My favorite place on Earth is CalArts, and the embodiment of that creative institution is the animation department's long-time figure drawing instructor, Cornelius Cole III. Walt Disney may have founded and funded the school, but the culture there is much more of the free-spirited, rebellious, anti-Mouse nature that
Corny encouraged. I shouldn't say
Corny was anti-Mouse, I'm not sure he was anti-anything; he was just pro-individual and always cautioned his students against becoming a cog in a machine.
That is an especially daunting challenge nowadays when animators seem to be a dime a dozen. The animation industry is more competitive now than ever, and there is a huge pressure to fit into the studio system. To conform to the machine. True artists and craftsmen will always be rare, though, particularly sages like
Corny.
Pen Ward put it best when he said of
Corny, "I hope to draw until my style develops into that awesome, awesome old wise man style."
Among the many loving tributes to Corny are these Producers Show intros from 2003 and 2005. Corny and his fellow figure drawing instructor, the late
Mike Mitchell, made regular appearances in student films. Partly because of how much they inspired us, but mostly because it's fun to animate curmudgeons.
2003 intro by Scott Bromley, Ron Yavnieli, and Ken Perkins
2005 intro by Pen Ward
The best way to honor
Corny is to get out there and make your own art. Direct a film, take a figure-drawing class, or just "learn to draw with your left hand gawdammit" as
Corny would growl. I said earlier that the embodiment of CalArts
is Corny, not
was, because as long as his art endures (and as long as we, his students, pass on his lessons), he will live on.
Here's to
Corny, the animation industry's grumpy Yoda.
