Bill Matthews

Bill Matthews is one of the founding instructors and founding director of the Sheridan College Animation Program and recently retired Manager of Artist Development and ongoing consultant for Walt Disney Feature Animation. Bill worked on effects animation for Disney's Sleeping Beauty and for NASA, and has been writing traditional animation curricula for public schools and colleges for twenty years.

Where were you born and what was your childhood like?

I was born in Los Angeles in 1931, and shortly after my parents separation when I was about 2 or 3, I moved with my mother and brother to Winnipeg, where I spent the early childhood. Both my parents had been born in Manitoba, Canada, so my blood line is about 50-50 Canadian and American! My teen years thru high school were spent back in Los Angeles, and shortly after our return to LA I had a stint of work in several films of the 1940-42 era as a child extra. While in high school my main interest was in photography and had hopes of one day making that a career; however the Korean War started a year after I was out of HS, and I entered the Navy, serving for 4 years. By the time I was discharged I had pretty well ruled out photography for a living, and decided to study Illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles on the G.I. Bill of Rights.

What or who were you influenced by growing up?

I think we can all point to many people we've known as we grew that in one way or another had a bearing on our thinking and living, teachers, friends, parents, and others. It goes without saying that my mother had the strongest influence on me in so many ways and kept my head above water; likewise my older brother was someone I could always go to for advice. Others whose lives and positions were ones I wanted to emulate were President Roosevelt, Walt Disney (and his work, that I followed from when I first saw "Snow White & The 7 Dwarfs" in 1938), the parents of some of my closest buddies in school and beyond, and others.

How did your animation career start? Give a brief overview of whole career since then.

Believe it or not, even though I dreamed as a kid of one day working for Disney I never seriously thought it would ever happen. Even when I decided to study Illustration after I got out of the Navy, it was only a vague hope. However, I decided in the Spring of 1956 to just go out to the Studio with my portfolio and apply for a summer job to help me get thru Art Center. They told me they didn't hire part-time or summer help, but as they were looking for new trainees perhaps I'd like them to look over my portfolio for that consideration. I, of course, did....they decided what I had to show was good and offered me an entry-level Inbetween job (at that time I hadn't the foggiest idea what an "Inbetweener" was....I learned very fast!!) I thus began what I didn't know then would be a lifetime career, and love, of animation!

At the end of Sleeping Beauty nearly everyone in the studio was layed off, and so I made ends meet for the next 5 months picking up freelance work of several art and animation types...and living off of unemployment checks! Just as NASA launched us into a space race with the Soviets, it's prime contractor, the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, was likewise launched into design and development of unmanned spacecraft to explore the moon and planets, preparatory to sending a man into space. I applied at the Lab just as they were desperately looking for an artist/animator to handle the space animation for their films, made for NASA, Congress, the public, and especially for the scientists and engineers engaged in this important work. I got the job as a one-man animation department, and for the next and first decade of the space program, had the privilege of creating animation for a lot of films describing what it was like "out there", and working with some of the country's leading rocket scientists.

When the space program wound down, I knew I had to seek a new career, and once again, happened to be in the right place at the right time. I had always wanted to teach, having worked with young people in a counselling situation before. An opportunity was presented to join the faculty of a new community college in Ontario, Canada...Sheridan College, about 35 miles west of Toronto, on the shores of Lake Ontario. After a start by a fellow Californian, an animation program was started at Sheridan and I joined it for the second year. Together we began to build the first program in North America to teach professional, Hollywood-industry standards animation and production. It was set up to try and build an animation industry in Canada...and gradually, that's exactly what the graduates of the program did over the succeeding years. We got an international reputation, as the department and its faculty and student body kept growing.

After 10 wonderful years at Sheridan, during which I headed the department for 2 years, I decided to return to Southern California and re-enter the industry. For a brief time I worked at Hanna-Barbera and Filmation, but became disillusioned with the state of the art at that time and decided to switch careers again. This time I became an art director, producer of multi-image slide shows, designed brochures, created technical animation, etc. for one of the ITT firms that designed radar equipment for the world and the military and civilian air services...ITT Gilfillan. It was a different type of work but had its own challenges, and for awhile I planned to retire from it after a few years. However, fate and a couple of former Sheridan students, then Assistant Animators at Disney, entered back into my life, and convinced me that I should put my name forth to the Disney Feature Animation brass as a possible candidate to start up a training program. At that time Disney Feature Animation was a small group of artists, sort of trying to get the old spark back, and were working on a film called "Oliver & Co.". I interviewed for the position, and to my own great surprise, was invited to give it a try. This was the biggest challenge of my artistic career, for not only was I to set in place a complete training program that then didn't exist, but to work to help the veteran artists (most of whom were young and not that long out of art school themselves) keep their skills (and interest) ever sharp....and then to begin a recruitment campaign to locate new, young as well as professional talents to present for possible hiring. After a few bumpy starts the job began to fit me like a glove, and for the last decade of my professional life I built a department I and everyone are proud of at the Studio, and I can look back on it with pride knowing that so many of today's stars in the Animation firmament either were former students of mine at Sheridan or that I found and trained through our inhouse training programs. I decided to retire after 10 years back at Disney and over 40 years connected to the industry, just 5 years ago, in 1996. The studio decided they didn't want to lose a connection with me, so they put me under a contract as a Consultant, and I continue to maintain my ties with Feature Animation. It's been a very satisfying career. I also continue to mentor young kids whose talent is exceptional, work with high school kids interested in animation, and have started back teaching part time at a local college in Burbank.

