Is there still a place for hand-drawn animation in a world of CGI and AI? DIY animator Mark Neeley thinks so. Neeley is a rare breed: an independent animator who creates his visions in an old-fashioned 2-D style using pen and paper. His short film Fragments (2020) enjoyed a long festival circuit run and was played on PBS.
Mark Neeley’s films at first seem to come from a bygone era, but their execution could hardly be dismissed as simply retro or simplistic. His cartoon dreams come at the viewer in a stream-of-consciousness swirl, moving with a certain speed and freedom that only animation can provide. His soon-to-be-released short film, Pure Animation for Now People, is only about a minute long but serves as a reminder of how much animation can do for the eyes, mind, and heart in a short time. Neeley animation, our current artistic climate, and working with a legendary musician on his latest film.
Mark Mothersbaough of Devo, who has soundtracked shows ranging from the Rugrats series to Wes Anderson films, made a soundtrack for your new short film, Pure Animation for Now People. How did the collaboration come about?
The opportunity to interview Mark Mothersbugh for Aquarium Drunkard fell in my lap last year. Justin [Gage, of Aquarium Drunkard] briefly did some music supervision work at Mark’s studio, Mutato Muzika, years ago. I’ve considered Mark a hero for as long as I can remember.
The interview was for Devo’s 50th anniversary, but we also talked about things like his visual art and his history with animation. As you said, animations were some of his earliest compositions before Wes Anderson’s movies and major Hollywood scores. Something I’ve loved for a long time is this ambient background Muzik cassette called Muzik for Insomniaks, [1988] which led to Rugrats.
Mark was kind, and we also had an off-the-cuff conversation about my work. Once I made Pure Animation For Now People – it’s only one minute long – I thought, why not? I’ll reach out to Mark about the music. And to my surprise, he said yes.”
You have attracted some notable friends. Your short film, Legend of Lee Baggett, animates Phil Elverum’s words (Mount Eerie, the Microphones) and features a hilarious story that includes hot dogs full of fruit. How did that come about?
It’s funny that you mentioned that project. It was my first time working with Perpetual Doom, and they will be premiering a short clip from the new film soon. Perpetual Doom is a great record label, and they reached out to me to make that trailer. We’ve had a working relationship ever since. That story was about Phil and Lee’s old adventures on the California coast and how “fruit dog” was Phil’s nickname for eating them like that.
When I first watched your new short animated film, Pure Animation for Now People, the 1970s educational series SchoolHouse Rock came to mind. I was terrible at math, so a teacher suggested I watch the show. Does your animation have an educational intent like Schoolhouse Rock?
I’m not sure that it’s the educational element specifically. But I’m greatly influenced by the styles of that era. Schoolhouse Rock and vintage Sesame Street are what my work gets compared to the most. The cool thing is that a lot of that stuff was outsourced to many different independent animators and eclectic small studios. So even though there’s a bit of a house style involved, it was all very individual and included many visionary artists.
Animation was also a fresh, exciting medium during that era, and companies and organizations wanted to use it for their commercials, etc. Another great example of animated educational material was the husband-and-wife team of John and Faith Hubley, who made innovative films for public media and were commissioned to make films for institutions like the Guggenheim.
Your animated films approach the viewer experimentally. Suzanne Pitt and other avant-garde animators come to mind. Tell us about your work’s more experimental leanings.
A comparison might be to a musician who dabbles with experimental elements but within that pop/rock framework. Certainly, there is a lot of improvisation in my process, in terms of just putting together a very loose storyboard or sometimes no storyboard at all, depending on timing. Much of my animation is classic ink lines but with some experimentation with mixed-media paint and a marker with more abstract patterns. I like how this came out with my recent music video for Allah-Las’ “The Fall”.
I love experimental animation. Growing up in the early ‘nineties’90s, my only access to any of this stuff was through library books, which is how I taught myself to animate with flipbooks and such. A really eye-opening book was Experimental Animation by Robert Russett and Cecile Starr [1988]. That was my introduction to artists like Norman McLaren.
How do you create your animated films?
It starts with a storyboard of planned, loose thumbnail sketches. Then, the animation is done directly on paper. The filming is shot frame by frame under a copystand camera. Finally, it’s light editing and syncing music or dialogue. It’s essentially the very old-fashioned, 2D animation process, but it’s inked and colored directly on the paper rather than with cels and paint. If it’s a project like a music video with audio beforehand, that changes the planning a bit to accommodate.
Your film shorts are short; I’m guessing that’s partially because the animation process is so demanding. I wonder if you are in dialogue with our current climate of fast-paced content. How do you navigate something like the Internet, where a five-minute video is viewed as being “long” when compared to a ten-second viral TikTok video?
