Content 3 News AWG News The Single Women .................................. 5 AWG News .............................................. 32 News from ASIFA National Groups ......... 33 If it Ain’t Broke: Contemporary Uses of Traditional Techniques .............................................. 11 Interviews Contact Information SCRATCH, CRACKLE & POP! An Interview with Contact Information ................................. 48 Steven Woloshen .................................... 13 Dave Cox: Toronto Independent Animation Pioneer .................................................... 19 Riho Unt Talks The Master ...................... 25 Climbing Over the Garden Wall: A Conversation with Patrick McHale ................................. 28 ASIFA Magazine Credits Editor: Vice President of Communications: Design: Chris Robinson Mohamed Ghazala Monica Bruenjes Kara Miller Contributors: Ray Kosarin, Richard O’Connor, Keltie Duncan, Crystal Chan, Kelly Gallagher, Jeannette Bonds, Patrick Jenkins © 2016 ASIFA - prior written approval must be obtainedt to duplicate any and all content. The copyrights and trademarks of images featured herein are the property of their respective owners. ASIFA acknowledges the creators and copyright holders of the materials mentioned herein, and does not seek to infringe on those rights. 4 Letter from the ASIFA Treasurer What ASIFA has Meant to Me I frst got involved in my local ASIFA chapter in 2009, as part of my desire to support the amazing animation community in Portland, Oregon. I greatly appreciate that ASIFA gives chapters the autonomy and fexibility to manage their own activities and membership, while ofering a large support network. Over the years, my involvement in the international organization has grown and evolved, culminating in my recent election to the role of Treasurer. ASIFA has always been a place to share my love of ani- mation with like-minded people, and has created countless opportunities for me to meet and connect with animators and animation-lovers all over the world. It is an amazing resource for learning, sharing, and growing the art and the business of animation. The people I have met through ASIFA have been fascinat- ing people to chat with at a festival, after a screening, or over a cocktail, and many of them have become deep and life-long friends. ASIFA members are not only artists and writers and animators and academics, but they are people who care about each other, who devote time and energy and resources to sharing with and supporting each other. They represent the very best of the anima- tion world, and I am honored to participate in such a wonderful group. The role of Treasurer may seem like a boring but necessary job. However, I see it as a signif- cant opportunity to provide the concrete, meaningful tools necessary for the organization to meet our goals and fulfll our mission. I want to continue the fantastic work of my predecessors, while working to make the association more efective and more transparent. I also hope to use the role to build a greater sense of community and connectedness among our chapters. I have a lot to learn in order to get up to speed and be fully efective, and I am looking forward to growing in the role. And I am always willing to listen to any questions or concerns, or just to say hi. Please feel free to contact me at [email protected] News 5 The Single Woman Writer/Director Signe Baumane, praying to the ancient Latvian gods of flm. By Richard O’Connor and the ridges of Staten Island “I know what is wrong with my try their best impersonation of flm,” she starts, sounding as if Signe’s World a Mediterranean coastal town. this train of thought will ride for Head against the window, a hours. “There is too much voice A person who spends four slight twist of the neck brings over. Everyone tells me this, years making a flm about sui- Manhattan into view. Brimming and I know it, but that is how cide and depression might be and boiling, even on the most I’ve done it. It is about depres- expected to live at the edge of pacifc day, the rolling water sion. Worst of all, it is anima- the world. draws all the attention. This tion about serious things. I see same river lured Spalding Gray what they don’t like. I see what Not exactly the end of civiliza- after years of resistance -his upsets them about it. The voice tion, Signe Baumane’s work- humor no longer strong enough over is huge problem. But that shop overlooks the anchor point to resist the water’s leaden is how it happened, that’s the of a short pier where the East swirl. Now it wraps around this flm I wanted to make.” River rejoins the Hudson in warehouse joining the ever New York Harbor. From her sev- present gulls in a white noise