40 Years of Animated Cartoons

By Jacques Muller

Animation, a lifes passion
Animation has always been Jacques Mullers life passion. Since he was a small kid, he wanted to draw Cartoon characters that he had seen on the screen. These Cartoons were magical to him. The screen was no longer a flat surface but a window opening new worlds and other realities. After having practiced drawing through all his childhood and adolescence, he eventually had his first break into the industry in 1977 as a storyboard artist. Working for several years for the French TV channel TF1 and other studios in Paris, he eventually got the opportunity to fly to Sydney Australia in 1982 to work on a TV series. Another five years passed before he could enter the feature film arena for the big screen. Since, many major Hollywood studios employed him as a character animator on sixteen different productions. This allowed him to make some great encounters with big names in the Hollywood animation industry.
Today he occupies the position of senior lecturer at SIDM (School of Interactive Digital Media) at Nanyang Polytechnic of Singapore; teaching students the arcanes of Classical animation.
This book tells the story of his long journey into the world of Cartoons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Apr 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781482880885

Jacques Muller

Jacques Muller, a native of France, dreamed of working for Walt Disney as a young boy. He went on to become an animator and worked in Sydney, Australia, before working on his first major movie: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He became the first Frenchman to work for the Disney studios in Burbank and went on to work on sixteen blockbusters. Jacques currently lives in Singapore.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 Jacques Muller. All rights reserved.

ISBN

978-1-4828-8087-8 (sc)

978-1-4828-8088-5 (e)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017962079

04/16/2018

18803.png

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Birth of a Passion

Chapter 2 First Visit to the Dream Factory

Chapter 3 Trained on the Job in Paris

Chapter 4 Australian Adventures

Chapter 5 A Bunny Madness

Chapter 6 Open Sesame!

Chapter 7 Burbank here I come!

Chapter 8 Bernard, Bianca, and Some Dancing Cat

Chapter 9 A Casting Error

Chapter 10 I take back my Freedom

Chapter 11 A Mercenary in Ireland

Chapter 12 A Mexican Mouse and a Hunchback

Chapter 13 Warner Bros. Animation, a New Beginning

Chapter 14 Journey into the Third Dimension

Chapter 15 Crash Landing in Paris – A Matter of the Heart

Chapter 16 Toward New Horizons

Chapter 17 A Samurai on the Thames

Chapter 18 Magic in Scotland

Chapter 19 Mexican Bicentennial

Chapter 20 The Sky is the Limit

40%20Years%20Animation_Chapter%2000-1_Page_00A_B.jpg40%20Years%20Animation_Chapter%2000-1_Page_00A_B.jpg3288.pngMissing%20image%20Page%205.jpgMissing%20image%20Page%206.jpg

Cover illustration for Gary K. Wolf’s novel Who Wacked Roger Rabbit?

FOREWORD

O ne day, I was walking down an ordinary city street; I turned a corner, and found myself in Toontown. In the company of a talking rabbit named Roger and a buxom, sexy redhead named Jessica. Life for me was never the same.

On another day, long after that, I was navigating my way through a bunch of ordinary posts on Facebook; I turned a corner and ran headlong into a talented, creative artist named Jacques Muller. Once again, life for me was never the same.

I’m incredibly happy I turned both corners.

I was well aware of Jacques Muller’s work long before I ever knew his name. He had animated many of my favorite characters. Jacques animated on Sylvain Chomet’s wonderful full-length feature The Illusionist, based on a screenplay by Jacques Tati. He animated parts of Paula Abdul’s Grammy-winning music video Opposites Attract, where he created MC Skat Kat’s girlfriend. And, of course, he animated my all-time favorite characters, Roger Rabbit, his va-va-voommate Jessica, and Baby Herman.

I came to know Jacques quite by accident.

I spend an unseemly portion of my time reading my friends’ postings on Facebook. Usually, those involve endless cute cat videos, interesting new animations, and, I’m embarrassed to admit, a large number of bikini-clad young actresses. (Hey, give me a break. Where do you think the idea for Jessica Rabbit came from? Those kinds of girls did not exist in the Illinois farm town where I grew up.)

