RON CAMPBELL'S DEBUTS
Born in 1939 in Seymore, in
the Australian state of Victoria, Ron Campbell has
been a force in animation for the past four
decades. Campbell began his animation career in the
early 1960’s, working on Beetle Bailey, Krazy Kat,
and Cool McCool for King Features, as well as The
Beatles. He then moved to the US and Hanna-Barbera,
going on to write and produce cartoons for Sesame
Street and animate on the original George of the
Jungle and Tom Slick TV shows. He produced and
directed the animation for The Big Blue Marble,
winning many awards, including a Peabody for
Excellence in Broadcasting and an Emmy for Best
Children's Show of the Year.
Krazy Kat Jail
Mirage
THE BEATLES YEARS
Nowhere Man
In the late 60's Ron
Campbell, with his good friend and colleague Duane
Crowther (RIP), animated many scenes in The Beatles
Yellow Submarine feature film, including the Sea of
Time sequence, and much of the action between the
Chief Blue Meanie and his boot-licking side-kick,
Max. He animated a lot of scenes involving the
multi-named Boob, Hillary, the Nowhere Man.
Earlier, he directed for King Features many of the
episodes made in Australia of the highly successful
ABC television series The Beatles.
Who are the
persons who inspired, or helped or thought you the
most, artistically speaking?
Ron Campbell
- Gerry Ray, Pat Mathews, Duane Crowther, Bill
Hanna, Al Brodax, Ken Snyder.
SCOOBY-DOO
When,
how and why did you come to work on the Scooby-Doo
Series?
In early 1967 Bill Hanna hired me at Hanna-Barbera
as an animator. I had come to the US from Australia
in late 1966.
In 1968 I started my own company, the year
"Scooby-Doo, Where Are You" was first produced. One
of my earliest clients was Ken Snyder, who had
produced Roger Ramjet. He was selling several shows
to the networks in that period (late 1968 early
1969). One was a show based on Mattel's new toy Hot
Wheels, another was a show he called Spook-Out. The
original drawings for the sales-pitch presentation
I saw but had no hand in creating. It starred a
group of teens based loosely on the long-successful
Archie comic book characters:- Spook-Out featured a
handsome hero, a pretty girl, a goofey hippy kid
and a smart girl in glasses. They had a big dog, a
Great Dane, who could barely speak (like many a 6
year old) who was a big scaredy-cat until the chips
were really down. They went around the country in a
colorful '60's van solving ghost problems.
The networks bought the Hot Wheels idea from Ken
Snyder, but for reasons long forgotten (though I
suspect it was doubts about Ken's ability to
produce) the Spook-Out idea was shopped by the
network to Hanna Barbera. Iwoa Takamato and Joe
Barbera redesigned everything, creating Scooby-Doo
as everyone knows him, but the basic idea was
Spook-Out. In those days the words Love-In, sit-in,
drop-out etc were the latest vogue, very hip,
up-to-date -- hence Spook-Out.
I have no documented proof of the veracity of this
story, just my memory, so my story must be taken as
just the memories of an old man, which is all they
are. Ken Snyder himself later became a close friend
and business colleague of mine through the 1970's.
I did some storyboard work for Scooby-Doo on a
free-lance basis that first season in 1969, and
subsequently did storyboards for the show in later
years. I rarely got credits in those days. For some
reason I believed credits were of no importance
whatsoever. The animation business was small and
everybody knew everybody, including what they did.
My company also did several Hot Wheels shows that
year, a show that ended with great troubles because
they were accused of being long commercials for a
toy, which they indubitably were.
Running Scooby Group
On what
episodes did you work, and on what scenes?
No clue as to
what shows. It was a TV show and as such it all
just runs together in one's mind. I remember every
scene I did in Yellow Submarine, that was a feature
film, but hardly anything on the TV Beatles, or
Scooby-Doo. I just remember going to some trouble
drawing a spooky old house once, and I always
enjoyed planning scenes when Scooby got scared...
What were exactly your assignments?
With what members of the crew did you work more
particularly?
