There's a new animation blog I want to recommend to you by a great animator, John Celestri.
John the Animator Guy
John started his animation career in his native New York City (working on the Richard Williams' feature film "Raggedy Ann & Andy", among other things) then spent several years at the Nelvana studio in Toronto as a supervising animator on Nelvana's ambitious first feature film , "Rock & Rule", as well the Nelvana television specials such as "The Devil and Daniel Mouse", "Intergalactic Thanksgiving" , "Easter Fever" (which he was also a Sequence Director on) , among others. I don't think these Nelvana specials run on TV anymore , but I'll tell you as someone who was a teenager interested in getting into animation at that time: in the vast wasteland that was television animation in the 1970's these fully-animated specials by Nelvana were a bright standout , which inspired people like me with the thought that "hey, it is possible to still do full animation today, it's not just all in the past".
*ADD ON: Thank you to the Anonymous commenter who posted this in the comments :
"On the old Animation Nation discussion board (which used to have many pros posting as members of the board) Dave Brewster (who is also a very fine animator) posted something about Celestri:
"He went off to pursue other things but he is one of the few animators I consider up there with James Baxter and Glen Keane. During Rock & Rule he did some of the best animation ever. Feature animation suffered a huge loss when he stepped out of the spotlight. More than just dwell on the past I pine for what could have been."
After a long stretch in the Hollywood animation industry John moved back east to work as a freelancer from his home studio. He and his wife Cathie have also teamed up to write a series of mystery novels. Currently John is the Directing Animator and VP of Grace Animation Studios in Danville, Kentucky .
On the blog John is sharing his thoughts on animation technique, scriptwriting, the relationship between art and commerce , among other topics.
Check it out !