One day, an animator friend of mine, Tom Sito, whom I met during the production of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, reposted a picture posted by a friend of his. (Hold on for a minute. This is getting confusing. I’m gonna go look at more pictures of bikini-clad actresses to clear my mind. Okay. Done. I’m back.) That posted/reposted picture showed the scene from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? in which Roger and Jessica hang from a hook in the Acme warehouse. Tom’s friend’s name was Jacques Muller. Unknown to me, Jacques was the talented artist who animated that scene.

After the movie came out, Disney gave cels from the movie as thank-you gifts to a number of people. Charlie Fleischer, the voice of Roger Rabbit, got one; Steven Spielberg got one; the director Bob Zemeckis got one; and on and on. Well, I got one, too.

Mine showed my characters, Roger and Jessica, hanging from a hook in the Acme warehouse. If you’ve seen the movie – and if you haven’t, you certainly ought to – Roger and Jessica are not in that many scenes together. So this was a very special piece of artwork to me.

What made this cel even more special were the autographs that came with it. The signatures included Bob Zemeckis, the lead animator Dick Williams, Jessica’s voice Kathleen Turner, Charlie Fleischer, Bob Hoskins, and of course the man who made everything happen, Steven Spielberg.

I responded to Tom Sito’s reposting of Jacques Muller’s posting (whoa, so confusing. Time out for a few more bikinis. Okay. Good to go.) with a photo of my autographed cel.

I got an immediate response from Jacques. He told me that he had drawn that cel and was tickled to death to know that I now owned it, and that so many luminaries had signed it.

I asked Jacques if he still drew the characters. He told me he drew them occasionally as presents for friends. He offered to draw one for me. I offered him a much better deal.

I had just finished the third Roger Rabbit novel, Who Whacked Roger Rabbit? I was looking for an artist to illustrate the cover and to design and draw images of several lead characters. Jacques was the perfect choice.

Jacques accepted my offer immediately.

He did a fantastic job. And I didn’t make things easy for him. I’m on the cover of the book, a tradition that stretches across all of my Roger novels. In the photograph that I sent to Jacques, I was facing the wrong way, had my hands and arms at the wrong level and at the wrong angles, and was wearing the wrong suspenders. Jacques worked his magic, manipulated me around and sideways like a living paper doll, and wound up with me positioned exactly the way I should have been if I had been studying how to model instead of ogling models themselves.

He created and illustrated a whole stable of my book characters. Honey Graham, my blonde Jessica; Willy Prosciutto, a ham actor and the crime lord of Toontown; Louis Louis Louse, Willy’s right-hand vermin; evil scientist Doc Trinaire; and Eddie Valiant’s adorable puppy Mutt.

Jacques is one of the most talented and creative artists I know. I often told him his life would make an interesting book. He was in the French Marines. Yeah, that French Marines. He’s worked for every major animation studio. He’s done incredible work on amazing characters. I’m happy to see that he finally took my advice and put his life on paper so all of us can sit back, spend a few hours with him, and appreciate this truly gifted artist.

Gary K. Wolf

Creator of Roger Rabbit

3477.png

CHAPTER 1

Birth of a Passion

3524.png3558.png3596.png

F ollowing my August 1956 birth in Blois, in the Loire Valley of France, I was soon brought back to my grandparents’ home in the town of Cognac, the birthplace of King Francis the First of the House of Angouleme. The monarch was at the origins of the construction of the castle of Chambord. His friend, Leonardo da Vinci, whom he greeted as his personal guest in the later part of his life, died eventually in his arms.

There, in Cognac, I lived a happy childhood surrounded by drawings and cartoons.

I must have been three or four years old when I first saw a Disney film. Later on, I discovered with enchantment other Disney classics, including Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty. My parents, noticing how I was fond of them, allowed me to attend the screenings of Walt Disney films at the cinema for each Christmas season.

My total focus during the rest of the year centred on the memory of that ephemeral moment: the yearly Disney movie. Nothing else mattered much in my ten-year-old mind than this escape and the eighty minutes or so spent in that other world.

The illusion taking place on the screen was so real that I could not get tired of it. The voluptuous motion of the characters, the delightful colour palettes of the backgrounds, the lights and shadows, and the enchanting melodies all combined to create a blissful experience for me.

