Jeff Olsen
VSNRY
The Outsized Influence of Robert Abel and Associates (on Me)
It is my deep desire to drum-up enough interest within Abel alumni, and the animation and film communities to produce some sort of documenting vehicle which does justice to the remarkable creativity and pioneering spirit of the studio, hoping to enlist the cooperation and participation of some of the persons who lived it.
I'm in the process of creating a graphical timeline of biographies of some of the studio's principals, and of its prodigious output:
https//vsnry.info/abel.html
I thank you for your time in wading through this long-winded explanatory piece, and hope that it has whetted your appetite to learn and see more.
About that title sporting nary a single vowel, VSNRY - from what I've come to understand via an exchange with Ellen Wolff, that was what you would have seen on Bob Abel's personalized California license plate had you caught a glimpse of him tooling about town.
I'm in the process of creating a graphical timeline of biographies of some of the studio's principals, and of its prodigious output:
https//vsnry.info/abel.html
I thank you for your time in wading through this long-winded explanatory piece, and hope that it has whetted your appetite to learn and see more.
About that title sporting nary a single vowel, VSNRY - from what I've come to understand via an exchange with Ellen Wolff, that was what you would have seen on Bob Abel's personalized California license plate had you caught a glimpse of him tooling about town.
Who can predict what will resonate within one's soul?
Certainly not I, certainly not me.
As a teen in the mid 1970's already in awe of the creativity and excellence exhibited in Walt Disney's Fantasia, Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey, and Heinz Edelmann's Yellow Submarine, I became mesmerized by an exciting new type of imagery appearing on television emanating from a single source, the small Hollywood studio of Robert Abel & Associates.
Their ubiquitous work was impossible to miss, arriving in the form of captivating network IDs, corporate logos, and jaw-droppingly beautiful, unfathomably creative commercials so remarkably different than anything that had come before. In some circles, their imagery was referred to as 'psychedelia gone straight...'
Certainly not I, certainly not me.
As a teen in the mid 1970's already in awe of the creativity and excellence exhibited in Walt Disney's Fantasia, Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey, and Heinz Edelmann's Yellow Submarine, I became mesmerized by an exciting new type of imagery appearing on television emanating from a single source, the small Hollywood studio of Robert Abel & Associates.
Their ubiquitous work was impossible to miss, arriving in the form of captivating network IDs, corporate logos, and jaw-droppingly beautiful, unfathomably creative commercials so remarkably different than anything that had come before. In some circles, their imagery was referred to as 'psychedelia gone straight...'
I wanted nothing more than to prove worthy of joining alongside those pioneers of contemporary imagery out in Hollywood, actually stopping-in at the buzzing Highland Avenue studio in the early 1980's hoping to show The Wizard of Tinseltown what we'd accomplished on our own in the 'backwaters' of Kansas.
Didn't make it up the chain to Bob, but I did get to show our stuff off to some intermediaries in the lobby.
By this time, RA&A had moved on to pioneering and producing bleeding-edge computer graphics under grueling production deadlines, and my fascination with the kinds of streak, slit-scan, and candy-apple back-lit 'light show' graphics that we were capable of producing was on the wane due to its wide adoption by other studios and subsequent public over-exposure.
Studying Computer Science and Graphic Design at this time, my design professor told me that he thought that I belonged in the Fine Arts department, and so it was there that I went to give that a whirl:
By this time, RA&A had moved on to pioneering and producing bleeding-edge computer graphics under grueling production deadlines, and my fascination with the kinds of streak, slit-scan, and candy-apple back-lit 'light show' graphics that we were capable of producing was on the wane due to its wide adoption by other studios and subsequent public over-exposure.
Studying Computer Science and Graphic Design at this time, my design professor told me that he thought that I belonged in the Fine Arts department, and so it was there that I went to give that a whirl:
Fast forward to 2012. I'd made my career in IT, but the dormant love for the kind of imagery that the Abel folk had created all those years back was still strong within me.
The kicker came when Apple knocked down the price of their motion graphics production program, Motion, which provided in app form a large fraction of the technical capabilities of the early Abel studio, sans talent, from $1000 to $50.
My kind of bargain, I plunked-down the fifty simoleons and once I'd felt my way around the app, started aping some of my faves from the Abel 'light-show' oeuvre.
