This
month’s Featured Artist is a former Hanna-Barbera and Disney artist
who didn’t let his colorblindness hold him back from achieving his
dreams!
Accidental
Beginnings
It was a warm summer day in 1979. Jim Franzen, a recent California
transplant, was driving around when he accidentally noticed the
space-age modern styled Hanna-Barbera Studios buildings. When he
read the name on the sign, he immediately went inside, applied,
and set his career, and dreams, in motion. This single event would
place this highly talented, funny and upbeat artist squarely in
the midst of animation heaven, working at two of the worlds premier
cartoon studios: Hanna-Barbera and Walt Disney Studios.
School
First
From day one, Jim Franzen knew he wanted to be an artist. Born in
1936, not only was he always encouraged to draw, but in third grade
even began writing and wrote the student newsletter for a year.
Mr. Franzen graduated from Highland Park High School, Illinois in
1954. Interestingly Highland park HS has a unique history of producing
more than its share of future Hollywood producers, actors and directors
including Alan Carr (producer), and Charles Kimbrow (Murphy Brown)
who both of whom attended school with Mr. Franzen. While in high
school Franzen nurtured not only his artistic drawing talents but
found the time to set 25 high school track records - two of which
still stand. This was quite an accomplishment for someone who has
had to live with an arthritic back that was the result of an injury
since the tender age of 10. Amazingly, his father had wanted him
to learn boxing, but Franzen was a born runner. His athletic prowess
earned him a track scholarship to the University of Southern Mississippi,
where he continued developing his artistic abilities as well as
distinguishing himself in track, as double State Champion (in sprinting),
and even briefly ranking in the NCAA National Honor Roll - both
achievements he continues to be very proud of to this day. He then
completed his tour of education at the American Academy of Art in
Chicago.
A
Black-&-White World
Since his boyhood Jim Franzen knew he had “red-green syndrome” -
a type of color-blindness that actually did allow him to see some
color, though, as he puts it, “in a very skewed way”. In spite of
this he still wanted to be an artist, though he was often told that
this handicap was comparable to being a tone-deaf musician. Realizing
his own limitations he set out to find a way around them and still
pursue his love of drawing. He began simply enough by working as
an illustrator in Chicago from 1960 - 1979.
Go
West Young Artist!
A year earlier his parents had moved to Southern California, so
when in early 1979 he had the opportunity to follow his girlfriend
out West, he took it. Hollywood, of course, often works in mysterious
ways, so when he accidentally stumbled onto the Hanna-Barbera Studios
that warm summer day, he could not have imagined the adventure that
awaited him. Hanna-Barbera was the last place Jim Franzen had thought
he would be working. Growing up on a diet of Warner Bros. theatrical
Bugs Bunny cartoons, he had always had an ongoing battle with his
daughter Paula while she was growing up in the 1960’s. She kept
changing the channel from Bugs Bunny in favor of her favorite Hanna-Barbera
cartoons. Back and forth the channels would go, followed by lectures
to his daughter of how theatrical cartoons were better. So that
summer when Paula called him to ask where he had found a job. He
was speechless to answer. After a long pregnant pause his daughter
asked, “Did you get a job at Hanna-Barbera?” Shyly, Franzen answered
her, “yes”. To which she exclaimed enthusiastically, “WOW! That’s
Great!” While her dad had grown up among theatrical cartoons, like
most of her generation and those that followed, Paula grew up in
the world and characters of Hanna-Barbera… Yogi Bear, Flintstones,
Jetsons, Huckleberry Hound and the like - they were all old friends
and family to her!
Thus,
Jim Franzen was plunged into the frenetic TV cartoon production
world that Hanna-Barbera dominated. Where Disney ruled in theatrical
feature animation, Hanna-Barbera, in his opinion, “were the masters”
at TV cartoons. He cites clever writing and great characters as
easily making up for the “limited” style of animation they had pioneered.
The first thing Hanna-Barbera put Mr. Franzen to work on was on
various Flintstones projects doing character designs and having
fun dreaming up more gizmos for the ever-increasing Flintstones’
inventory of wacky Stone Age gadgets - modern things with a caveman
twist. Though working in Bedrock was fun, Franzen found still greater
joy working on the Smurfs as a layout artist because they lived
in “such a neat little world that was fun to draw!” Doing layout
turned out to be very demanding and technical, requiring the ability
to see things from a camera’s eye view. This was something new to
this ambitious animator with an illustrator’s background, but he
rose to the occasion and discovered that he found it very fulfilling.
Layout work, it turned out, wasn’t as assembly-line oriented and
allowed him to see a process through from beginning to end. Something
he found extremely rewarding.
