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At long last! Closure to the Stupefying Dana Reemes interview!
Too much Dana is never enough!
I swear he looks like a Bond Villain.
"Excellent!"
Performing as a Gothic Mentalist at a very private affair. Winter Solstice, 2000.
Some funny stuff from the Dana Reemes Files!
Don’t you guys hate it when this happens?!
For the benefit of the laymen, here is what a clean up artist brings to the table in animation.
An awesome parody of the classic Ripley’s cartoons by madman Dana!
Lureline Weatherly:
a self-portrait.
She is Dana’s first wife and left quite an impression on him!
Ramses II’s Great Royal Wife Nofretari and Dana –Dana is the one on the right.
The Glamorous side of being an Animator.
Filmation also made live action Saturday morning kid shows. One of them was Space Academy! When it tanked, the abandoned sci fi sets were used to house artist cubicles! Studios will literally shove artist cubicles ANYWHERE!
When I was boy vs. art this stuff was THE BOMB!
File the next two under so horrible they are great!
Shazam is cool. Everyone knows that!
This takes the cake! Bigfoot raises an orphan and together they fight CRIME?!!
Will the REAL Ghostbusters please stand up?
Controversy!
While working at Filmation Dana had a ringside seat to the cartoon drama between “The Original Ghostbusters” and “The Real Ghostbusters.”
In 1984 Columbia Pictures released the blockbuster film Ghostbusters. As they raked in millions Columbia was clueless to their huge blunder. Apparently they did not realize the name “Ghost Busters” was taken! Believe it or not Filmation had already produced a live-action comedy series with that same name in 1975 starring Forest Tucker and Larry Storch.
In 1985 Filmation sued Columbia. As part of the out-of-court settlement, any cartoon based on the Columbia Pictures property could not be called “Ghostbusters.” That title was reserved for Filmation! Columbia had to name their cartoon show “The Real Ghostbusters” to directly distinguish it from the Filmation show.
Filmation then proceeded to call their version “The Original Ghostbusters.”
Columbia’s “The Real Ghostbusters was produced by DIC.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
I worked as a clean up Inbetweener on the Phoebus Unit on the 1996 Disney production The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Phoebus was the handsome soldier who falls in love with the Gypsy Esmerelda. He was interesting to work on thanks to some great rough animation by Russ Edmonds and Dave Brewster as well as the charming voice performance by Kevin Kline.
But the helmet and sword gave my boss the suave Brian Clift a hard time. Anyway, no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get the props right. The sword and helmet always morphed and wiggled. The head of the clean up department Vera Lanpher, wisely put Dana on the case! It turns out Dana has a real knack for metal props and his sense of perspective is razor sharp! Every frame of film that shows Phoebus’s helmet and or sword was done by Dana.
Helmet by Dana Reemes.
Something from the “Q” branch!
Dana owns a custom hand made animation lightbox setup made by the same guy who made the black acrylic animation discs at Disney. It is beyond awesome! It collapses into a briefcase and comes with top and bottom pegs! For $300.00 Dana got himself the coolest portable animation table set up I have ever seen. Hand made in Korea!
Coolest animation lightbox ever!
Dana Reemes: The Filmmaker
NECROMANCE, a sequence from an unfinished feature film by Dana Reemes, is provided here as a public service by ManvsArt.com. The names of the cast aand crew have been changed to protect the identify of some of the most prestigious individuals in the worlds of music, fashion, entertainment and the visual arts. This film has been recognized for its artistic merit by countless audiences and critics over the years. NECROMANCE is, to put it bluntly, a deathless classic of the cinema.
Ahem!…..
Corrections!
I goofed in the last post a few times when it came to selecting images Dana admires. So he wrote to me and pointed my mistakes out and offered his solutions. Here I cut and pasted Dana’s emails. Isn’t he precious?!
Hey Raul, buddy,
It’s Dana “Not Tall” Reemes, here. Know you’re a busy guy, but thought I’d offer another suggestion for Man vs. Art. I think that Swafford’s great caricature would benefit from some judicious cropping; there’s too much negative space around the image. Use the crop tool and pretend you are an art framer. That’s all for now… Back to my writing.
