Animator's Perspective IV: World of Magic Shorts
Chapter 5: A New World of Magic
Post from the Riding with the Mouse Net-log by animator Terrell Little.
Jim Henson changed everything. His energy was ripping through the Animation department, as much a blur as he was himself. Jim was magnetic…that’s the only way that I can describe it. He was taking the time to look at everyone’s contribution with a smile or at least a friendly shrug. We all found ourselves desperate for even that tiny bit of connection to him[1]. The Imagineers, performers, and live action folks would tell me similar stories as he rushed through their sections. A sort of rivalry and jealousy had always existed to some degree between the four groups, but now it flared, leading to ever-increasing games of one-upmanship as we all competed for daddy’s attention and affection[2]. Plus, we all three had to compete with the Muppets in addition to each other.
And Jim seemed to be everywhere at once. While working on his new Muppets movie (eventually called A Muppet Mystery!) on Stage 2, he was simultaneously helping those of us in Animation set The Black Cauldron in motion and work on the Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore Short[3] to play before The Sword in the Stone re-release. He was also supporting work on Tron in the writer’s room and computer lab, and even overseeing and selecting the dozens of little projects that would show up on the TV series, now called Disney’s World of Magic. And to him it was all magic, from the groundbreaking computer effects behind Tron to the little grey Claymation short Tim Burton was doing[4] for World of Magic. He didn’t make any one project seem greater or more important than another.
He upended entrenched management and ways of doing business, including the traditional “write as you go” approach that Disney Animation had used since the time of Walt. He favored instead an approach where the production team began by establishing a basic film structure and treatment, if not full-on screenplay, before painting the first cell[5]. The storyboards now had a larger framework to build upon, rather than simply storyboarding individual “scenes” and “gags” and then having us Inbetweeners try and fill in the gaps with as little awkwardness as possible. Henson walked the line between giving in to opposition to these new methods from middle managers and imposing his will, instead subtly gaining consensus for his ideas through a “can we try it?” here and a “but what if we…” there. Little by little, the process for animation was streamlined and wasted cels were minimized or avoided.
And I have no idea how he found the time for it all.
He also brought laughter, I mean, full-body, shaking fits of laughter, everywhere he went. He laughed loudly and easily. He encouraged laughter and the little jokes and friendly pranks we played on each other, or even him. If it took an extra 15 minutes to finish the storyboard meeting because of the laughs, so be it. Many of the middle management were afraid that he was hurting production, but surprisingly the number of cels being produced per day actually started to increase!
It all started to slowly rub off on us. Soon something amazing started to happen in the animation building: people started working after lunch. Little by little, the ball fields and bars became progressively emptier and the desks progressively fuller. The hours flew by because suddenly we felt like we were a part of something magical, not just drones at the draft tables patiently waiting for our number to be called to sketch a mushroom. World of Magic was a big part of this. Demand for animation was increasing with each new Short and us bored inbetweeners and ink-and-paint crew patiently awaiting our turns to fill in gaps between scenes or color cels on Cauldron now got the chance to do real animation work. And best yet, some of this work was of our own creation.
World of Magic was magical to all of us young employees, because it meant that we all got a chance to pitch our own ideas, and Jim would happily take suggestions from literally anyone, even the cleaning ladies[6]. I even pitched Jim a couple. The first was a generic short with a singing flamingo, which earned me what we were all coming to refer to as the “Grunt of Doom” or G.O.D. The G.O.D. meant that he wasn’t impressed, but didn’t want to hurt your feelings by telling you so. The acronym, of course, led to inevitable expressions like “the wrath of G.O.D.” or “smitten by G.O.D.”.
My second suggestion fared much better: Boudreaux’s Kitchen, an animated Short where a Cajun alligator named Boudreaux ran a small café with his wife & partner ‘Laina, a Creole-of-color spoonbill. To do the writing I enlisted Steve Hulett, since he’d written for Ken Anderson a few years earlier on the Catfish Bend project, and so hypothetically he knew something about the Deep South. I based it all on my aunt and uncle. As a kid, I’d always found the way they playfully bantered back and forth at each other in their kitchen down in Mobile endlessly amusing (I like to tell people I’m from L.A.: Lower Alabama). Jim liked the story and the test sequence and he loved the Deep South setting (he’d grown up in Mississippi!) and we soon got the green light!
It was the proudest day of my life at the time.