Some Abel-Ape frames:
The kicker came when Apple knocked down the price of their motion graphics production program, Motion, which provided in app form a large fraction of the technical capabilities of the early Abel studio, sans talent, from $1000 to $50.
My kind of bargain, I plunked-down the fifty simoleons and once I'd felt my way around the app, started aping some of my faves from the Abel 'light-show' oeuvre.
Some Abel-Ape frames:
Equal parts nerd and artist, I was smitten, and along with friends Dave Shelton and Mark Sullivan, we began to reverse-engineer the studio's techniques and to noodle-around with creating motion graphics using them.
We designed a logo for our fledgling production company and christened ourselves 'Out of the Blue Graphics'.
We designed a logo for our fledgling production company and christened ourselves 'Out of the Blue Graphics'.
Later, in December 2012, something significant appeared on radar, seemingly too late to act upon.
In November 2012, Tony Best, along with others at UCLA, had brought the RA&A band back together in the form of a panel discussion billed as 'Trip the Light Fantastic', which fortunately was recorded and shared online:
https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/trip-the-light-fantastic-a-tribute-to-robert-abel-associates-2012-11-10/
In November 2012, Tony Best, along with others at UCLA, had brought the RA&A band back together in the form of a panel discussion billed as 'Trip the Light Fantastic', which fortunately was recorded and shared online:
https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/trip-the-light-fantastic-a-tribute-to-robert-abel-associates-2012-11-10/
A viewer's guide to We Young Turks: The mustachioed and barefoot galoot standing upon the X-Y axes of our animation stand, that was me. It is graphic designer Dave Shelton who appears to be shoving the streaked 'Six' as I point at it, and it is my genius friend Mark Sullivan who's the wild-haired fellow toting the manuals for somebody's-somethings... just to the right of his visage is a shot of his bedroom:
At that time, Tony Best was a graduate student in the Moving Image Archive Studies program at UCLA who had cataloged much of the Archive’s Abel holdings donated by the Abel family after Robert Abel died in September 2001 from complications which arose not long after he suffered a heart attack.
Despite having learned about the 'Trip the Light' event after it had happened, I reached out to Tony, offering the story I've just presented and explaining that while I had truly missed out witnessing that once-in-a-lifetime confluence of talent in person, how grateful I was to have had the opportunity to take-in all of the stories told by viewing the record of it online, and how wonderful it was to make his acquaintance.
I posed this question to him: 'Given their outsized influence, why has the story of RA&A never been presented comprehensively in print or documentary form?' He said that he had wondered the same, and had considered embarking upon such a project himself. Thus began our multi-year correspondence.
I also sent a mammoth email to Richard Taylor, resplendent soul and the first Art Director at RA&A, thanking him for all of the joy I've had contemplating his work, which for me was the Rosetta Stone in terms of exposing the realm of possibilities for crafting poetic messages formed of light and color and movement and even typography, unfolding over time.
The very document you are now reading has largely been, to this point, a paraphrasing of my initial emails to Tony Best and RWTII.
It is Richard Winn Taylor II's work at Abel's that has chiefly informed my design sensibilities.
Shown below, a mock late-70's album cover mash-up that I crafted and shared with Richard Taylor incorporating some RWTII-created graphical elements :
Despite having learned about the 'Trip the Light' event after it had happened, I reached out to Tony, offering the story I've just presented and explaining that while I had truly missed out witnessing that once-in-a-lifetime confluence of talent in person, how grateful I was to have had the opportunity to take-in all of the stories told by viewing the record of it online, and how wonderful it was to make his acquaintance.
I posed this question to him: 'Given their outsized influence, why has the story of RA&A never been presented comprehensively in print or documentary form?' He said that he had wondered the same, and had considered embarking upon such a project himself. Thus began our multi-year correspondence.
I also sent a mammoth email to Richard Taylor, resplendent soul and the first Art Director at RA&A, thanking him for all of the joy I've had contemplating his work, which for me was the Rosetta Stone in terms of exposing the realm of possibilities for crafting poetic messages formed of light and color and movement and even typography, unfolding over time.
The very document you are now reading has largely been, to this point, a paraphrasing of my initial emails to Tony Best and RWTII.
It is Richard Winn Taylor II's work at Abel's that has chiefly informed my design sensibilities.
