Dan Haskett Interview

The Animation Guild blog is now posting a series of audio interviews with members. The latest features old friend Dan Haskett, character designer and animator extraordinaire. (And here is part 2.) I first met Dan in New York in the 1970s, where he was one of the most prominent young bloods anxious to restore animation to the glories of the past. For those too young to remember, animation was at a real low point then. Dan has contributed to many major features and TV specials over the course of his career.

Earlier interviews are with Ruben Aquino, Bruce Smith (part 1, part 2), Ed Gombert (part 1, part 2), and Robert Alvarez (part 1, part 2). Thanks to the Guild adding labels, a quick link to all the interviews can be found here.

I really value interviews with animation artists as the mainstream media (and some recent documentaries) spend too much time focusing on management and not enough on the people who actually create the films. Now that The Animation Podcast seems to be dormant, I'm glad to see The Animation Guild taking up the slack.

Bob Jaques

In this 1982 photo, that's Bob Jaques in the center. Behind him on the left is Dan Haskett and to the right is Chris Armstrong.

I'm late mentioning this, but I wanted to dig up a visual to go with talking about Bob's new blog. I met Bob at Nelvana in Toronto in 1980 or '81. While I had come from New York and had worked in the New York animation industry, I was far more enamored of animation that had been made in L.A. To be honest, I looked down my nose at a lot of the people working in N.Y. animation.

My only excuse is that I was young and stupid. I came to realize that the difference between N.Y. and L.A. had more to do with opportunity than with talent. One of the people who wised me up was Bob.

Bob had stared at the Fleischer and Famous cartoons long and hard. Comparing what he saw on the screen with the sparse animator credits on those cartoons, he had methodically figured out how to recognize the styles of just about every animator. Bob was the one who opened my eyes to the brilliance of John Gentilella, an animator whose work was as good as anybody in California and done under much less friendly conditions.

Bob now has a blog dedicated to identifying the animators on the Popeye cartoons. As these cartoons are finally becoming available on DVD, his timing couldn't be better. (Bob has also done some audio commentaries for future Popeye DVD releases). New York animators never received the attention of their L.A. counterparts and were rarely interviewed. It's great that Bob is sharing his knowledge, filling in gaps in our understanding of the Fleischer/Famous animators.

Dan Haskett Sesame Street Work

This is a Sesame Street spot created by Dan Haskett. Dan is one of the most natural animators I've ever met and it's a shame that he rarely has the opportunity to animate his own thing. It seems like most of the credits I see for Dan are in the area of character design, and while he's excellent at it, nobody moves his designs as well as he does.

When I started out in the '70's in New York, Dan Haskett was miles ahead of the rest of us, and we all knew it. We all wanted to be Dan when we grew up.

Here's another piece Dan did for Sesame Street. There's a four second blackout near the start, but the piece resumes. There's some very expressive dialogue animation here.

Dan may have done other Sesame Street spots, though I can't remember for sure. If anyone knows and can find them online, please let me know and I'll link to them.