Mr. In-Between

My Life in the Middle of the Animation Revolution

Bill Kroyer

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040300961
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Animation
• Index: Computer Science

What's changed most in your lifetime? The switch from land lines to cell phones? From snail mail to email? How about the transition from Bugs Bunny to Buzz Lightyear? Those Bugs and Daffy cartoons you loved as a kid look nothing like the PIXAR classics Toy Story or The Incredibles.

Mr. In-Between: My Life in the Middle of the Animation Revolution is the fascinating and hilarious saga of one of animation's computer graphics pioneers, Bill Kroyer, making his way to Hollywood to end up as a key figure in the technical revolution of animation's "Second Golden Age". He provides an artist's explanation of the fundamental principles of animation, from the basic mechanics of motion to the immersive, artful experience of visualizing and realizing the performance of an imaginary character.

Rather than a scholarly listing of films and filmmakers, the book is instead a captivating first-person journey through what may be the most important transition in the history of the arts—the transformation and renaissance of the animated film in the digital age. An important work for scholars, and an eye-opening and page-turning adventure for any film or cartoon fan, Mr. In-Between is a book that has the ultimate writing credit.

Bill Kroyer was there.

Key Features:

• Explains the step-by-step evolution of the digital tools of computer animation, from the most basic primitive "scripted" motion to the current application of artificial intelligence
• Describes some of the most remarkable, eccentric, and colorful geniuses who populated the quirky now-vanished subculture of "hand-drawn animation"
• Takes the reader on a world-wide tour of animation studios on four continents, explaining the vast cultural differences, but common artistic devotion, of animators in places as diverse as communist China, Europe, India, and the Philippines
• Recounts fascinating and surprising interactions with world-famous celebrities that worked with the animation industry, including legendary musicians, Oscar-winning actors and the King of the United Kingdom

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• 1 Snow White Rollin’ on the River!
• 2 It All Started with a Wink
• 3 Annie’s Sugar-Coated Nightmare
• 4 Westward Ho
• 5 How Cheap Will You Work?
• 6 What Is a Spungbuggy?
• 7 Putting Pants on the Elves
• 8 The Tidepool off the River
• 9 Working My Way Back to Burbank
• 10 Animation across the Pond
• 11 At the Feet of the Master
• 12 The Rat’s Nest
• 13 The Miracle of the Pencil Stub
• 14 Things You Could Never Imagine
• 15 It Will Remind of You Something You Have Never Seen Before
• 16 Board Certified
• 17 Animation by the Numbers
• 18 Computer Image Choreography
• 19 Get Me 100,000 of Those
• 20 Let the Digital Age Begin
• 21 Animating with Crayons
• 22 She’s a Hard Woman to Please
• 23 The “E.T.” You Haven’t Heard of
• 24 Outperforming a Muppet
• 25 Dead on Arrival
• 26 Kroyer Films Ink
• 27 The Technological Threat
• 28 From Korea with Love
• 29 Chasing Awards
• 30 Back to Commercials!
• 31 Honey, I Shrunk the World
• 32 Killing Santa
• 33 Animation the Third World Way
• 34 Fairy Tales Will Come True!
• 35 Raindrops Falling in Our Heads
• 36 I Do Live in a Tree!
• 37 Building an Airplane—In Flight
• 38 The Traditional Crash and Burn
• 39 Is There Life after FernGully ?
• 40 Warner Bros. and the Failed Quest
• 41 Time to Go Digital
• 42 Talking Animals “R US”
• 43 Dinosaurs, Dogs, and Cats
• 44 The Academy and the Second Golden Age
• 45 Animation in the Digital Age
• 46 The Marriage of Animation and Visual Effects
• 47 R&H India
• 48 That Party
• 49 How about a Career Change?
• 50 Teaching in the Digital Age
• 51 The Science of Keeping Up
• 52 Everything Changes
• 53 Fringe Benefits
• 54 Meeting Legends
• 55 Winding Down
• 56 Wrapping it Up
• Index