Jules Engel

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Jules Engel (11 March 1909–6 September 2003) was a Hungarian American filmmaker, animator, painter,sculptor, and teacher. He is most remembered as the founding director of the Experimental Animation Program at the California Institute of the Arts, where he taught until his death, serving as mentor to several generations of animators.

1 Early life
2 Paving through Hollywood
3 "To CalArts and Beyond!"
4 Continuing His Legacy
5 Trivia
6 Quotes
7 References
8 External links
- 8.1 Work and Statements by Engel

[edit] Early life

Engel was born in Budapest, Hungary where as a baby his mother would cover him with a baby blanket when carrying him in a stroller. This was largely due to the shape of Engel's head (he once commented in an interview) that was similar to a hexagon. The family story is that people would stop his mother to inquistively ask what she was carrying in the stroller. Engel goes on to explain that this incident might have been a foretelling of his career in art and animation! ^[1].

Engel immigrated to Chicago where he grew up in America in Oak Park, Illinois and attended Evanston Township High School. During his high school years, he was heavily influenced by the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo.

[edit] Paving through Hollywood

He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in 1937. In 1938, he was asked by Walt Disney Studios to work on Disney's Fantasia. At the time, Disney was doing something unthinkable, integrating "low" art (animation) and "high" (classical music). The studio needed someone who was knowledgeable with dance, and Engel was a natural choice. He would be assigned to Russian and Chinese mushrooms dance sequences of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. It was during this time that Engel was influenced Kandinsky and Klee, and with such inspirations, inventively placed his dancing sprites against the stark black ground. And by bolding the simplified setting, he intensified the contrast of the figure and the ground.

While he was working on Fantasia, Engel met avant-garde filmmaker, Oskar Fischinger, who encouraged both his abstract animation and painting. Fischinger’s tenure would be brief, but Engel would continue to work with Disney Studios in their next full-length animation, Bambi (1942). While in production, Engel made critical contributions to the film's traumatizing momma-deer death scene, where he expressed his view with his colleagues to have more freedom of expression in their color choices in relationship to the art of animation.

During World War II, he was in the service alongside with Ronald Reagan, and Theodor Geisel. At first, Engel was not drafted by the Army, like many of his friends and colleagues were, because he had glasses and a bad shoulder. He was eventually recruited by the Air Force to join the First Motion Picture Unit as an animator.

In 1945, Hazel Guggenheim (of the art patronage family) arranged for his first exhibition at the Frederick Kahn Gallery in Los Angeles. Engel and Guggenheim were visiting the gallery when Ms. Guggenheim suggested Mr. Kahn that he should give Jules an exhibition. Taken by surprise, Engel agreed to have an exhibition if Kahn would agree not to sell anything.

Engel was one of a group of animators who later left Disney to found the United Productions of America studio. At UPA, Engel worked on cartoons like Gerald McBoing Boing, Madeline, and Mr. Magoo.

With former UPA colleagues Herb Klynn and Buddy Getzler, he then launched Format Films, and produced several popular US television series, including The Alvin Show (1961-62) and The Lone Ranger (1966-67), as well as one-off animated shorts, among them the Ray Bradbury-scripted, and Oscar-nominated, Icarus Montgolfier Wright (1962).

In 1962, Engel moved to Paris to direct the animated The World Of Sine, which would go on win the La Belle Qualité award. He then co-directed The Little Prince, a theatrical production combining animation and live performance. And later, his first short live action film, Coaraze, which won the Prix Jean Vigo. During his stay in Paris, his was friendly with other artists at the time, including Man Ray. In the late 1960s he began making his own personal fine art animation. He also made several documentaries on other artists.

[edit] "To CalArts and Beyond!"

In 1970, Engel founded CalArts' Program in Experimental Animation, widely recognized as one of the world's foremost centers for animation arts.

In 1997, Animation World Magazine, asked Engel, along with two other animation prfoessors: "If you were stranded on a desert island with only ten films to screen to your students, to teach them the principles, techniques and concepts of the art of animation, what would they be?" Engel chose the following:

1. Band Concert by Walt Disney.
2. The Nose by Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker.
3. Two Sisters by Caroline Leaf.
4. Study no. 6 by Oskar Fischinger.
5. Study no. 8 by Oskar Fischinger.
6. Filter Gallery by Eric Darnell.
7. Tenderly by John Hubley.
8. The Trap by Amy Kravitz.
9. The Demon by Kihachiro Kawamoto.
10. Game of Angels by Walerian Borowczyck.

In 2001, Engel kept himself busy by selecting the color design of each frame for The 1 Second Film. This was an interdisciplinary project that was conspired by Nirvan Mullick, an Experimental Animation student of his at the time. In that same year, CalArts hailed his indelible contribution to the arts by conferring on him the title of Institute Fellow, the highest honor it awards to faculty. The Fellowship has only be given to two other faculty to date, Alexander Mackendrick, and Mel Powell.

[edit] Continuing His Legacy

In one of his final major acts, in May 2003, Jules established the Jules Engel Scholarship Fund. The recipients of the awards are those students who have carried out their work at CalArts in Jules’ name have all demonstrated rigor, daring imagination and great curiosity about the world, leading into inventive interdisciplinary projects.

Engel was also a painter, and produced a prolific body of oil paintings, lithographs and other graphic artworks. His paintings are in the collections of major museums, and recently there have been exhibits of his work at Tobey C. Moss Gallery in Los Angeles. He was still working on a new series of lithographs just before his death.

Today, many of his students carry out his influence through their work, which include John Lasseter, Henry Selick, Tim Burton, Stephen Hillenburg, Joanna Priestley, Christine Panushka,Peter Chung, Ellen Woodbury, Paul Demeyer, Eric Darnell, Kathy Rose, Joyce Borenstein, Mark Osborne, Fern Seiden, Steven Subotnick, Amy Kravitz, Vanessa Schwartz, Mark Kirkland, and Janeann Dill among others.

[edit] Trivia

The first animation he ever saw was Three Little Pigs, from Disney.
The makers of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, graduates of Engel's Experimental Animation program, dedicated the film to him.
The shriveled docter in Suzan Pitt's El Doctor is rumored to be based on Jules.

[edit] Quotes

"Color can be heard.”

"It's not what I give my students. It's what I don't take away."

"I have chosen to convey ideas and feelings through movement, visually formed by lines, squares, spots, circles and varieties of colour."

"Experimental animation is closer to music, which can move away from any obvious image, and gives us an experience that can only be the property of music.In my work, movement in itself is the expression that gives us both an aesthetic and an emotional experience."

“My work is not realized through mathematical formulas or theories. It is gained through visual trial-and-error. It is a process of perception. It is a process of trial-and-error.”

“Movement is the content. Don’t merely look at a movement, FEEL it."

"Movement emerges, only to disappear.”

“The art of filmmaking is timing."

"Since the advent of 3-D and CinemaScope, there has been a great deal of talk by film executives about how they are going to 'save the industry.' It's my opinion if there's any saving to be done of a business based on creative talent--it will be done by creative talent--not by the men behind the big, oak desks."