Storyboarding. Just storyboarding
FYI
-- Like the plans for building a house that show
plumbers where to lay pipes and glassiers where to
put windows etc, a storyboard is the plan of how
everything in the film being made will work, and
from which everyone must refer. I was attracted to
the job because I believed doing storyboards was
the job that really directed an animated film.
I suppose I worked closest with Bill Hanna, but
also Iwoa. Yet I did not work in the studio but out
of my own studio a mile or soo away on Laurel
Canyon Blvd Studio City.
Can you
tell me about you about your first meeting and your
relation ship with Jack Hanna and Joe Barbera?
I really liked Bill Hanna and had very little
contact with Joe Barbera. I first met Bill Hanna in
early 1967. I had to deliver a message to Bill for
Eric Porter Productions in Australia, a company
that was bidding for sub contract production. After
I did so Bill asked me if I wanted a job. I did. He
helped get me through all the government rigmarole.
I enjoyed Iwoa's company, and greatly admired his
draughtsmanship. I always felt a little
uncomfortable around Joe, don't know why, but very
much liked his daughter Jane who was a great
organizer, v efficient.
Do you have
any dogs? What race? Do you like Dashunds?
Love
Dachshunds. Why? Don't much like Great Danes. A
friend had one, lovely dog but disobedient and a
bit dim...maybe it was the owner? We always had my
wife's favorite, Golden Retrievers.
Are
there any characters from the Scooby Doo series you
feel rather close to? If yes, who? Why?
This is actually a
great question -- I have sometimes felt extra
sympathy for characters sometimes in a very
personal and mostly secret way. For almost 10 years
I did almost all of the storyboards for the Smurfs
and really grew to love poor Brainy Smurf.
Inexplicable. The character was a pompous ass, but
I secretly felt great empathy for him...I've never
admitted this before :) There are others. George
Jetson's boss, can't remember his name now. Loved
the brat Angelica in the Rugrats.
The teens in Scooby left me a bit cold, they were
designed to appeal to tweens, not grown men. Scooby
himself carries the day on that show, especially
his inability to express himself...
What
did you have to do? What could you do? And what
couldn't you do? (in other words, what were the
limits of your creativity/imagination within that
frame?)
Technical stuff, multiple exposure stuff,
computer-generated stuff, lab work. Bottom lights,
top lights, they're all Greek to me. Sort of Greek,
anyway.
SUCCESSES IN ANIMATED SERIES
In the early 1980s, he drew a
majority of the storyboards for Hanna-Barbera’s hit
series The Smurfs, including the Emmy-award winning
Smurfolympics special. Also during the ‘80s,
Campbell was a storyboard artist for The Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles and numerous other hit shows
of the era, including Flintstones, Jetsons, Captain
Caveman, Scooby-Doo and many other shows. The 1990s
took Ron Campbell to Disney TV Animation where he
was responsible for animation direction on Bonkers,
Goof Troop, and Darkwing Duck. He also spent much
of the decade storyboarding for Klasky-Csupo’s The
Rugrats, Rocket Power, and the bizare adult
cartoon, Duckman. During that time, he was
nominated for an Emmy for a storyboard for Ahh!
Real Monsters.
The Big Chase # 26
RECENT PRODUCTIONS
Still working today (old
animators just fade away), he is currently
animation directing episodes of Ed, Edd, and Eddy,
a mad-cap cartoon series for TV produced by AKA
Cartoons in Canada.
Since 'retiring', Ron
Campbell has been doing Pop Art paintings often
based on the cartoon shows he has helped create in
one capacity or another, and has been showing his
work on the Beatles TV cartoons and The Yellow
Submarine in galleries around the country. His Pop
Art Beatles work sell in galleries internationally
and all over the USA.
Owner of and
president of Filmsense, Inc., Mr. Campbell
has been a force in the field of animation
for the past four decades and is currently
directing episodes of Cartoon Network's Ed,
Edd and Eddy after having finished work on
the storyboards for Stuart Little II.
