'ANIMATION ME'

My memoirs as a traditional, hand-drawn, 2D animator.

As a great number of my animation clan have asked me to share more about my work and career, I’ve decided to write a memoir about my life, experiences and the past/present/future in traditional hand-drawn animation - ‘ANIMATION ME’. It will be the second in my ‘This is Me’ memoir series - the first is already published, ‘Astrological Me’, with two more books yet to come. Here’s the provisional cover for the current one…

Do you like the cover design? Do you not like the cover design? Please write and let me know.

Hopefully ‘Animation Me’ will be out in early 2025 - although ‘Paid Subscribers’ to this Substack page will be able to read exclusive advance chapters ahead of time, and see my Arnie illustrations, when and as I create them. Paid Subscribers will also get a free, signed print copy of the book when its published. So, if you don’t want to miss out and have access to all these sneak peeks as I do them - from this book and all my future books in the series too - you should definitely click the button below to become a Paid Subcriber…

I have to be honest when I say that it’s very strange to be reminiscing on a life & career that spans over 50 years. Where does the time go! The bulk of those years were spent in London - starting out at the Halas & Batchelor Studio, then at the Richard Williams Studio (as his own person apprentice and later as a director/animator there) as well as through my own award-winning studio, Animus Production, for a further 20 years. These were my golden days of 2D animation as far as I am concerned.

Receiving my BAFTA from Princess Anne in 1978 - with my impulsive muse ‘Arnie’ intruding, as ever!

Even weirder is the fact that having now lived far away from all that, for over 26 years in Seattle, when I squeeze out all those past memories from my brain, it almost feels as if those days and the people in them are so real in my mind that all I have to do is hop on a plane and rejoin them just like old times. Of course, I know that this is not possible - with some of them even passed on sadly - yet so intense are the memories at times that it actually does feel that way. One way or another however, I fully intend to share many amazing moments in my life and career with the readers of ‘Animation Me’.

Another fantasy that will also rear its ugly head in ‘Animation Me’ is the one where my imaginary muse, mentor and general pain-in-the-butt, ‘Arnie’, will actually muscle-in and have his own say about things. I wish he wouldn’t do it to be honest. But he’s become extremely outspoken and rebellious of late, so there’s actually very little I can do about it to stop him.

Anyway, to kickstart things, here’s the introductory opening for ‘Animation Me’, so that Paid Subscribers can get a feel of where I’m going with it all...