Shown below, a mock late-70's album cover mash-up that I crafted and shared with Richard Taylor incorporating some RWTII-created graphical elements :
Ultimately, I let Mr. Marks know that, while honored, I didn’t feel that it would be fair to the original creators of the imagery if my pastiches were used as substitutes, and I set about asking various ex-Abelites and others such as Jeff Doud and Douglas Trumbull to contact Mr. Marks if they still had the copies of the requested imagery.
I’ve also had numerous email exchanges with Bill Holland, the genius who as a teenager in high school computerized Abel’s animation stand in the early 1970’s and ultimately won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for doing so, along with his counterpart Ray Feeney, and with Sari Gennis, a staff animator at RA&A for several years who also worked with the Kroyers on their studio's full-length animated feature, Fern Gully.
I mention all of this to establish my background, the depth of my passion for this subject, and the motivations behind this passion.
The Abel studio pioneered the look of much of the imagery we take for granted today, as well as techniques for its production. It was, for its time, a talent magnet, and by dint of such spawned many new careers, and in the wake of its demise, new studios.
I’ve also had numerous email exchanges with Bill Holland, the genius who as a teenager in high school computerized Abel’s animation stand in the early 1970’s and ultimately won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for doing so, along with his counterpart Ray Feeney, and with Sari Gennis, a staff animator at RA&A for several years who also worked with the Kroyers on their studio's full-length animated feature, Fern Gully.
I mention all of this to establish my background, the depth of my passion for this subject, and the motivations behind this passion.
The Abel studio pioneered the look of much of the imagery we take for granted today, as well as techniques for its production. It was, for its time, a talent magnet, and by dint of such spawned many new careers, and in the wake of its demise, new studios.
Included in the lengthy gratitude-bomb that I set to RWTII was a link to one of my early 'Abel-Apes':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFAOb-ei4HA
Both Tony and Richard responded within hours of my pressing the send button, and I was 'over the moon,' made particularly so by an offer from Richard Taylor to meet 'somewhere down the trail...'
This meeting did finally take place down the trail in April of 2015 at a dinner in Marina Del Rey, where, along with my wife Lizzie, I spent an unforgettable evening with Richard Taylor, Stella Starlight, and animation legends Bill and Sue Kroyer.
All were gracious enough to sign the capping shutter from the Bolex 16mm camera we once used on our home-spun motion-control rig, an image of which appears in the masthead of this missive.
After December 2012, I've also held an extensive multi-year correspondence with Kenny Mirman, another significant Art Director at the studio who joined RA&A after Richard Taylor's departure, and who directed the Abel studio's contribution to TRON as well as several of their award-winning, ground-breaking spots having either CG elements or that were fully created as CG.
I conducted an extended exchange with the 'godfather of broadcast graphics' and TED Talks co-founder Harry Marks, who had funneled a lot of ABC network ID work through RA&A. Our exchange led at one point to Mr. Marks floating the idea of using some of my reproductions as stand-ins for images of seminal work of which he no longer possessed to fulfill a request for them from author Louise Sandhaus for her then-forthcoming book, Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California Graphic Design, 1936-1986.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFAOb-ei4HA
Both Tony and Richard responded within hours of my pressing the send button, and I was 'over the moon,' made particularly so by an offer from Richard Taylor to meet 'somewhere down the trail...'
This meeting did finally take place down the trail in April of 2015 at a dinner in Marina Del Rey, where, along with my wife Lizzie, I spent an unforgettable evening with Richard Taylor, Stella Starlight, and animation legends Bill and Sue Kroyer.
All were gracious enough to sign the capping shutter from the Bolex 16mm camera we once used on our home-spun motion-control rig, an image of which appears in the masthead of this missive.
After December 2012, I've also held an extensive multi-year correspondence with Kenny Mirman, another significant Art Director at the studio who joined RA&A after Richard Taylor's departure, and who directed the Abel studio's contribution to TRON as well as several of their award-winning, ground-breaking spots having either CG elements or that were fully created as CG.
I conducted an extended exchange with the 'godfather of broadcast graphics' and TED Talks co-founder Harry Marks, who had funneled a lot of ABC network ID work through RA&A. Our exchange led at one point to Mr. Marks floating the idea of using some of my reproductions as stand-ins for images of seminal work of which he no longer possessed to fulfill a request for them from author Louise Sandhaus for her then-forthcoming book, Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California Graphic Design, 1936-1986.