Dear Raul,
Hope all is well. Don’t mean to be a pain in the ass, but thought I’d write. The TUROK material that you have up is not what I found particularly inspirational. I sent you a couple of really magnificent early painted covers by Morris “Moe” Gollub, who incidentally had been an assistant at Disney and was later a very distinguished layout guy and president of the MPSC 839 animator’s union when I joined up. Of course, I didn’t know any of this when I last saw you; Sito came by for an enjoyable visit on Friday and gave me an inscribed, author’s presentation copy of his illuminating book DRAWING THE LINE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE ANIMATION UNIONS FROM BOSKO TO BART SIMPSON. (You would like this book, as its primary focus is “man vs. art”; artists trying to make a living doing what they like to do best, while having to deal with bullshit all the time from greedy or incompetent employers.) Sito, for his part, had an error in the book, describing the cover paintings that Mo Gollub did for Western Publishing titles like TARZAN and TUROK, SON OF STONE as being for paperback books rather than comic books. Gollub was just a guy like us (only talented) who knocked out those beautiful covers in the late ’50s when he was about your age. It was just something he did on the side as he was basically an animator. As for the interior page art, the examples you have are from the garishly colored Darkhorse reprints of one of the early issues illustrated by Rex Maxon, an old-timer that had done the TARZAN full-color Sunday newspaper strip (back when such strips were a big deal) for years starting in 1930, until it was later taken over by Burne Hogarth and the great Russ Manning (who later did MAGNUS,ROBOT FIGHTER for Western Publishing). Maxon’s Turok work looked old-fashioned at the time and while professional, always appeared to be done in great haste, mostly with brush (it’s faster). The finest draftsman ever to work on TUROK, was Alberto Gioletti (correct spelling, this time) a highly trained Italian, who later went back to Rome and established a well-respected comic book publishing firm. Considering how fast he worked and how little he was paid, his work is of a very high illustrational standard; other artists still use his drawings for reference when doing all manner of things like jungle, rocks, caves, etc. His work was always well-researched and had a real look of verisimilitude. All of the living beings, humans, cave-men, dinosaurs, etc., convey a sense of anatomical conviction. Anyway, it is factually incorrect to say that I liked the “Italian artists” that did TUROK; everyone involved with TUROK over the years was American except for Gioletti. (To complicate matters slightly, Gollub’s great covers were done early on when Rex Maxon was still doing interior page art; some other decent, but second-rate guy did the covers later on when Alberto Gioletti was doing the inside pages.)
One last thing, Sito right away knew the cartoonist who did that “Out of the way, swine, a cartoonist is coming!” panel; it is New York artist Bernard “Hap” Kliban, usually known as B. Kliban, and remembered now mostly for his goofy cartoon cats. He died sometime in the ’90s. You need to give him credit for that panel which so perfectly summarizes the way we cartoonists deal with our perpetually shattered dreams and frustrated aspirations. CARTOONISTS RULE!
B. Kliban
Well, I’m getting back to work on my doctoral dissertation now… Good being back in touch with you.
Your pal,
Dana
Also….
Also, with regard to the MAGNUS material you posted, you should say that this was the work of the great Russ Manning, as some of your fan-boy minions will no doubt know this and wonder at the oversight. Check out the way Manning does Magnus’ girlfriend in the finely-pleated, partly transparent mini-dress–very sexy, yet demure. Don’t think he ever did the cover art though.
Here’s some random pages of Russ Manning MAGNUS art for you to pick through. Looked really good to me when I was a teenager!
Oh yeah, before I forget!
Also get a load of the latest Ghettomation Podcast! A fun and crazy animation round table discussion I take part in with Jim Lujan and Kevin Cross!
One last thing….
ManvsArt.com’s Subcommandante Jim Lujan has just released his first DVD Ghettomation Garden. If you like stuff that is different, innovative, and funny then this is for you.
The reviews are in!
“I gushed my chonies….in a good way!”
The Che Guevara T-Shirt.
“I couldn’t stop laughing for hours! And that was just while trying to get the shrink wrap off the DVD case!”
Raul Aguirre Jr.
Total with shipping: $13.00 USD
For less than a 12 pack of Dos Equis! ($13.49)
But just as fun and twice as intoxicating!
Thanks for dropping by!
Ciao.
R.
Raul
