1st Edition
Mr. In-Between My Life in the Middle of the Animation Revolution
What’s changed most in your lifetime? The switch from land lines to cell phones? From snail mail to email? How about the transition from Bugs Bunny to Buzz Lightyear? Those Bugs and Daffy cartoons you loved as a kid look nothing like the PIXAR classics Toy Story or The Incredibles.
Mr. In-Between: My Life in the Middle of the Animation Revolution is the fascinating and hilarious saga of one of animation's computer graphics pioneers, Bill Kroyer, making his way to Hollywood to end up as a key figure in the technical revolution of animation’s "Second Golden Age". He provides an artist’s explanation of the fundamental principles of animation, from the basic mechanics of motion to the immersive, artful experience of visualizing and realizing the performance of an imaginary character.
Rather than a scholarly listing of films and filmmakers, the book is instead a captivating first-person journey through what may be the most important transition in the history of the arts—the transformation and renaissance of the animated film in the digital age. An important work for scholars, and an eye-opening and page-turning adventure for any film or cartoon fan, Mr. In-Between is a book that has the ultimate writing credit.
Bill Kroyer was there.
Key Features:
- Explains the step-by-step evolution of the digital tools of computer animation, from the most basic primitive “scripted” motion to the current application of artificial intelligence
- Describes some of the most remarkable, eccentric, and colorful geniuses who populated the quirky now-vanished subculture of “hand-drawn animation”
- Takes the reader on a world-wide tour of animation studios on four continents, explaining the vast cultural differences, but common artistic devotion, of animators in places as diverse as communist China, Europe, India, and the Philippines
- Recounts fascinating and surprising interactions with world-famous celebrities that worked with the animation industry, including legendary musicians, Oscar-winning actors and the King of the United Kingdom
Preface
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Chapter 01 Snow White Rollin' on the River
Chapter 02 It all Started with a Wink
Chapter 03 Annie's Sugar-Coated Nightmare
Chapter 04 Westward Ho
Chapter 05 How Cheap Will You Work?
Chapter 06 What Is a Spungbunny?
Chapter 07 Putting Pants on the Elves
Chapter 08 The Tidepool off the River
Chapter 09 Working My Way Back to Burbank
Chapter 10 Animation across the Pond
Chapter 11 At the Feet of the Master
Chapter 12 The Rat's Nest
Chapter 13 The Miracle of the Pencil Stub
Chapter 14 Things You Could Never Imagine
Chapter 15 It Will Remind of You Something You Have Never Seen Before
Chapter 16 Board Certified
Chapter 17 Animation by the Numbers
Chapter 18 Computer Image Choreography
Chapter 19 Get me 100,000 of Those
Chapter 20 Let the Digital Age Begin
Chapter 21 Animating with Crayons
Chapter 22 She's a Hard Woman to Please
Chapter 23 The "E.T." you Haven't Heard of
Chapter 24 Outperforming a Muppet
Chapter 25 Dead on Arrival
Chapter 26 Kroyer Films Ink
Chapter 27 The Technological Threat
Chapter 28 From Korea with Love
Chapter 29 Chasing Awards
Chapter 30 Back to Commercials!
Chapter 31 Honey, I Shrunk the World
Chapter 32 Killing Santa
Chapter 33 Animation the Third World Way
Chapter 34 Fairy Tales Will Come True!
Chapter 35 Raindrops Falling in Our Heads
Chapter 36 I Do Live in a Tree!
Chapter 37 Building an Airplane—In Flight
Chapter 38 The Traditional Crash and Burn
Chapter 39 Is There Life After FernGully?
Chapter 40 Warner Bros. and the Failed Quest
Chapter 41 Time to Go Digital
Chapter 42 Talking Animals "R US"
Chapter 43 Dinosaurs, Dogs, and Cats
Chapter 44 The Academy and the Second Golden Age
Chapter 45 Animation in the Digital Age
Chapter 46 The Marriage of Animation and Visual Effects
Chapter 47 R&H India
Chapter 48 That Party
Chapter 49 Hoa about a Career Change?
Chapter 50 Teaching in the Digital Age
Chapter 51 The Science of Keeping Up
Chapter 52 Everything Changes
Chapter 53 Fringe Benefits
Chapter 54 Meeting Legends
Chapter 55 Winding Down
Chapter 56 Wrapping it Up
Biography
Bill Kroyer was nominated for an Academy Award for his short film Technological Threat, the first film to combine 2D and CG animated characters. He directed Ferngully, The Last Rainforest, as well as dozens of commercials and animated feature film credit sequences. As Senior Animation Director at Rhythm & Hues studios he directed CG characters in films the grossed over $1 billion worldwide. In 2017 he and his wife Susan were the first couple to receive The International Animation Society's prestigious June Foray award.
https://www.mrinbetween.org
"Bill Kroyer has been a witness and a participant in the ever-changing world of animation for decades, with awards and credentials to prove it. As a longtime admirer I enjoyed re-living his career -- and learning things I didn’t know. FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST remains a family favorite which I can’t wait to show to my young granddaughter." -- Leonard Maltin
