about John Conning

the Bentwood Chair

My career as an animator started in 1972 at Halas and Batchelor's London studio. We shot pencil tests on the 1910 Debrie camera that John Hallas had bought from Roy Disney in 1936. I was an animator on the Jackson 5 show and then had the great good fortune to be Oscar Grillo's assistant on commercials. He is one of the best. When I returned home in 1975 I worked on the feature that was intended to launch digital animaton "Tubby the Tuba", that bombed, but really was my first chance to work with talented Disney guys like big Ed deMattia. Then I was fortunate again to work for Paul Fierlinger in Philadelphia on a whole lot of different films. For Paul, I designed and animated some educational films for Learning Corporation in New York before hitch hiking out to LA in 1976 to find a place as a Hollywood animator.

In 1982 Bill Hanna asked me to work overseas as one of the first American animation directors in Korea. At first there weren’t many experienced Korean animators. So we helped them as much as we could and worked a lot of late nights. It was my responsibility to fix all of the mistakes. And since almost no one spoke English, I had to learn Korean. There were rats everywhere. Koreans didn't like cats. The animation cels were painted by young women in a long room. And when a rat raced across the floor, the paint ladies screamed and jumped up on their desks in a great wave of feminine panic. Learning to speak Korean helped me win the heart of the beautiful Kyung. And we have been married for 25 years.

Credits:

Presently I have been drawing lots of animation for Center City Video in Phiiladelphia for "Sprout" and "Baby Boost" and fun things like that.

2005 - 2007 Animated in Flash on "Kappa Mikey for Animation Collective in New York

2000 - 2003 Drew a lot of storyboards

Sept 1999 - July 2000 -- Overseas Director in Korea on “Sammy” for Sony TV.

July 1996 – August 1999: Storyboard artist for Character Builders, 4-Kids Entertainment, Film Roman – “Bobby’s World”, Jumbo Pictures – Disney’s “Doug”, MTV, Nickelodeon, Saban Productions, Sunbo Productions, Startoons, and Warner Bros. Animation

1996 - assistant director on the Beavis and Butthead feature with Mike Judge. He would think up ideas and I would draw them out on a pad of paper and then he would think some more.

June – November 1995: Overseas Director for Hanna-Barbera’s “Capitol Critters"

April 1993 – December 1994: Overseas Director for Film Roman’s “Bobby’s World” animated at Cucoos Nest studio, Taipei.

June 1989 – December 1992: Overseas Director on“Dink the Dinosaur”, “Police Academy”, “Cabbage Patch Kids”, “Piggsburg Pigs”, “Rambo”, and “Lazer Tag” for Ruby-Spears.

In 1988 Kyung and I traveled around to Hong Kong, Japan and even to Alaska. Along the way we made our own movie called "Her Other Side" which you can see on www.moviemice.com

Kyung and I moved to Taiwan in 1989 where we began a long friendship with James Wang. At that time James ran Cucoos Nest from his hip pocket with 900 employees in his Hsin-Tien studio, supervising "Saturday Morning Cartoons" for Film Roman and Ruby Spears

Took some time off in August – November 2003 and produced a live action video called “Hepburn’s Sawmill” to document the historic mill near Wiarton, Ontario, Canada. Shot on Mini-DV and Edited in Final Cut.

In 2003 I met the amazing designer Maciek Albrecht who had opened an animation studio in Easton, Pa. Working in the 'Magic Studio' I animated a series of short cartoons for HBO's "Classical Baby" series like "The Singing Cow" which you can see on sufferincats.com

After working with Magic I wanted to animate on a Flash TV show and started commuting to New York every day to animate on the Kappa Mikey show. A lot of time was spent riding the rails with Amtrak, so I developed some plug-ins to help Flash animators. You can find these at www.moviemice.com about halfway down the page. Thousands of them have been downloaded, so I guess they are useful. The Four-in-One Panel really has some valuable functions, especially if you are laying out a whole movie in flash from start to end. Things Adobe never thought about. You can email me for more information. The buttons at the top for example, will take all of the keyframes from the root timeline and print their relative location into the graphic symbol which they represent. Very useful for laying in audio.

Since March 2007 I have been working in Philadelphia at Center City Video which has offices in the new Comcast Building. This is primarily a live action producton company to which I have brought my traditional animation. Working with live action has been an amazing opportunity to combine animation with green screen. We make all sorts of different things from commercials like America's Best and Dr. Miracles, to on-demand cable tv shows like Sprout and Baby Boost.

Projection room, Fox building, 4th floor, Philadelphia

1981 Challenge of the Superfriends Smurfs Trolkins Scooby-do Spider Man - Hanna-Barbera....... / Hero High Black Star Thundarr - Filmation .........../

1980 Family Circus - Kullen-Kasdan / Scooby-Do - Hanna-Barbera......../ Heathcliffe Rickety Rocket Incredible Detectives Plastic Man - Ruby-Spears....../ Pink Panther - Depate-Frieling......./

1979 Heckle and Jeckle Mighty Mouse Quackula Tarzan Flash Gordon Fat Albert - Filmation ...../ Superfriends Scooby-Do - Hanna-Barbera....../

1978 Yogi’s Space Race Superfriends Spider Man - Hanna-Barbera....../ 1977 Scooby-Do - Hanna-Barbera....../ 1976: eight short films for PBS at Ron Campbell's. Some commercials and other stuff.

1975-76 Educational films and commercials for Paul Fierlinger in Philadelphia

1972-74 Jackson 5 and Osmonds TV cartoon commercials with Oscar Grillo and a lot of other things i can't remember anymore

Fox Booth, Fox Building 4th floor, Market St., Philadelphia

Lewis Tower, Philadelphia

row house

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