Character Sheet: Steve Segal

Long-time ASIFA-SF member Steve Segal was born in the last few days of the 1940’s (1949 to be precise) in Richmond, Va. He grew up on The Mickey Mouse Club, and Walt Disney’s Disneyland, but he still can’t figure out how he ended up becoming an animator. In addition to working as an independent artist and a professional stint at Pixar in the mid 1990s, he’s also an instructor and connoisseur of cartoons. In otherwords, his experience encompasses the entire demographic of ASIFA!

Like many of us Steve was weaned on the classics, especially Disney and Warner cartoons in the movie theatres ("Yes, they used to show those regularly!") and on TV, but not the made-for-TV stuff. As he recalls, “In the ’60s CBS had a series called Camera 3. It was devoted to the arts and on one program they profiled (National Film Board of Canada pioneer) Norman McLaren. His work blew me away technically and conceptually. That series was shown when there were only three TV stations in a metropolitan area, and no cable. Now even with hundreds of channels, there is nothing comparable.”

That inspiration led to a number of experimental films, including The Red Ball Express (all drawn on celluloid, no paper or camera involved!) and two films which were finished decades ago. “Dance of the Stumblers (pictured below) was made in 1987 on an Amiga 1000 computer; the machine had half a megabyte of memory (that’s not a typo)—and no hard drive. At the time it was a state of the art graphics machine. The program was Aegis Animator and you could animate simple shapes interactively, in real time…theoretically. As I went the scenes got more and more complex and the machine couldn’t display the motion fast enough. So I aimed a 16mm camera at the screen and shot single frames while the program displayed in slow motion.

Today, he’s applying most of his energy to animation classes at California College of the Arts and the Academy of Art University. “I try to show amazing examples and clearly explain what distinguishes great animation. I have two films I’m just developing, which is a more professional sounding way of saying I’m just thinking about them; one is a performance with a TV (not unlike the early stage shows by Winsor McKay), the other is an abstract film that keeps getting interrupted by everyday life.” When pressed for more goals, Steve keeps it simple: ”I want to survive my kids’ teenage years.”

Even with his success in various fields (including credits on Toy Story and A Bug’s Life ) Steve’s enthusiasm is unabated. In fact he can be an admiring fan like the rest of us. “I once visited Ward Kimball at his house and he showed me his toy and train collection; that is still the high point. I also shared a limo with Ray Harryhausen when we were both guests of the San Jose film festival. I think I was too in awe to ask any intelligent questions.”

He remains passionate and wants to be an advocate of good animation. “I love watching great animation and exposing people to it. I tend to favor well-animated work, like Pixar (of course) Ray Harryhausen or Richard Williams over clever stuff like Family Guy or South Park (those do make me laugh, though).”

You can see more examples of Steve’s work at his website.