Michael K. Frith

Michael Kingsbury Frith
Born 8 July 1941
Bermuda
Occupation director, consultant, designer, puppeteer, producer, creator, writer, illustrator, and technician

Michael Kingsbury Frith (born 8 July 1941 in Bermuda), is the former Executive Vice-President and Creative Director for Jim Henson Productions. His contributions to Muppet projects[1] have been extensive and varied.[2]

Frith began his career at Random House in 1963 as a children's book illustrator and editor. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Beginner Books series, the line of books created by Theodor Seuss Geisel Dr. Seuss. He was also Dr. Seuss's book editor and close personal friend.

In 1971, when Random House began publishing Sesame Street books, Frith was named editor and art director of the Sesame series. He produced a series of five annual large-format Sesame Street Storybooks, and contributed artwork for four of them: The Sesame Street Storybook (1971), The Sesame Street 1, 2, 3 Storybook (1973), The Sesame Street ABC Storybook (1974), and Big Bird's Busy Book (1975).

Appreciating Frith's talents as a designer, Jim Henson brought him on board his creative team. One of Frith's early projects was designing the Land of Gorch characters for Saturday Night Live.

Frith recalled his beginnings with the Muppets in The Saturday Evening Post (December 1980): "The first drawings I ever worked on were characters for Saturday Night Live. The Muppets did regular segments for a season featuring characters about as far removed from Sesame Street as you could get. Jim asked me to come over one day to talk about creating Muppet personalities—specifically, strange, mossy, warty creatures. Instead of traditional ones with cartoon eyes—round, white and black—he had become fascinated with taxidermist eyes: cow, camel and tiger eyes. Around this simple concept of a different eye evolved a whole new concept which led to the creation of the crazy-eyed loonies we enjoy today."

Frith also described his collaboration with the builders: "All I do is doodle something on an envelope on the subway while coming to work. It's the puppet builders who are true geniuses in coming up with personalities. Working with them is an experience you can't begin to describe. Every artist is fascinated by the Pygmalion dream – to carve Galateas and get living, breathing creatures."

Frith joined Henson Associates full-time as Art Director in 1975. He was named Vice-President in 1978, and Executive Vice-President and Director of Creative Services in 1985.

After the success of "The Muppet Show" series Henson wanted Frith, along with two other Muppet Show stalwarts Jerry Juhl, Jocelyn Stevenson (both writers) and newcomer to the Henson productions Duncan Kenworthy (producer), to create a new children's show which would appeal to a much wider international audience."Fraggle Rock" is the new show which emerged and subsequently ran for 4 seasons,96 episodes between 10 January 1983 and 30 March 1987. This new show centred on "Muppet" creatures known as Fraggles, who live underground along with several other species of creature such as Doozers and Gorgs. Frith played a significant part in designing the many creatures and settings which existed in this universe. He explains that he drew on two major parts of his background when creating the "look" of the show, the first his many years in working with Ted Geissels (Dr.Seuss) on several children's books and the second being his growing up in Bermuda. on YouTube[3]

In October 1995, Frith left Henson Productions to start a new company, Sirius Thinking, Ltd., with John Sculley, Christopher Cerf and Norman Stiles. Sirius is the multi-media children's education company that created Between the Lions, an award-winning educational puppet show on PBS, in 2000. Frith served as the Executive Producer, Creative Director, Conceptual Designer and Co-Creator of the show.

Frith's projects and credits

Film and Television

Books written and/or illustrated

Illustrated

Series written by Leonora Hornblow & Arthur Hornblow, ill. by Frith

References

  1. ↑ Stetler, Carrie (31 January 1987). "IMAGINE THAT FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE MUPPET BABIES TAKE THEIR CREATIVE FANTASY TO THE STAGE". Morning Call. p. A47. Retrieved 28 June 2011. ...says Michael Frith, Muppet designer and vice president of Henson Associates. ...
  2. ↑ The Bermudian magazine, October, 2001, Page 13. Profile, by Rosemary Jones: READING BETWEEN THE LIONS. Bermudian Michael Frith takes his passion for learning to TV.
  3. ↑ Documentary Segment (2007) "THE CREATION OF FRAGGLE ROCK" on YouTube Video Interview: 00:34. Retrieved 10 October 2012.

External links