Campbell began his animation career in the
early 1960s animating Beetle Bailey, Krazy
Kat and Cool McCool for King Features as well
as The Saturday Morning Beetles. He is one of
a handful of animators who worked on both the
film Yellow Submarine and TV series, The
Saturday Morning Beetles. Campbell went on to
write and produce cartoons for the Children's
Television Workshop, the progenitor of Sesame
Street on PBS. As president and founder of
Ron Campbell Films from 1973 to 1978,
Campbell, in 1976, won his first Emmy Award
and a John Foster Peabody Award for Best
Children's Show for his production of The Big
Blue Marble. After this and during the 1980s,
Campbell drew the majority of the storyboards
for Hanna-Barbera's The Smurfs, including
creating the character of Papa Smurf.
Smurfolympics brought Campbell his second
Emmy Award. He also contributed to the
success of that '80s phenomenon, The Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles. The 1990s found
Campbell working at Disney TV Animation where
he was responsible for animation direction
for Bonkers, Goof Troop and Darkwing Duck. As
a noted storyboard artist throughout his
career, he also contributed to the
Klasky-Czupo Nickelodeon shows, The Rugrats,
Rocket Power and Duckman. During this decade,
Campbell received an Emmy nomination for his
storyboard work on Ahh! Real Monsters.
Married since 1962 to Engelina, Campbell and
his wife moved to the United States in 1967
and became citizens in 1976. They make their
home in the American southwest.
Can you tell me about the
different techniques you used? How long did
you spend on a drawing? On one episode? How
many drawings do you think you've drawn as an
animator? (Thousands, millions?)
The work I did on Scooby-Doo was all in
pencil. Primarily storyboard work, but I do
recall animating some in the early seventies
and I think my studio, Ron Campbell Films
Inc., might have sub-contracted some too, but
memory fails me here. I could be mistaken.
As an animator one works primarily drawing
what we call 'roughs', which is a loose rough
drawing possibly in blue pencil that is
'cleaned up' by an assistant animator in
preparation for 'inbetween' drawings being
drawn by assistants or inbetweeners.
Storyboarding in those days was a lot less
detailed than storyboards are done today,
with a lot less attention to drawing 'on
model' or even to scale. This was possible
because we did careful and complete layout
drawings in preparation for the animator.
Much of this work is now done today by the
storyboard artist.
For an animator to calculate the number of
drawings he has done in his career is to ask
him to first take a fistfull of Aspirin. It
doesn't bear thinking about unless one is
ready for the loony-bin. How can one do so
many drawings and still live? You must
calculate not just the number of inbetween
drawings you did while learning to animate,
you must also calculate the uncountable
number of drawings you did as an aninimator
and the even more uncountable number of
drawings you did that you had to throw away.
Then there is the complexity of the drawings.
For example, the first job I ever had when
first hired as an inbetweener was to do
hundred of inbetweens of a caterpiller dying
from a bug spray, each drawing had a
caterpiller with a hundred legs and each leg
had to be drawn...one at a
time...carefully...
No. The question is unfair, and cruel, and I
shall discuss the matter no more.
Are you still in contact with
some people of the Scooby Doo Team?
All my friends and many colleagues are dead
or long since retired and disappeared into
the wide open spaces of the American West.
Write to Gerard Baldwin he might have some
memories especially of the Smurfs (I worked
with him on that) and perhaps he did stuff on
Scooby. He might know others because he
worked in the studio much more than I did as
I had my own studio through a lot of this
time period.
What persons did you meet that
influenced or impressed you the most,
personally and professionally?
Can you tell me about your work for
Disney (Bonkers, Goof Troop, Darkwing Duck)?
Was the work there different from the other
studios? Why?
Iwoa I had a lot of respect for, and
Bill Hanna of course. Nick Nichols rates very
high in my esteem and I worked with him at
Disney's also, on Darkwing Duck. Bob Dranko
was a great talent as a designer, and Cliff
Roberts was brilliant as an ideas man and
writer. Piere Culliford was a terrific artist
(Peyo, creator of the Smurfs) and a very
creative mind, and Yvan Delport was just this
side of brilliant if you reserve the word
brilliant for people like Einstein and Sir
Isaac Newton. Shall I go on? I forgot to
mention you Bernard, sorry. And Duane. Then
there is Fred Crippen and Fred Calvert, and
Phil Mendez and ... Norm and Al and Phil and
Barry and and on and on....
