21
Photo: Douglas M. Parker
3
Jack), Lauren Faust (My Little Pony) and Jorge Gutierrez (El Tigre). Bursting onto the scene next, over the past decade, was a fresh group of animation trend-setters, with Alex Hirsch (Gravity Falls), Pen Ward (Adventure Time), J.G. Quintel (Regular Show) and Daron Nefcy (Star and the Forces of Evil), among others. The live-action programs launched a succession of practitioners in experimental
3 Mike Kelley, More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid, 1987, mixed media, 96 x 127 x 5 in., and The Wages of Sin, 1987, mixed media, 52 x 23 x 23 in. Installation view, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles. Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
film (William E. Jones, Deborah Stratman, Rodney Evans, Naomi Uman, Robert Fenz, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Natasha Mendonca), documentary (Travis Wilkerson, Bill Brown, Lee Ann Schmitt), and independent narrative cinema (Aurora Guerrero, Eliza Hittman, Mike Ott, Tariq Tapa). Marked by a high degree of inventiveness in their respective genres, their achievements on the festival circuit and in the
4
© Nickelodeon
a breadth of artistic output unmatched by any other film school. The gamut ran from hand-painted 16mm film and stop-motion to the newest in digital video and CG animation, from lyrical reveries to harrowing historical investigations. In 2006 this creative diversity went on view at MoMA with the sweeping retrospective Tomorrowland: CalArts in Moving Pictures. “CalArts was one of the few schools in the country that excelled in making the transition to digital,” says curator Joshua Siegel. “Whether it was in experimental documentary or animation, the filmmakers managed to retain a distinctiveness when the medium was moving into something potentially more generic; they made the work tactile and vibrant, kinetic and singular.” Just as the Pixar and Disney feature film units were kicking into high gear, a new wave of CalArts animation artists arrived on the small screen in the role of show creators and developers—artists who had learnt how to marshal the elements of story animation into a compelling whole, shaping it from a unique, often personal point of view. They included Stephen Hillenburg (SpongeBob SquarePants), Craig McCracken (The Powerpuff Girls, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends), Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai
4 First broadcast in 1999, Stephen Hillenburg’s beloved series SpongeBob SquarePants is the highest-rated program in Nickelodeon history.
SPRING 2016