A Kid At Heart: Disney Animator Richard Bazley
Veteran animator Richard Bazley talks about a career in the Realm of Dreams.
What do you want out of a career in animation? Money, fame, or maybe long hours of work at a computer or sketch-pad, working out complex action sequences? What about the chance to pursue your own vision of the way things should be for adoring worldwide audiences? For well-known and successful feature film animator Richard Bazley, stories with ‘heart’ – the ones that have the power to touch people in a magical way – are where his rewards can be found, even after years in the business working on top-level projects.
“I’m trying to be more and more selective,” Bazley said. “Iron Giant’ was one of those, and ‘The Barnyard’ (his current project) is another. It’s a very high-quality, directordriven film. It has what I call a lot of heart and soul. It has the sort of human issues that will stir you up in the same way that ‘Iron Giant’ did.”
This is not to say that his previous work has lacked in that special ‘something’ that moves viewers either to tears, to climb mountains, or to reflect on their lives and the world around them. Bazley’s childhood dream to work at Disney was realized as a lead animator on films such as ‘Hercules’, the ground-breaking ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’, and ‘Pocahontas’. Bazley also animated and supervised CGI work on the character Drix in ‘Osmosis Jones’, and is perhaps most well-known for work on Brad Bird’s ‘The Iron Giant’. He worked with famed British political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe on ‘Hercules’, and with Oscar winner Richard Williams on ‘Roger Rabbit’, and as a supervising animator at Sullivan-Bluth Studios, Disney and Warner Brothers. The list goes on and on, including projects with producer Howard Kazanjian (‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ and ‘Return of the Jedi’), and his own film, ‘The Journal of Edwin Carp’.
Now working at Omation Studios in San Clemente, California, on a Steve Oedekerk project called ‘The Barnyard’, Bazley said he’s very pleased to take on the role of Supervising Animator again for this one. Oedekerk was the writer for films such as ‘Jimmy Neutron’, ‘The Nutty Professor’, ‘Patch Adams’ and ‘Bruce Almighty’, but details about ‘The Barnyard’ are being kept quiet. Featuring voice-work by actress Courtney Cox, the 3DCGI project appealed to Bazley on the basis of his own feeling for the material.
“It’s very exciting from my point of view,” he said. Taking his cue from the critical success of ‘The Iron Giant’, Bazley said he hopes ‘The Barnyard’ will also bring out the little kid in both audiences and himself.
“There were things in ‘The Iron Giant’ that you’d see your son or your nephew do, and that’s the magic of it,” he said. “I feel that’s some of what they’re doing here on ‘The Barnyard’.”
“To me, it’s got the same buzz I got when I was working on ‘Iron Giant’,” he added. “Normally my instincts are right.”
As Supervising Animator on the 3D-CGI project, Bazley and his team are working with XSI animation software from SoftImage on PC computers. Like many animators who have worked in the industry for many years, he laments the demise of 2D animation on popular films, but he says his skills with hand-drawn sketches or rendering are still of great use. Before he starts a scene or a sequence, for example, Bazley said he will still block out the action before he starts with small thumbnail sketches he can give to animators, making the process much more specific to his goals for the images.
“CG takes a little longer,” he commented. “It takes more time up front, but then when you get to the final part, it’s quicker.”
Films like the highly regarded ‘Spirited Away’ from Hayao Miyazaki and others still feature the hand-rendered, 2D images artists have favoured and audiences have loved, from ‘Snow White’ and
‘Pinocchio’ to ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’. But Bazley said the success of 3D-CGI has seduced film executives who want to copy the tremendous financial rewards of computer animated films from Pixar and other studios.
“They’ve become followers, rather than leaders,” he said. “To me, it’s a travesty that 2D has been dropped by most of the industry. It’s like oil painting and water-color. One should not replace the other. I would love to see 2D rise again.” He added that 3D-CGI films have had an advantage, not just in the technology of producing the animated images, but also in the stories. “With 2D, it became accepted that there were certain perceptions of what the films were,” Bazley said. Meaning that many of these films were musicals for children, but with CGI, “it’s a little bit more open,” he said.
The ‘Hollywood formula’ animated film story has thus had a chance to change with the new technology, he said. “When you’re spending $100 million, I can understand, because the investors want to make a return on it,” Bazley added. “But you can do what Brad Bird (‘The Incredibles’) is doing, which is to use the studio system and nudge it a bit.”
Working with Bird on ‘The Iron Giant’, which used both 2D and computer-created techniques, Bazley had the chance to see an unusual story turn into a critical favourite and a ‘gem’. “I pitched the idea for
‘The Iron Giant’ to Don Bluth,” he said. “So then later I went over and met with Brad, and he showed me the boards, and I was just knocked out.”
About Bird, Bazley said, “He does like robots. He’s a whirl-wind. He’s terrific.” For the artist, of course, a big-budget production has its perks. “Obviously in the big studios, the great thing is the luxury you have to get the shots you want,” he said. “I’m really against work going over-seas. To get films like ‘The Incredibles’ or ‘The Iron Giant’ you can’t just story-board it and hack it off to India. It’s not going to happen. Why build a house with the budget of a cabin?”
Bazley is 42 years-old, and makes his home in England, though he has spent the past 6 months living in San Clemente while working on ‘The Barnyard’. He has a background and degree in
Graphic Design, and was formerly Art Director for two of London’s top advertising agencies. He made his directorial debut with his 2D animated film, ‘The Journal of Edwin Carp’, which is featured in the book, ‘The Flash 5 Bible’ by authors Jon Warren and Rob Reinhardt, along with Bazley.
“Basically the only way I’ve been able to survive all the ups and downs is to really love the medium,” he said. “If you do it as a career option, for money, you have to earn a living. But first and foremost, you have to do it because you like it.”
Truly a dream career for many would-be or beginning animators, the little kid who wanted to work at Disney is still thrilled to see his work take shape. “Once you see the final elements come together, that’s the real buzz,” he said.