Photos
Here are some shots of my life and career
that you won't see in the book.
But I've also included some of the photos from the book...in COLOR!
That's me with my ponytail and Ford Falcon van parked on Hollywood Boulevard in March of 1975. I'm heading to Chuck Jones' office! Alas, he didn't hire me.
My first job in Hollywood was at SPUNGBUGGY WORKS on Sunset Boulevard. That's me front left, and Auril Pebley, our masterful inker, right/center.
The backyard premiere of my educational film MAKING CHANGE FOR A DOLLAR. This started my tradition of projecting 16mm animated films on a bedsheet. No video then!
Here are the RATS thirty years later, still trouble.
L-R: Dan Haskett, Henry Selick, Jerry Rees, me, Brad Bird, and John Musker.
Finally, my dream job: Disney Animation! My fateful roomates, the RAT'S NEST: L-R, Jerry Rees, Dan Haskett, me, Henry Selick, John Musker, and Brad Bird.
Cutting my cake at my farewell party when I left Disney to work at LIsberger Studios.
And here's the cake, caricature of me drawn by the master caricaturist, John Musker!
John Musker makes sure I am cutting the cake correctly.
The wrap party for ANIMALYMPICS, directed by Steve Lisberger. I'm sitting between my fellow Rat Brad Bird and my new bride, Sue Kroyer.
When I returned to Disney to work on TRON, Jerry Rees and I became the first and only Disney animators to have a computer! One computer - the Chromatics.
At the VES Awards with my two mentors of Visual Effects; the legendary Richard Edlund and my close friend Richard Taylor, the genius behind the unmistakable look of TRON.
Me in my room at Rhythm & Hues Studios.
I spent 11 years in that room, where we had some pretty fun blacklight parties...
I'm pictured with my extremely talented R&H roommates Doug Juhn and Mike Meeker. The lesson here: don't let VFX artists take your picture.
As Director of Digital Arts at the Dodge College of Film at Chapman University, I helped design our home for the animation department, the Digital Media Arts Center (DMAC). Jen Re is cutting the ribbon!
When R&H sent me to India to train animators, I got to know the managers of an orphanage near my bungalow on Mahd Island North of Mumbai. Sue and I did a fundraiser at our Christmas party and financed new, modern bathrooms.
When our student Daniel Drummond won Chapman's very first Student Academy Award, the whole department celebrated. I loved this shot because it conveyed how everyone, from Freshman to new alumni, felt part of our animation "tribe". That's me in front of the blue monitor screen.
I took my students to a lot of Academy events. On the night we celerated the nominees for BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM they got to meet the eventual Oscar winners: Kobe Bryant and Glen Keane.
At Kroyer Films, Sue was a Sequence Director, head of the Design team, one-person HR Department - and animator! Here she is deciding that she needs a smalller pencil to erase an errant line.
As you'll read throughout my book, from the time we hired him as a young animator to his very last moments, our lives and careers were blessedly, indelibly entwined with animation's greatest Production Designer, Ralph Eggleston.
As a Governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences I hosted a lot of Academy events, and produced a series of public programs about how the digital age was changing the industry.
Every year we would take a "team picture" of the Academy Governors. That's me in the third row, standing next to Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to win the Oscar for Directing.
Governors meet a lot of celebs at Academy events. Here I am with PIXAR founder and my fellow nominee John Lasseter, hugging the voice of Gollum, Andy Serkis.
You may not recognize him, but I was very proud to meet a recipient of our newly created GOVERNORS AWARD, the legendary stunt man Hal Needham.
Sue and I hired Rich Moore right out of Cal Arts, and what a career! He directed WRECK-IT RALPH, ZOOTOPIA, and has won (to date) three Emmys and an Oscar.
Posing with the beautiful Rachel Weisz and her husband, 007.
PIXAR's current CEO, the multi-Oscar winner Pete Docter.
Brad Bird and I having a little fun admiring the statue just won by Jean De Jardin for THE ARTIST.
My friend Matt Shumway was nominated for creating the CG bear that ripped up Leonardo Di Caprio in THE REVENANT. Remarkable how far CG animation had advanced since Block Woman!
Hanging with, among others, Alfonso Cuaron, Richard Edlund, and, in the blue shirt, animation's favorite writer and critic, Leonard Maltin.
With Matthew Modine
(my doppelganger?)
Sue and I had many happy memories standing at our front door and greeting our friends who came to "the party".
The somewhat legendary KROYER CHRISTMAS PARTY. What started as an intimate seasonal get-together for close friends remained a seasonal get-together for close friends, but over forty years we were blessed to make a lot of friends. It became the animation party of the year, and featured "the toast", where Sue and I memorialized the year, lifted our glasses , and made everyone drink a shot of Akavit.
Here are some photos from the book...
in color!
THE RATS - then and now
Me in 1982 in my TRON helmet.
My Disney farewell party, with future
PIXAR CEO Joihn Lasseter center, enjoying cake!
Me in front of the Chromatics 9000, the one and only computer we had at Disney to create the CG animation on TRON. And it didn't do much: it simply displayed still vector images. Of course, the subcontractor companies had their computers.
The room in TECHNOLOGICAL THREAT that we modeled after Frank LLoyd Wright's "Great Room" at Johnson's Wax HQ in Racine, Wisconson.
The HARD WOMAN video we did at Digital Productions for Mick Jagger had many technical innovations, not least of whcih being rendered on the world's fastest computer, the CRAY-XMP.
Our FERNGULLY crew on the scouting trip to Australia. Our base camp was a group of beachside cabins in Byron Bay. Ralph Eggleston is seated lower right, and Vicky Jensen, future Director of SPELLBOUND is seated to his right.
Our wonderful FERNGULLY Crew, standing in front of our home base, the old Stroh's Brewery in Van Nuys, California. We had 190 people there, with other smaller crews in Toronto and Copenhagen. Our Ink and Paint was done in Korea and Taiwan, making it a truly international production.
It was always fun to take my students to Academy events, and it was rather special to meet Kobe Bryant and Glen Keane when they were nominated for DEAR BASKETBALL.
There is no arguement that Dick Williams was one of the greatest animators of all time. He and his wife Mo are pictured here at St. James Palace on our way to meet Prince Charles.
June Foray (lower right) was our "Queen" of animation, one of the greatest voice actors and champion of the animation branch. Bob and Cima Balser were legendary animation artists whose undying enthusiasm for the art was inspiratiional.
When Prince Charles, the future King of England, threw a party for British Oscar winners, he invited the Academy governors. It was quite the thrill to see the stars of show biz royalty in the presence of real royalty.
You will also get no arguement that Hayao Miyazaki is another of the world's greatest animators. I met him at the Governor's Awards, but it was a magical moment of my life to stand beside him at his fabled drawing desk at Studio Ghibli in Tokyo.
Not in the book, but kind of a cool shot of me in front of a real TRON Lightcycle.
Our dear friend Ralph Eggleston was a huge part of our lives. He passed in 2022, and not a day goes by that we don't think of him.