Ralph Bakshi

[admin]

http://toonmag.com/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=57&Itemid=2

....Then, after the Nickelodeon crew gave out their swag (T-shirts) and cleared out of the room, we were treated to a panel with veteran animator/troublemaker Ralph Bakshi, whose long-awaited DVD version of his collaboration with Frank Frazetta, Fire And Ice had just recently dropped.


However, the big news of the panel wasn't really the DVD, (although the restoration job is amazing) but the fact that he is getting back into the animated feature game that he left after the ill-fated Cool World. He had not intended to reveal the fact that he was getting ready to make a brand-new, original movie with independent funding, but at the spur of the moment decided to show everyone some very rough but impressive test footage.


The tentative title of the new project is The Last Days of Coney Island, and tells a hardboiled tale of a NYPD detective, the Lady of the Evening he alternately loved and busted, and the seedy characters that haunt the streets of New York City's run-down amusement district. It was classic Bakshi: rude, loud, profane and brutally honest at the same moment. It was also strikingly beautiful, with the same rough beauty present in Bakshi classics like Heavy Traffic.


Although Bakshi admitted to being in his 60s now, he seemed to surge with new-found intensity and enthusiasm about the prospect of making not only the Coney Island project, but also a possible sequel to his much-loved classic Wizards and some other projects percolating through his twisted mind. Apparently one of the reasons he has decided to move forward on multiple fronts is, surprisingly, the advance of technology. The photo-montage combined with classical drawn animation technique he used on his e70s-vintage features has been made easy and inexpensive with the increasing power and sophistication of digital ink and paint and digital compositing packages that run on off-the-shelf computers.

Although not a fan of CGI or of the digital rotoscoping technique that Richard Linklater used in Waking Life and the upcoming A Scanner, Darkly; and nakedly contemptuous of the moves by Michael Eisner at Disney, Jeffrey Katzenberg at Dreamworks and other executives to marginalize classical drawn animation, he now is a believer in technology walking hand in hand with old-school pencil and paper to create a hybrid art form. In my opinion, the second advent of Ralph Bakshi is the biggest news I (Michelle) have heard at Comic-Con this year. The fizzle of the non-announcement by Disney on Friday has been eclipsed by the shot across the bow of the animation industry fired by Mr. Bakshi.

Written by Michelle Klein-Hass and Thomas E. Reed

Sunday, 17 July 2005

[dnvillalpando]

Particularly that Bakshi's appearance was the highlight of the conference.

Great work everyone! What a delight it is to see Bakshi back in action and the world taking notice!!!

david