Rocks in My Pockets is narrated enth foor perch, the Verrazano soundtrack. by Signe herself, Latvian accent Bridge dominates the horizon and everything. Her voice foats 6 over the picture -thousands of loved. Within the flm, one might “I’m a loner,” she insists, “I feel drawings from her own hand- wonder if these are variations comfortable being alone.” She sometimes commenting on on the same thing - the pull might attract a crowd of enthu- the action, sometimes adding of two directions - the desire siasts while out on the town, detail and sometimes wander- to be a wife versus the desire but her return to the solitary ing altogether elsewhere. It’s to escape, to disappear yet to harbor view comes as soon easy to see how this concoction survive. as she fnds an escape. Per- could overpower an audience. haps it’s that space in between, The flm is like standing under Her self-portrait on screen, the anonymous hours on the a waterfall. Until technology while no doubt authentic, subway, where the burden of catches up with science fction, doesn’t fully connect with what the past and the weight of the until there’s a device that will can best be described as Sig- future sink onto the nickel-rub- allow one person to step inside ne’s impressive social bearing. bing present. Isn’t this where all another’s head, rare flms like Gracious, opinionated, forth- Americans - 20 year transplants this may be the closest thing to right, engaging. Few animators like Signe, and native born rummaging through a stranger’s have the developed and refned alike - live their lives? Riding brain -family heirlooms, histori- interpersonal skills that Signe the highway between where cal artifacts, old trophies, books Baumane has. She will spot a they were and where they think and boxes too precious to toss young animator shyly sipping they want to be. Encased in but stashed away not important from a Solo cup, take them by an anonymous cocoon of steel enough for daily use. the hand and proudly introduce and glass, by themselves in the midst of thousands, where one slight move in the proper direction could bring it all to a glorious conclusion. Signe’s under- ground pas- sage from the Manhat- tan canyons (and center of social “My grandmother must be at the center of my brain. She is standing confused in the water, not understanding why she doesn’t sink. I think like her, I want to survive - but I don’t want to live.” life, even for the ani- Conundrums beat the pulse them around the room going mators who can’t aford to live of Rocks in My Pockets, none person-to-person with a sales there) takes her underneath the more central than the divergent pitch that would catch P. T. Bar- World Trade Center, below the desires to disappear or to be num’s attention. East River, passed the billion 7 techniques learned while work- ing with Bill Plympton after her emigration to New York from Latvia, the flm required 30 to 60 drawings to be created each day. Signe drew every frame, and worked with her three assistants to digitally color and composite them. Becoming an animator The typical story goes some- Signe posing with a papier maché piece of the flm’s set. thing like this: I always loved dollar home of the Brooklyn me of Saturdays) which are to draw. From an early age I Nets and one hundred blocks separated from the pornog- would draw all over everything. down Fourth Avenue. Passed raphy stores by the highway Give me a crayon or a pencil the Gowanus Canal Superfund overpass. The earth fattens, and I’d doodle dinosaurs and site where artists have recently the street widens, trafc disap- spaceships and cats and dogs settled amongst the two hun- pears. There’s a sleeping guard all over the house. My parents dred years of industrial by-prod- at the entrance to the largely even had to put butcher paper uct, passed the VFW Hall with unoccupied industrial park with on all the surfaces so I didn’t its plaque commemorating the Signe’s studio. With the river ruin the paint job. Then I saw 1st Maryland Regiment of the in view, and the world at your The Little Mermaid (or Bambi Battle of Brooklyn, passed the back - this place seems almost or Cinderella or some other Greenwood Cemetery - New liveable. such thing), I didn’t know how York’s 19th Century version of they did it - but I knew that’s Central Park where families With very little fnancial what I wanted to do. The auto- would picnic on top of the dead. resource to make Rocks In My biographical segments of Rocks Pockets, the ability to lead a in My Pockets contain sex, When the trains are running as solitary life came as a blessing. love, abortion, worry, anti-psy- planned, the trip takes over an Through much of the produc- chotic prescriptions, confusion, hour.