Long time, and legendary, animator, Dale Baer, was recently honored with a 2017 Winsor McCay Award for Career Achievement at this years Annie Awards held on February 7. Baer, 66, whose work has won several Annie Awards, has been an animator for more than 45 years and he just seems to marvel at how technology, and the craft itself, has simply exploded onto the scene of late.
Baer first wandered in to the Disney animation studios back in 1971 after having attended the Chouinard Film Institute. The California native spent many decades with Disney and has worked on such award winning films as Moana, The Lion King, The Emperor’s New Clothes and Zootopia, just to names a small few. In fact, he won the 2001 Annie Award for Best Animator for his creation of the character Yzma in The Emperor’s New Clothes.
Getting to Disney studios back in the early 1970’s, however, seemed like a dream come true for a young man with dreams of being involved in the creation of animation. He started working on Saturday morning cartoons. He said of those days that, “It was so wonderful walking into this place and working with heroes of mine. Eric Larson and John Lounsbery were the most patient, helpful people I ever met. I gravitated to John because he liked to do very broad, comical animation. He was never overly critical. Eric was very methodical. He’d look at your work on the Moviola, stop and zero in on one spot that needed work and take a piece of paper and make a drawing. He’d hand you the paper, and it just made sense.”
He had begun his serious training at Disney working on 1973’s Robin Hood and studied under some of the most undisputed animation masters in the history of film. Baer has gone on for more than forty years working on legendary films and characters for Disney and others. In addition, he has also worked for 27 years in the commercial end of the business doing both television and commercials creation.
For Baer, who trained traditionally at the easel, has been simply amazed at how animation has evolved and has simply exploded and flourished in recent years. Even with all of the marvelous new software technology at his fingertips, Baer still loves to draw free hand. For him, a pencil and a sketch pad are where the ideas, and the memorable characters and stories, begin.
For Baer, the future seems bright for the industry as he believes that animation has simply, “…blown up like crazy. I worked on two CG films at Disney, though I still like drawing on paper. I’m glad they’re both out there now. It’s exciting.”
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