I’d hardly see Jim after that. Occasionally, Steve and I would get a brief, few minutes to catch Jim up on our progress, and receive the blessing of his nods or the curse of G.O.D., and then we’d retreat to make changes. Eventually we screened the rough cut for him. He nodded, smiled, and said, “I like it,” and we were on. Just like that. Boudreaux’s Kitchen aired on World of Magic in late 1982. We got some good reviews and even a few fan letters. I’d hoped to expand it into a series, but it never made it past that one glorious Short.
Of course, putting together that Short on top of working hard on Cauldron meant that Steve and I were working long, exhausting hours. Save for marching a couple of hours a day during a brief 3-or-4-day solidarity strike in August to support our brothers and sisters in other studios, we were in the studio practically 7 days a week. We worked for so long, in fact, that we got in trouble with the Union for putting in free, unauthorized overtime!
We also got in trouble with management for bypassing the chain of command and going straight to Jim. Plenty of other Animators were facing the same heat. Many of the middle generation of animators between the Old Men and the Rat’s Nest felt like we were all cheating. They’d spent years patiently awaiting their chance, and here we were, jumping in front. It was like the lines for the rides at Disneyland where they’d waited their fair turn, and we were cutting. I received a few sharp looks and grumbles from the senior animators after that and soon a new policy came down reinforcing the mandate that new ideas would be shopped through the proper channels. I’d spend months to years repairing the damage of my brief unintentional insubordination.
And yet if given a second chance I would do it all over again[7].
[1] I’ve read or heard countless accounts from former Henson employees who say pretty much the same thing.
[2] A similar thing happened within Henson’s company between the New York (Muppets) workshop and the London (“Creature”) workshop.
[3] In this timeline Henson fought to keep this Short in-house rather than subcontract to Rick Reinert Productions, as happened in our timeline.
[4] Vincent (1982). Greenlit in this timeline as well as our own.
[5] Bluth used a similar method to control costs in his animation and Katzenberg implemented something similar at Disney in the late 1980s.
[6] In Muppet Guys Talking they describe Jim’s openness to new ideas from all, and how this created a real sense of teamwork and collaboration.
[7] Again, all based on actual accounts I hear from the people who worked for him. He apparently really was that magnetic to his employees. The down side of this was jealousy and hurt feelings as they all competed for his increasingly limited time and attention.
Note: Edited for ambiguous grammar.
Post from the Riding with the Mouse Net-log by animator Terrell Little.
Jim Henson changed everything. His energy was ripping through the Animation department, as much a blur as he was himself. Jim was magnetic…that’s the only way that I can describe it. He was taking the time to look at everyone’s contribution with a smile or at least a friendly shrug. We all found ourselves desperate for even that tiny bit of connection to him[1]. The Imagineers, performers, and live action folks would tell me similar stories as he rushed through their sections. A sort of rivalry and jealousy had always existed to some degree between the four groups, but now it flared, leading to ever-increasing games of one-upmanship as we all competed for daddy’s attention and affection[2]. Plus, we all three had to compete with the Muppets in addition to each other.
And Jim seemed to be everywhere at once. While working on his new Muppets movie (eventually called A Muppet Mystery!) on Stage 2, he was simultaneously helping those of us in Animation set The Black Cauldron in motion and work on the Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore Short[3] to play before The Sword in the Stone re-release. He was also supporting work on Tron in the writer’s room and computer lab, and even overseeing and selecting the dozens of little projects that would show up on the TV series, now called Disney’s World of Magic. And to him it was all magic, from the groundbreaking computer effects behind Tron to the little grey Claymation short Tim Burton was doing[4] for World of Magic. He didn’t make any one project seem greater or more important than another.
He upended entrenched management and ways of doing business, including the traditional “write as you go” approach that Disney Animation had used since the time of Walt. He favored instead an approach where the production team began by establishing a basic film structure and treatment, if not full-on screenplay, before painting the first cell[5]. The storyboards now had a larger framework to build upon, rather than simply storyboarding individual “scenes” and “gags” and then having us Inbetweeners try and fill in the gaps with as little awkwardness as possible. Henson walked the line between giving in to opposition to these new methods from middle managers and imposing his will, instead subtly gaining consensus for his ideas through a “can we try it?” here and a “but what if we…” there. Little by little, the process for animation was streamlined and wasted cels were minimized or avoided.
And I have no idea how he found the time for it all.