When I ponder these old friends of mine I
grow wistful, and wonder at my luck at what
good friends and colleagues I have had...
Not much difference in the studios. It's
always people who made the films for TV and
the people often went from one studio to the
next as projects were born or died.
Yesterday
This is an original painted drawing by Ron
Campbell framed with vintage 45 rpmrecords and
signed by Ron Campbell. The records are "I Want
To Hold Your Hand" and "Yesterday"
How did you manage to
weave yourself within the spirit of all these
series, that are so different? Did you have
any "Bible"? How did you work with execs and
producers?
Every show has a 'bible' which is a guide
that disparate writers must have to bring
them all together writing about the same
characters. Some shows one avoids because of
personal inadequacies or even disdain, but if
one is out of work one soon drops disdain and
gets off the high horse. On the other hand I
managed to work mostly on shows I loved,
frequently giving up almost a decade of life
for each. Such is the life of an old
animation hack in Hollywood.
Never met a producer I didn't like. I was
myself a producer, producing the animation
for the children's TV show The Big Blue
Marble, and other things.
What was the importance of
music (score) in your work? In humor? In
emotions?
VERY IMPORTANT especially in the Big Blue
Marble.
Do you have favorite composers you
worked with? Would you please share some
memories with us?
It is many years now since I worked directly
with musicians, and when I did so it was as a
producer/director. Music for children is a
wonderful field for musicians and a master of
the form was a friend of mine (if I can drop
a name) now passed, Joe Repozo, whom I first
met while doing early Sesame Street shows. He
composed the opening song to Sesame Street, a
tune played on TV here in the USA every day
for over thirty years now. He later did the
music for us on a French/Canadian film I was
line-producing called Smoggies, a show
created by another friend just this side of
genius, Gerry Potterton of Quebec. Like Woody
Allen's girlfriend in Manhattan, I seem to
know a lot of geniusus...
I fondly remember producing a rock opera for
the story of King Midas with the golden
touch, kissing his daughter good morning he
reacts in horror, singing to a rock beat:
"Oh, No!- What is this?- I have a golden
daughter with just one kiss!!" Lyrics by
Cliff Roberts, music and sung by Ted Neeley
who had just played Jesus in Norman Jewison's
film Jesus Christ Superstar. For some reason
I still smile at those silly little words
that seemed to tell the whole story...
Yellow Submarine
This is an original painted drawing by Ron
Campbell framed with a vintage 45 rpmrecord
and signed by Ron Campbell.Multiple Emmy
Award-winning animation director, Ron
Campbell was born in Seymore, Victoria,
Australia in 1939.
What was the importance of music
(score) in your work? In humor? In emotions?
The Beatles were important in my
early work, as I directed many episodes of
the TV show in the early sixties and also
segments called 'sing-alongs' -- bouncing
ball stuff to early Beatles songs. I remember
I Want To Hold Your Hand depicted as an
octopus holding the Beatles wearing diving
suits playing the song
underwater...bizarre....
What would you suggest/advice
young artists you want to succeed in the
animation business? What training, what kind
of personality.... Would you encourage them
to do this job?
Young animator:- No matter how much your
computers can do for you, learn to draw,
paint, and design...study the masters and the
moderns, read every day, study film, all
kinds of film good bad and indifferent, but
above all study literature.
Have you any projects
to come?
Would that I did, but time has
passed me by and I find peace now in painting
Pop Art based on shows I have in one capacity
or another had a hand in making. People like
to sell them and buy them, and I like to
paint them. We are all happy.
What are the three questions
you’d like to be asked, and what would be
your answers?
And what are the three questions you wouldn’t
to be asked, and why?
This is a cute question. You want me to ask
the questions AND give the answers??? Where
did you get the idea for this question? The
Devil?
You are invited to Google
'Ron Campbell Animation Art' to see some of that
work.
ACCUEIL