It’s All About The People
In his own words, Mr. Franzen “feels blessed to have found his niche
in animation” where line-art drawing is not hindered by color-blindness.
Additionally, it was among the animators and their related artists
that he discovered he shared an artist kinship and like-mindedness.
Finally, he felt he belonged. In return the animation world provided
him with, as he so succinctly puts it “both a handsome as well as
story-filled and memorable living”.
Franzen worked with the talented likes of the artistic Bob Singer,
the inimitable Iwao Takamoto, and the highly creative Sandra Young.
He recalls bumping into Bill Hanna in the hallways. Though he found
Hanna to be a quiet sort of unassuming fellow, he was surprised
during one particular conversation with him, to find out that they
both shared a passion for singing in Barber Shop Quartets. It seems
they both sang baritone. He recalls that, in comparison, Joe Barbera
was “ebullient and by far the bigger ‘personality’ of the pair”.
Additionally,
he laughs at the very thought of the incredibly gifted Floyd Norman
who had such an amazing gift for doing caricature comic lampoons
of all the biggest studio heads. Joe Barbera, Bill Hanna, and even
before with Walt Disney and then later Michael Eisner - they were
all fair game! He would randomly create and post these comics in
the studio hallways, yet even though he often targeted his victims
with jibes about the ridiculous sums of money they were making,
for example, he never got in trouble because of the class and sophistication
within his humor. Never was there malice or mean intent, and as
a result, even the studio execs came to especially appreciate his
unique brand of harmless humor. So much so that eventually a book
of his comics was later published.
It was such special people that made working at the studios in those
days, especially rewarding. Mr. Franzen also fondly, but with a
definite tone of mischief, recalls the various ways the artists
would entertain themselves while working.
The
DROP!!!
Franzen, with an evident and obvious pride, especially recalls something
the artists called “the drop’. The animators worked on the second
floor of a building they affectionately called “the warehouse”.
Below them worked the cel painters. In stark contrast to the wacky
world above them, absolutely no talking was allowed among the cel
painters. They worked in cloisterous icy silence. To the animators
this presented a challenge! For a while Franzen was not aware of
the triggering mechanism, it seemed that at random intervals during
any given week, suddenly a “drop” would occur. It started simply
enough. Pencils. A coffee cup. Then more coffee mugs. Then larger
objects… all simultaneously raining down on the floor in a violent
cacophonous crescendo that always culminated in the dropping of
a large metal sign and finally several brave souls lifting up and
dropping an actual animation desk to the floor. This of course led
to an explosion of boisterous laughter and applause… followed by
silence and footsteps. The footsteps were those of the head cel
painter as she headed upstairs to the second floor. She was a hard
woman with no sense of humor, and every time she would appear on
the second floor after a “drop”, she would be greeted with a combination
of blank stares, muted smiles, and denial as she demanded, “What
is going on up here?! It was months before Jim Franzen, the new
guy on the second floor, found out that the trigger for these “drops”
was simply the random sneezes of fellow animator Tony Rivera! How
this tradition started remains a mystery even to this day…
Strong
Convictions
But as much fun as it was working at Hanna-Barbera in those now
famous original animation buildings during those “glory” days, many
things also happened that formulated and framed some very solid
convictions in the mind and soul of this artist. While at Disney,
Mr. Franzen specifically designed two characters for the Gummy Bears.
Zummy Gummy and Tummy Gummy. What makes these two characters special
compared to the many others he designed on various productions,
was that he auditioned for voice-over roles for them. Though he
didn’t land the roles, he feels grateful to have had the experience
of attempting voice-over acting, and still considers it a possibility
for the future. It is the very fact that “back then” he could be
allowed to even try out, that is the difference between the industry
“then” as compared to “now”.
Mr. Franzen feels that in today’s animation industry the domination
of celebrity voice-over actors is a tragedy that is excluding many
talented people who are not even given a chance because of the crass
marketing that takes place now. He is quick to clarify that marketing
in and of itself is not a bad thing. Nor are celebrity endorsements.
It fuels the industry and often product tie-ins are a natural outgrowth
of a given cartoon’s popularity. What he is adamant about, however,
is the greed that has seemingly permeated the heart of the industry,
stripping artists of their creative voice, and substituting quality
with mere sensationalism for the sake of sensationalism… and the
making of “the hard sell”.
What
the businessmen fail to realize, in his opinion, is that if, for
example, a talented voice is bringing a character to life, it won’t
matter if they are a celebrity or not. The cartoon will still be
popular, make money and most importantly retain its “heart”. Mr.
