Animator works to put his own studio on the map
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Animator works to put his own studio on the map
Brahm Resnik
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 27, 2002
Len Simon's office is a seat at a drawing table. No computers or other
electronic devices in sight. He still believes in the power of the pencil, and
that belief is being tested again.
He's working at his third animation studio in two years, Fat Cat Animation, but
this time Simon's running the show.
"I want to make a go of this and last more than one or two films," said the
32-year-old Simon, who's worked in animation since he dropped out of college in
Canada at 18.
Simon's team of 40 animators from all over the world worked with him at Fox
Animation Studios, a 300-person operation that opened eight years ago. Simon
was director of animation there. After just two movies - Anastasia and Titan
A.E. - Fox conceded animation to Disney and shut the unit down in 2000.
"Fox spent a lot of money bringing these people together," said James Stoyanof,
who runs the business side at Fat Cat. Simon oversees animation.
Fat Cat's done some contract work for studios such as Dreamworks SKG since
opening about four months ago, but the focus is developing stories, characters
and scripts, and finding investors, for feature films.
Several projects are in the works - Hope Canyon, an environmental movie about
the threat of poachers; and Brian Boru, about the king who drove the Vikings
out of Ireland 1,000 years ago.
Simon says he's funding Fat Cat out of his own pocket but expects to have
outside financing lined up by March. The company's leasing space that once
housed a video production company.
At his drawing table, Simon sketches a Hope Canyon character faster than most
of us could address an envelope.
"The average person has about 10,000 bad drawings to get out of their system
before they get good," said Simon, whose wide, U-shaped smile looks like a
cartoon creation.
He started doodling as soon as he could hold a pencil. Simon was motivated by
an older brother who did animation for the children's cartoons Scooby-Doo and
The Flintstones. But he was inspired by the hunter's shot that felled Bambi's
mother.
"There were five areas of the theater where the kids were bawling," he said.
"It's one thing just to draw . . . and another to make people laugh and cry."
By age 19 he was directing animation on feature films.
Classical animation - hand drawing pages and pages of a character just to make
him blink and smile - is a painstaking business. One week's work produces five
seconds of movie, and films can take a year or two to create.
One of Simon's measuring sticks is the yardstick: Simon says the average
animator produces 5 feet of footage per week; his staff can do up to 15 feet a
week and maintain the quality.
Simon says he learned early on from mentors Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, who ran
the Fox studio, how to save time and money.
"We're able to do the same product as other studios at a fraction of the
price," he said.
Goldman, a producer/director in the business 30 years, both at Disney and now
with partner Bluth in the Valley, said of Simon: "When he says he can deliver
something, I think he'll be able to do it. If someone can produce a traditional
animated feature for under 30 million (dollars), they're going to make some
money."
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QWest Arizona service has deteriorated to the point where
criminal action should be taken against the company officers