They draw lines at the cutting edge

Orlando Sentinel

August 2, 2001

By: Roger Moore

To the folks who 'toon, Spike & Mike's Slick and Twisted Festival of Animation is like Cannes and Sundance rolled into one. Getting your short animated film included in this touring compilation film is animation's Lotto jackpot.

"An annual anthology of cutting edge and truly tasteless 'toon," is how The Dallas Morning News describes this fall film favorite. "A substantial hoot,: seconds The Austin Chronicle.

"You get in that, you're following in the footsteps of John Lasseter (Toy Story), Beavis and Butt-head (created by Mike Judge) and Nick Park (Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run)," said Orlando animation director Mark Simon.

Simon can be excused a few visions of sugarplums, big payday and fame. Simon's company, A & S Inc., created three short films that have made it into the 2002 Sick and Twisted lineup. (This year's edition opens Aug. 17 at Maitland's Enzian Theater.) Timmy's Lessons in Nature are three one-minute ditties featuring a scout without a clue.

"My friend T.J. had this idea for a kid's book, and he showed me some drawings," Simon said. "I looked at them and I laughed, 'Man, we should animate this!'"

"Animators, when we're sitting around doing nothing, will doodle," said T.J., a local animator who has to keep his name secret because his current employer might not be too happy with freelancing, especially successful freelancing. "Sometimes those doodles turn into something. Or in the case of Timmy, someone."

T.J. did enough drawings to make a test of Timmy. It was funny, "and we decided to refine it and shoot it," T.J. said. "We just started out having some fun with an idea, and it turned into this big deal."

In Timmy's Lessons in Nature, a banjo twangs and a chubby little redheaded boy who doesn't fit into his scout uniform experiences the wonders of the wild in some not-so-fun ways.

He whacks a snake, which promptly pounces on him and tries to swallow him whole.

"Lesson One: Avoid Snakes."

Timmy gallops across a darkened pasture to tip a cow. He misses and winds up giving Bossy a rectal exam.

"Lesson Two: Aim When Cow Tipping."

He greets a rabid fox by smacking it with a lollipop, with fur-flying results.

"Lesson Three: Avoid Rabid Animals."

"We created this book of rules for Timmy when we started the films," said Jeanne Simon, Mark's wife and a writer on the series. "He can't be mean, but he never learns."

Simon's company A&S, consists of five upstairs rooms in a west Orlando house that's just a toss of a mouse from Disney. Bongo drums, models of Superman, The Brain (from Pinky and the Brain) and cartoon toys and prints share space with animators and the computers that much animation is done on these days.

It's all the space that's needed to do the 500 to 750 drawings for each short film, scanning them into animation computer programs, coloring and compositing (layering animation action) as they do.

"We started showing the first 'Timmy' at festivals; it started winning prizes [at Houston, Cal State Northridge and ASFIA, a French animation society] and then we heard from 'Spike,'" Simon said.

Craig Decker of La Jolla, CA., the "Spike" of Spike & Mike's animation festivals, has been foisting odd 'toons on art cinema audiences since 1977. He laughed at the first "Timmy."

"I said, 'If the rest of them are as funny as this, I'll take as many of these as you guys can make by June,'" he said. "I liked the look of the nerd. It's corny and it's direct, and that, to me, is funny. That snake bludgeoning has face with multiple strikes, that is such a surprise that it makes me laugh every time I see it."

Decker is quite aware of his festival's role as a stepping-stone to greater thing.

"We have been a lot of people's tickets to iconville and bags and bags of money," he joked. "We've premiered most of the great animation that's turned up, from John Lasseter's first films, Tim Burton's first cartoon, all of them."

And that is rubbing off on the Timmy team. They plan a total of 26 Timmys. And they're deep into contract talks to turn Timmy and a group of his friends into a half-hour series, The Troop.

Simon, 37, makes his living producing animation for commercials (Cold-Eeze) and doing storyboards, the rough drafts directors use to make movies, TV shows and films. But with the little fat boy who never learns, films that cost just $40,000 each, he sense his shot at the big time.

"We all love Timmy; he's our baby," Simon said. "I'd love to see him get a series. And what I'd really love to do is what the Aardman people [the Wallace & Gromit team] did. They made short animated films to get attention, won some festivals, got on Spike & Mike, got more work and money to do bigger pieces, and then they made a feature film (Chicken Run)."

Simon sees a day when A&S can move to "that next level," employing local animators, "showing people everywhere the talent we have here in Orlando."

But for now, it's back upstairs at home, back to work on a cartoon training video for realtors.

"I never thought I'd be able to do animation," he said. "Too time-consuming, too labor-intensive." A native of Texas, Simon had studied art and business and worked in film production as an art director and storyboard artist on a variety of shows, including seaQuest DSV. "But then, these computer programs came out and I got my hands on them and I get lost in the work."

Simon's advice to those who would like to animate? Buy yourself a computer and some scanning, animation and compositing software. And think small.

"Too many animators, they get these grandiose dreams and abandon them because they're too big, too hard to finish. Do a short film, let people see what you can do. You never know, it could lead to something."

---