Tom Cook did an animation panel this weekend talking about his long career in the industry. Tom is mostly known for his work on “He-Man”, but chances are you’ve seen some of his other work like “BraveStarr”, “She-Ra”, “Blackstar” and “Fat Albert.”
If there’s one thing I always love hearing about it’s animators from the early days, back when everything was done on Animation Cel’s and artists could carve out a career on willpower alone.
For example Ralph Bakshi (“Wizards”) moved up from being a low payed Cel painter to a big time animator just by picking up his deck and moving it to the animation part of the studio he worked at hoping no one noticed.
The same is true of Tom Cook, working as a bus driver. At the time Tom took an art class hosted by an artist over at “Hanna Barbera” and soon enough was animating for one of the biggest company’s in the US. Industry. This is where the animation geek in me gets a little to over romantic, but back then talented people used to be able to walk in off the street and start making great cartoons the next day. I sincerely miss those times.
Tom gave a great panel on how the industry used to be and all of the great people he worked with over the years inducing Jack Kirby. He also made sure to point out how he has photogenic evidence that his hair used to be brown. Funny guy!