He also brought laughter, I mean, full-body, shaking fits of laughter, everywhere he went. He laughed loudly and easily. He encouraged laughter and the little jokes and friendly pranks we played on each other, or even him. If it took an extra 15 minutes to finish the storyboard meeting because of the laughs, so be it. Many of the middle management were afraid that he was hurting production, but surprisingly the number of cels being produced per day actually started to increase!
It all started to slowly rub off on us. Soon something amazing started to happen in the animation building: people started working after lunch. Little by little, the ball fields and bars became progressively emptier and the desks progressively fuller. The hours flew by because suddenly we felt like we were a part of something magical, not just drones at the draft tables patiently waiting for our number to be called to sketch a mushroom. World of Magic was a big part of this. Demand for animation was increasing with each new Short and us bored inbetweeners and ink-and-paint crew patiently awaiting our turns to fill in gaps between scenes or color cels on Cauldron now got the chance to do real animation work. And best yet, some of this work was of our own creation.
World of Magic was magical to all of us young employees, because it meant that we all got a chance to pitch our own ideas, and Jim would happily take suggestions from literally anyone, even the cleaning ladies[6]. I even pitched Jim a couple. The first was a generic short with a singing flamingo, which earned me what we were all coming to refer to as the “Grunt of Doom” or G.O.D. The G.O.D. meant that he wasn’t impressed, but didn’t want to hurt your feelings by telling you so. The acronym, of course, led to inevitable expressions like “the wrath of G.O.D.” or “smitten by G.O.D.”.
My second suggestion fared much better: Boudreaux’s Kitchen, an animated Short where a Cajun alligator named Boudreaux ran a small café with his wife & partner ‘Laina, a Creole-of-color spoonbill. To do the writing I enlisted Steve Hulett, since he’d written for Ken Anderson a few years earlier on the Catfish Bend project, and so hypothetically he knew something about the Deep South. I based it all on my aunt and uncle. As a kid, I’d always found the way they playfully bantered back and forth at each other in their kitchen down in Mobile endlessly amusing (I like to tell people I’m from L.A.: Lower Alabama). Jim liked the story and the test sequence and he loved the Deep South setting (he’d grown up in Mississippi!) and we soon got the green light!
It was the proudest day of my life at the time.
I’d hardly see Jim after that. Occasionally, Steve and I would get a brief, few minutes to catch Jim up on our progress, and receive the blessing of his nods or the curse of G.O.D., and then we’d retreat to make changes. Eventually we screened the rough cut for him. He nodded, smiled, and said, “I like it,” and we were on. Just like that. Boudreaux’s Kitchen aired on World of Magic in late 1982. We got some good reviews and even a few fan letters. I’d hoped to expand it into a series, but it never made it past that one glorious Short.
Of course, putting together that Short on top of working hard on Cauldron meant that Steve and I were working long, exhausting hours. Save for marching a couple of hours a day during a brief 3-or-4-day solidarity strike in August to support our brothers and sisters in other studios, we were in the studio practically 7 days a week. We worked for so long, in fact, that we got in trouble with the Union for putting in free, unauthorized overtime!
We also got in trouble with management for bypassing the chain of command and going straight to Jim. Plenty of other Animators were facing the same heat. Many of the middle generation of animators between the Old Men and the Rat’s Nest felt like we were all cheating. They’d spent years patiently awaiting their chance, and here we were, jumping in front. It was like the lines for the rides at Disneyland where they’d waited their fair turn, and we were cutting. I received a few sharp looks and grumbles from the senior animators after that and soon a new policy came down reinforcing the mandate that new ideas would be shopped through the proper channels. I’d spend months to years repairing the damage of my brief unintentional insubordination.
And yet if given a second chance I would do it all over again[7].
[1] I’ve read or heard countless accounts from former Henson employees who say pretty much the same thing.
[2] A similar thing happened within Henson’s company between the New York (Muppets) workshop and the London (“Creature”) workshop.
[3] In this timeline Henson fought to keep this Short in-house rather than subcontract to Rick Reinert Productions, as happened in our timeline.
[4] Vincent (1982). Greenlit in this timeline as well as our own.
[5] Bluth used a similar method to control costs in his animation and Katzenberg implemented something similar at Disney in the late 1980s.
[6] In Muppet Guys Talking they describe Jim’s openness to new ideas from all, and how this created a real sense of teamwork and collaboration.
[7] Again, all based on actual accounts I hear from the people who worked for him. He apparently really was that magnetic to his employees. The down side of this was jealousy and hurt feelings as they all competed for his increasingly limited time and attention.
Note: Edited for ambiguous grammar.
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