The June Foray Award, aptly name for a lady who has done so much for animation, is an award for service to the art of animation. Mark Kausler is an animators animator and an obsessive animated film collector, historian, and animation preservationist. Animation is like breathing to him, he can`t get along without it and the animation world is better because of this.

I just got a Christmas card from Mark so it seems like a good time to talk about why Mark is deserving of this year`s June Foray Award. Even as we speak, Mark is hard at work on his sequel to last year`s charming short animation It`s the Cat.

Mark has been quietly going about the art of animation since he was 12 years old and his father made him his first animation camera stand. His first professional job was an advertising animation job for which he was paid in animation cels that he could then use for his own projects. This strange, but satisfying, form of payment was mainly because he was far too young to be working.

He came out to California to visit friends and was given work in the animation field that turned his vacation into a career move. He has worked professionally on many of the great animation films of the last 30 years. Often his involvement in these films has gone uncredited because of his early career decision to work freelance, more money, less credit.

While working in the field during his first days in California he went to school at Chouinard Art Institute (now Cal Arts) back when student films had a budget. When he found out that other students were not taking advantage of their film budgets he cornered them and talked them out of their unused funds so that he could increase the production values of his own films.

The Cat, as seen on his Christmas card above, is returning to the film world with a new girlfriend and a dose of the green-eyed jealousy set to music. There is a refreshing 30s feel to his cat animations which is animated to the beat of the music. As everybody knows, you don`t make money making short animation so there has to be another reason. It is an act of love and obsession, a driven act.

Mark is no stranger to independent animation having been involved with independent animation from the days of Marv Newland. Nor is he a stranger to anyone involved in the history of animation or animated film preservation.

His privately maintained animation film library has been the source of many and many an animated film project. His unpaid involvement fills the commentary tracks of many a DVD, and his knowledge of the history of our field fills in gaps in many of the standard books in the field.

And then there are the screenings that he puts on and the screenings that other people put on using Mark`s films. The list of projects that owe their very existence to Mark and his collection are endless. When faced with questions of involvement in animation projects his first concerned is always the wellbeing and availability to the viewing public of animated films.  ¶ 1:26 PM