Honestly, I don’t think about it in those terms. I’m aware of that stuff, but it doesn’t enter my thought process because I don’t engage in that way. I have been commissioned to make a couple of Spotify “canvases”, for example, which are kind of like that. When I make advertising shorts, they range from 20 to 30 seconds, which to me is sort of like a classic bumper or commercial, and I think that’s a nice sweet spot for an animated clip.
With Pure Animation for Now People, I had always been interested in doing a short film that was only a minute or two, just as an experiment. Since I have had so many freelance projects going on for the past few years, I figured that would be the only way to do another personal short film.
Another challenge many artists, especially animators, face is the ongoing expansion of AI-generated art. Your work seems intrinsically human and emphasizes uneven, clearly hand-drawn lines. It reminds me of how hand-drawn stuff escapes the sometimes off-putting, uncanniness that can come with AI or computer-generated imagery. Do you have anxiety about AI? Have you ever thought about implementing it into your work?
It’s a good question. I don’t have anxiety about it with my work, but on a more grandiose philosophical level, it feels like yet another setback for artists. I’ve heard some anecdotes from friends, for example, that work they have published on social media gets immediately labeled as AI, which is just horrifying.
For me, in a roundabout way, AI animation almost feels like a continuation of things I’ve already been at odds with as someone who works analog amidst so much ambiguous, vectorized-looking digital art. This also happens in animation with corporate-looking “motion graphics”. To be clear, I’m not [disparaging] people who use digital tools to create with AI. I mean that I’ve been fortunate to find a niche with my analog, lo-fi kind of work, but at the same time, my work would not be embraced by clients looking for more polished, digital-looking works, which is now the norm.
So, I want to keep working with clients who value that artistic integrity. For example, I recently collaborated with the clothing brand Madewell, and they wanted to put my hand-drawn illustrations on their shirts. It’s really great that people still want that.”
How does a DIY, hand-drawn animator navigate the world in 2024? I assume you have to balance it with other work. Do you have any advice for artists trying to pay the rent while following through on their artistic visions?
Keep in mind that we live in the golden age of accessibility and distribution. Money continues to get sucked out of the arts to crippling degrees. I’m only in my mid-30s, but growing up, it only seemed possible to make animation if you lived on the coast where the industry was and walked into buildings with your physical portfolio in hand. It’s the same with DIY recording or self-publishing or whatever.
Despite the downfalls of our modern technocratic society, you can create things with minimal resources and put them into the world—even if it means working at very short intervals during downtime from your day job.
It’s tempting to say that Pure Animation for Now People is an abstract work, a swirl of colors and shapes. What is it actually about?
When I decided to make it at such a short length, I returned to intertwining “pure” animation elements, like the walk cycle and one image that transforms into another. Some scenes are in black and white, others in color. That’s also how I came up with the title; it’s a nod to the altered title of Nick Lowe’s first album, Pure Pop for Now People [1978]. That’s a brilliant title because it’s clearly tongue-in-cheek but perfectly suits the record.”
Fragments [2020] – which was dubbed by legendary musician and Beach Boys Collaborator Van Dyke Parks as “a delightful video” – won awards and eventually was played on PBS, which seemed fitting given that a lot of your work seems to be in dialogue with a certain kind of broadcast television animation. What is Fragments about?
Fragments came about organically; originally, it was just a series of 35mm photographs my wife and I took on a trip to Los Angeles and Joshua Tree. When we developed them, I started making a sort of “motion sketchbook” sequence by turning the photo slides into little moving pieces of animation. But a strange thing happened when our cat passed away unexpectedly right when we got home from the trip. So, I turned it into a short film that tells the whole story of the trip, the loss, and the range of emotions it encompasses.
I’m proud of the film. I didn’t anticipate the PBS screening or that it would do well at film festivals. I think people could relate to the story in a number of different ways. The soundtrack by my friend Yohei Shikano was essential. It was recorded live in his outdoor garden studio.
Your work seems to repeat symbols and motifs, particularly the emphasis on eyes, windows, and houses. Is this intentional or more of what feels right in the moment?
That’s an interesting observation, and I can see it now. It’s not intentional, it’s probably just a byproduct of some of the elements I typically incorporate in drawings.
In addition to Pure Animation for Now People, is there anything else coming up that you’d like to tease for your fans?
For personal work, I’m in the very early stages of trying to create animation for multimedia projections and live improvised music. It would be an experience and performance, as opposed to just making something alone in a studio and then sending it out into the world on screens. It’s an ambitious project that may require seeking some funding, but I’ll try.
Mark Neeley’s latest film, Pure Animation For Now People, will be screened on 28 August at the Logan Theatre in Chicago and will be available for online viewing in the fall.