What was the best project you ever worked on?

That's a tough one, as I was fortunate in being connected with so many great film projects and non-film projects, including the opportunities 4 times in my life to actually start projects which ultimately blossomed into entities that grew and developed into departments, programs, and careers for myself and others. However, if we want to select one, dealing with film animation, I would have to say that "Sleeping Beauty" served to launch me into a lifetime career in animation, and my opportunity to learn from so many "masters" on that film have continuously served to help me dare to do things throughout my career that I might not have attempted without that background. It has been called the last great feature animated fairytale of the "first Golden Age of Disney Features". That was at the beginning of the Matthews' saga...and equal to it was the opportunity to return to Disney at the end of my professional career to begin a training department, to help the current generation of artists to carry on the tradition we thought had ceased with "Sleeping Beauty", and to find the talents to keep the art of animation alive.

What was the worst project you ever worked on?

There were a few downers one experiences in every job, and I had to think hard about this one. Probably it was when I was out of work after leaving Disney at the end of "Sleeping Beauty", and I had to pick up work where and when I could get it, the industry then being in a recession. One schlock producer in Hollywood, using a polarizing technique to create dumb commercial spots for local TV stations, hired me to set up the artwork for these things...after 1 week I'd had enuff and quite...and then had to try and get paid, which at first he didn't want to do. Deadbeats in this industry are probably around today...trying to get something big for nothing...but fortunately the competition now doesn't allow for much of this. Another real low point in my life was when I came back from Canada and re-entered the industry. At first I was set to set up a new training program for Hanna-Barbera, but just as I started work there the Union went out on strike and I had to picket for 2 weeks. When I returned to work the training program idea was dead, and I was put to animating on a Scooby-Doo series, that, using a limited animation technique for a guy whose background was classical animation, was pyschologically difficult. My work was picked to pieces by a real jerk in charge of animation at that time, which did nothing for my self-respect. Needless to say I never went back to work for H&B again!

What is your favorite film?

That, too, is very difficult....don't we all have many, many 'favorite films' ? I know I certainly do. But there are some that, of course, come from my earlier era that I latched on to when I was young and the love of them has remained all my life...in other words no matter how many times I see them they still give me a lift. (Animation) "Fantasia" (influeced me the most); "Bambi"; "Pinocchio"; "Snow White"; and "Dumbo". Many more...in recent years, "Beauty & The Beast", "Aladdin", "Lion King" (Live-action) "The Great Waltz" (1938-has personal memories); "Gone With the Wind"; "How Green Was My Valley" (and most of the great films from the year 1939)

Where do you see the animation industry heading, and what you like to see happen?

I am very optimistic about the future of animation. The kids I've worked with, taught, mentored, and tried to turn on to the possibilites of this medium have themselves inspired me with their enthusiasm, commitment, drive and leadership. This is such a great generation of young artists, that I know the life of this medium will just continue to grow and lead us into new experiences on the screen (and in whatever technological medium the future has in store). It is evolving so fast that even those wise in the new technologies can't quite keep up with it. It's a challenge to those entering the field now to be sure they keep their skills honed and their interest focused. What I'd like and hope to see...and I think it's moving in that direction...is to have more interactivity between all the studios in the world and in local schools, both public (junior and high schools) and college and art schools where for those students who see this as a career for themselves to be offered annual summer interships and job-shadowing in every area of production. Yes, it does happen in some studios, usually when things are in an upswing in production, but this should be an automatic happening every year. And more involvement with the artists and technologists in the studios with the arts and computer classes in the public schools. More encouragement to young people to explore and experiment with various tools and media, more financing for the individual artist to develop a film on his or her own, much as the National Film Board of Canada once did. Everyone in the world loves animation...they always have...they always will. And the kids of today will provide it for them!