In a desperate effort to re-create these ephemeral impressions, and with a million stars still glittering in my eyes, I spent my time doodling in the margins of my exercise books. My limited drawing skills, if I had any, were not of much help, but somehow I persevered. I kept covering my pages with countless awkward sketches as I tried to represent the many wonderful characters from these animated films. This passion for drawing definitely found its origin in this fascination of mine with all these wondrous cartoons.

In 1960, a revolutionary event occurred in our home – my grandfather bought his first television, a Grandin (a now-defunct brand name in France). It brought one unique channel that was named with extraordinary originality: The First Channel. Naturally, the screen was in black and white, and its size in no way stood any comparison with the movie screen.

This huge change suddenly gave me the opportunity to discover many cartoons on a daily basis as well as enjoy the famous Walt Disney Presents, introduced by the well-known French presenter Pierre Tchernia. In fact, it is necessary to say that Uncle Walt was my number-one hero at the time. In my eyes, he was some sort of a mighty, godly figure, a cross between Santa and a fictitious benevolent grandfather who lived far, far away in the magical land known as America.

That mythical place appeared more out of reach than the moon itself. Above all, the ultimate goal was for me to be able to meet my hero in person. Pierre Tchernia, as the presenter of the French version of Walt Disney Presents, became some sort of Saint Peter, the man who held the keys to heaven, a paradise made of celluloid that was filled with choleric ducks and jumping mice.

Pierre Tchernia impressed me – he had met the great Walt Disney in person! I met Pierre later on during my professional years in Annecy and other places, but the magic had gone. No longer the jolly, good fellow from my childhood, he was but a busy and distant character when we met.

During the years after my grandfather brought that Grandin home, television allowed me to discover Popeye, Huckleberry Hound, Tintin, and Asterix, but above all the great Tex Avery cartoons.

For me, a certain fateful evening in the winter of 1966 was uneventful. Somehow, I had even missed an incredible story reported on the evening news, an event that had thrown the entire world into a deep sadness. It wasn’t until the following day that I learned of the passing of the great Walt Disney. All my classmates described to me the official tribute rendered to that legendary figure – and I had missed it all! I couldn’t believe it! Nonetheless, the simple idea of Uncle Walt’s death couldn’t sink into my mind. How could he do that to me? I thought in my youthful grief. We had not even met yet! In the mind of my ten-year-old self, it would have required several years to find the means of crossing the Atlantic Ocean in order to meet with him. On top of that, I didn’t even know a single word of English, despite the fact that I loved the sound of the American language. Really, it couldn’t be true! A man as extraordinary as Walt Disney couldn’t possibly die.

3637.png

Eventually, a reality check was in order. I finally had to come to terms with the fact that, in one clean sweep, the entire construction of my dream had collapsed with the unexpected disappearance of the main character.

Even though this traumatic event took some time to get used to, it had the beneficial effect of reinforcing my love for animation; this art form had the ability to create unlikely universes while giving them the illusion of reality itself.

3683.png

Christmas season upon Christmas season, I followed the latest releases from the Burbank studios with utmost assiduity: The Sword in the Stone in 1964; The Jungle Book in 1968; The Aristocats in 1972; and Robin Hood in 1975 (French releases were always a year or two behind the American release dates).

What I ignored (only to learn many years later) was that this entire tradition almost died. Faced with the troubling combination of poor box-office performance by Sleeping Beauty and the escalating and prohibitively expensive production costs, Walt had resigned himself to phase out the entire animation department. On top of that, his lack of enthusiasm for the new and more economical ‘Xerox look’ technique (the necessary evolution of the art form in the days following the dismissal of the entire inking department staff) was an extra reason for him to justify his decision. In his view, the new mechanically reproduced drawings on cels were a step down visually from the former richly coloured and hand-rendered tracings of the previous features. He thought of it as a regression of an art form that he had pushed to the sky’s limits. Uncle Walt summoned together his closest collaborators to announce the news of the likely closure of their department. Wolfgang Reitherman, a World War II bomber pilot, asked him to reconsider his decision. He made his point in this kind of way: ‘Walt, we have followed you