Hey Larry,

It just hit me that I forgot to reply to your e-mail. I am a student in character animation - currently enrolled in AnimationMentor.com - and am mostly into the more commercial disney-esque animation. But that`s mainly due to the great animation and, in the ones I like, involving storylines. But I`m also a fan of the fantastic art direction in a lot of alternative animation, that, once again in the ones I like, exceeds the more commercial field by far. Unfortunately, I haven`t seen too much of that, and that`s why I try to keep up with blogs like cartoonbrew.com, which often give links to some of the good alternative shorts.

About Raoul Servais . . . you`re right, he was a quite important animator. I forgot how he actually got into the field, but I believe he had been experimenting with it in his youth, and later got the opportunity to do something with it, instead of decorating rooms. I should check the DVD I`ve bought about him. Or you could also check www.raoulservais.be, which has a long biography on it. In the beginning, his films had more of a comedy feel, but later he went on to do very surreal pieces of art. That might have had something to do with him having worked with Henri Matisse, on a big wall painting project in a Belgian casino. In his career he won many awards, among which Annecy awards, Palme d`Or`s, and many others, and he made one feature film as well, called Taxandria, which was a live-action/animation mix and flopped. In 1963 he founded the first animation school of the European continent at the Royal Acadamy of Fine Arts Ghent, which is only a few miles away from where I live and some of his work has been shown in many museum all over the world, such as the MoMA in NY and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. And, on a minor note, he happened to be President of ASIFA from 1985 till 1994 ;-).

So like I said before, there`s much more information about him at www.raoulservais.be, but maybe it`s even better to check out some of his work. Many of his shorts are available at Atomfilms: Raoul Servais
I urge you to check them out, they`re fantastic. Some of them are a bit slow, but others are just amazing. My personal favorite is To Speak Or Not To Speak, a political satire, which is also one of my favorite animated short films ever.

I hope you`ll enjoy it,

- Benjamin

¶ 7:00 AM