Currently Listening to: The Animation Podcast

I’ve been meaning to post this for a long time, but since seeing WALL•E I figured now was the time. Back in 2005, I came across The Animation Podcast via Drawn!, but being the busy college student I was, I only listened to a few episodes. At the beginning of this summer, I rediscovered it and have since listened to all 25+ episodes that I missed. What a treat! If you’re an animation and film history buff like me, then I highly recommend it.

Clay Kaytis interviews some of the biggest and best animators working in the field today. His thought-provoking questions and casual format covers a wide range of topics such as how each animator got their start, to the backstory behind each film, as well as technical topics specific to the animation process and a few prerecorded lectures given by various members of Disney’s 9 Old Men (so far Milt Kahl with the promise of more to come). The approx. hour show kind of reminds me of Robert Osborne, but for animation. Although he’s mainly focused on Disney animators thus far, he’s also interviewed Ray Harryhausen, etc. 

Personally, my favorite episodes are his interviews with James Baxter. I think if I had been born just a decade earlier, I would have been an animator for the very reason Baxter loves hand-drawn so much: the trick of bringing drawings to life is just simply amazing. It was great to hear him discuss his fascination with it, and it really got me interested all over again in the process of it. (Oh, how I wish I could be a professional student! ha!)

Anyways, head over to the site and check it out! And Clay, thanks for such a great program.

Tags | Disney, film history, James Baxter, Milt Kahl, Ray Harryhausen, Robert Osborne