "outer" career journey, Tony also experienced an amazing "inner" journey too! "The Hermit" recreates Tony's meetings with a remarkable character in dreams - the teachings from whom are woven throughout the film!
CONCEPT ART: Reflecting on his inner life journey, Tony wrote a symbolic story, entitled "MADA and the Magic Tree". However, unable to find funding for the film, Tony has since decided that an animated sequence from this story will be created for "The Old Man Mad About Animating" - symbolizing as it does an important aspect of Tony's life journey.
Yet Tony’s love for traditional hand-drawn animation is not the only love story that is being told here. There is also the love and belief that he desperately needed to find for himself at the very beginning of his life. Although born to poor and yet wonderfully supportive parents, Tony’s childhood was haunted by sickness, fears, anxieties and a total lack of self-confidence or belief in himself or his work. Despite years of failed conventional treatments he was ultimately cured of all these things in a most unlikely, almost mystical, way - as the film will portray. Tony saw this whole thing as being quite “miraculous” at the time. It was also necessary - as without it happening, Tony’s career would never have begun in the first place!
TRAILER: 11.01.2020
Tony has created the following "trailer", just to give you a sense of how the whole film experience might be approached in the future...
So as you can see, this film is most definitely a "love" story. Through it the now 73 year-old Tony uniquely and imaginatively remembers and animates his journey through life - on both inner and outer levels. At the same time it embraces and pushes the boundaries of traditional 2D animation in a way that has never been done before. And as part of this journey, Tony also hopes to invite a number of contemporary 2D animators that he most admires, to recreate many of his stories for him - each in their own style and being uniquely supported by original music. In this way, the entire film might be seen as a personal and contemporary "Fantasia". As a result, "The Old Man Mad About Animation" will ultimately be not so much about Tony himself. Instead, it will become a moving homage to the wonderful artform that he loves so much.
CONCEPT ART: The evolution of "ARNIE"! Tony's film will reveal for the first time the missing link that marks the sudden departure of Homo Sapiens towards that of Animaticus Drawersaurus in recent times. ARNIE first appeared in Tony's work with the arrival of Tony's first book on animation, "The Animator's Workbook", in 1978 - although he had been evolving and growing in Tony's mind and life for some time before that!
SUPPORT:
If you would like to support* Tony as he champions the artform of traditional hand-drawn animation, you can do so via his Patreon page... HERE.
* Tony lives entirely on a small fixed income these days. He therefore thanks you for any support you can give him through Patreon to help him make his film. :)
* Tony lives entirely on a small fixed income these days. He therefore thanks you for any support you can give him through Patreon to help him make his film. :)