Away from home, I choose animation.

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ANIMATION – ‘ I get by with a little help from my friends’… When working on my yachts I find myself watching my beloved collection of animated movies to relieve the pressure of being away and being confined.

I guess animation also touches my heart as in a conversation I had with my brother, he said that his dream job would be an animator at PIXEL and I could imagine the wonderfully funny cartoons and movies his unique sense of humour would have created.

What is it that I love about animation ? One thing is that in this world of good, bad and ugly, I find animation light relief. Even though the stories can be dark in places there is usually a happy ending. I remember, back in the day when I used to carry my DVD’s around with me, lending one of our guests on board my collection so that she could test her player. She returned the case to me and said “I think you have given me the children’s case.” “Oh,” said I, “sorry about that” knowing full well that I had lent her my pride and joy. No “Speed” or “Fast and Furious” movies in that collection !!! I love the fact that animated movies take a special kind of creativity and dedication. I can picture the artists heads down over the drawing board firstly creating the story board and then getting the graphics to work on the computer with 3D designs which morph into the next phase and when that is close to perfection the final finishing touches are added. Some animations take years to complete and a massive team of artists, producers and editors. Of course the most famous of all animators was Walt Disney, born in 1901. He used to draw as a child on the family farm. He attended art school on weekends paying for the tuition with his newspaper round money and took a correspondence course in cartooning. In 1918 he joined the army and was shipped out to France as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross. He drew cartoons on the side of his ambulance and was published in an American newspaper standing next to his animated ambulance. He and his brother Roy formed the Disney Brothers Company which later became the Walt Disney Company and so began an incredible conveyor belt of fabulous animated movies. He started off with Mickey Mouse in 1928 and provided the voice for this character for years. Columbia Pictures signed a contract for Disney’s Mickey Mouse films and provided a solid base for him to produce movies and in 1932 he won his first short feature Academy Award. In 1934 he worked on his first feature-length cartoon “Snow White and the seven Dwarfs.” He had live animals brought into the studio and people to model for the animators. His animators drew on panes of glass to give the movie more depth of field back in those days. The movie grossed 6.5 million and earned him another Academy Award – they gave him one full-sized and seven miniature Oscars !! In 1952 he dreamed of building a theme park; he bought the land in Anaheim and built Disneyland with the help of investors. Always thinking of the next move, he entered the realm of television in 1954 under the ABC banner with a children’s programme called the Mickey Mouse Club. In 1956 came Disney World in Florida which included a feature called EPCOT – “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” which was to feature new ideas and new technologies that were emerging in the world. As we know today this is not quite what came about; it has become more of a permanent world fair. Walt Disney, a heavy smoker since WW1, died of lung cancer in 1966 just days after his 65^th birthday. In 1990 I visited Walt Disney World in Florida and the EPCOT Centre and it is truly a magnificent experience. Just remember I was wide-eyed, fresh out of South Africa and visiting a theme park of that calibre was mind-blowing !! I couldn’t get enough of the rides, and the realistic effects of all the interactive displays at EPCOT.

My favourite animation movies in no particular order to name just a few:

“Tangled”, “Sing”, “Coco”, “Frozen”, “Zootopia”, “Madagascar” “Rio” and so many, many more. The animals in all these movies stand out to me. Who doesn’t love Sven the reindeer, Flash the sloth, Maximus the horse, King Julien, Crush the ‘dude’ turtle in Nemo and of course Puss in Boots !!

So for my entertainment on any given day, I choose ANIMATION