Franzen’s opinion of many of today’s cartoons is that all too often
they “ring empty” and are devoid of feeling, fun, and of having
true characters with depth to them.“Style,”
he feels, “is being used as a substitute for quality”. Most of today’s
cartoons, he feels, rarely can compare to the “older” cartoons,
and few present themselves, as he puts it, “as something you can
warm up to”.
Additionally,
he feels that in today’s animation industry the “bloated fat cats
at the top”, as he likes to call them, are always willing to take
credit (and cash/stock bonuses!) for the hard work of others, yet
when they themselves fail it is everyone else who suffers and gets
blamed… often in the form of massive layoffs that especially hurt
artists and their families. The executives, in the meantime, get
additional bonuses for controlling loses for which they themselves
were originally responsible.
Mr.
Franzen literally bristles at the mention of the word “talent”.
Why? It seems he doesn’t appreciate bosses who refer to an artist
as having “talent” because he feels that it deflects from how much
work it takes for an artist during his/her creative process to occur.
Thus, he is appalled with what he calls the, “justified abuse” he
sees now with, for example, the massive over-time artists are often
required to put in (i.e. mandatory 6-day, and/or 50-60+ hour weeks,
that some studios often require). He also believes that all too
often the word talent leads to the unfair professional misconceptions
that, “artists can create automatically without any effort at all,
like blood from a cut artery.” The unfortunate result is that unrealistic
demands and pressures are all too often placed on artists - pressures
that all too often hinder the very result the studios are trying
to achieve. He cites as an example the horror and betrayal all the
artists at Hanna-Barbera felt in the 1970’s when Hanna-Barbera became
the very first studio to “outsource” its production work overseas.
He vividly recalls how it became a flashpoint for an impassioned
though failed strike which people have all too quickly now forgotten
about. Overseas outsourcing, as we all know now, has reached epic
scales.
Mr.
Franzen feels very strongly that the many Enron-esque approaches
by today’s industry will lead to a lot of future problems if people
-artists- aren’t willing to stand up for themselves and for what
is simply “right” and fair. One has only to look at the spate of
recent corporate scandals to realize that it seems, Jim Franzen,
who was fortunate to have worked with many of animations ‘greats’,
may be on to something.
Personal
Rewards Looking back at his varied career, Mr. Franzen feels he was
lucky to be at the right place and the right time and is very grateful
for that. And lucky to have worked in the animation industry on
the tail end of one of its greatest epochs, when so many of our
most beloved cartoons were born and matured. He remains especially
grateful to Hanna-Barbera for the wonderful opportunities they gave
him and misses the fact that they are not ‘really’ in existence
any more and, “feels blessed”, for having been part of history while
there.
More
than anything else, however, one marvels at the warmth of Mr. Franzen’s
voice as he discusses the people with which he worked. Camaraderie
and bonds - relationships with people - these seem to really mean
the most to him. And it is something he says he never had in the
illustrations field.
It
is for this very reason that, until just recently, he had spent
many years teaching at the American Animation Institute run by IATSE
Union MPSC Local 839 (www.mpsc839.org). Teaching at the union school
allowed him to be in touch with fresh and up-coming artists and
“give back”, as he says, something of what has been given to him.
One had only to sit in on his class, which always had an open-door
policy, to experience the genuine warmth, grace, knowledge, and
especially outstanding humor he exhibited… to know this man really-really
cares about his art… and his students.
Goodbye
to the Mouse, Hello World
Jim Franzen worked, within the Space Age modern Jetsons-esque Hanna-Barbera
Studios buildings that had initially lured him in, for three years.
Years that he looks back on fondly, and considers his favorite.
An introduction from within Hanna-Barbera to Disney then landed
him at Disney’s powerhouse Consumer Products division. While there,
he was able to put his formidable illustrating skills to work creating
the designs, in exquisite shaded black-&-white penciled relief,
for some of Disney’s most wonderful sculptures and snow-globes (perhaps
you may unknowingly be the proud owner of a Jim Franzen original!).
Several of his original artworks also now proudly hang framed at
the Disney corporate towers. Though he was asked to return to Hanna-Barbera
in 1991, where he worked briefly on the Tom & Jerry Kids, he ultimately
continued at Disney Consumer Products where he finally recently
retired.
Mr.
Franzen is quick to point out, however, that he has retired only
“in principle”. He has busied himself with the construction of a
home-studio and has already sold a number of independent projects.
And his color-blindeness?
Not
a problem.
Does
this colorful and out-spoken artist ever intend to stop?
Probably
not so long as he can put pencil to paper - if we are lucky!
Accidental
Beginnings 
Go
West Young Artist!
