Monday, August 15, 2011

Talking to Michael Giaimo -- Part I

Michael Giaimo in his office.

Mike Giaimo came into animation via the route a number of neophyte artists travelled in the 1970s: Promising student at Cal Arts makes an animated film; Walt Disney Productions takes a shine to same; the Mouse House then snaps up the neophyte to work in Burbank.

Sounds simple, but it wasn't always ...



TAG Interview with Michael Giaimo

Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link

Michael started his Disney career in the same way that many others did. He in-betweened on production while making a personal animation reel. But he soon found himself tagged by superiors as having a spark for story development. And within a short period of time Mr. Giaimo found himself being mentored by the young story artist Pete Young, as you will hear in this first installment of the latest TAG Interview.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is great! I've always loved Mike. Whenever I worked with him, he was always asking about me and my family rather than talk about himself. It's absolutely fantastic to hear his story.

What a great guy.

And he has the greatest modern home of all time... but that has nothing to do with anything.

Anonymous said...

Great interview. Can't wait for the second part.

Btw, Steve, your voice sounds a bit like Dick Van Dyke's voice. :-)

Steve Hulett said...

I think I am Dick Van Dyke.

Anonymous said...

Great interview. Michael is a brilliant designer and story artist, and it's great to know he's back at Disney.

What does Rich Rich know about storytelling, design, or film making? From his output, not much! The Black Cauldron, and everything he's done since only underlines this.

Floyd Norman said...

Mike is so cool and talented. Had the opportunity with him on "Sweating Bullets" at Disney. Too bad they wouldn't let us make the movie.

Anonymous said...

If they'd had strong story artists, maybe it would have happened.

Chris Sobieniak said...

For anyone who might like to see this Roger Rabbit test heard in the interview, here you go!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QQ8bPDNNm4

Jeff said...

Unfortunately, the links for both parts of this interview are not longer working. Can the links be fixed?

Steve Hulett said...

I think if you go to the animation guild website, you can retrieve an MP3 file for Mike's interview.

Chris Sobieniak said...

Though I don't normally update posts like this, just like to share this link to an excerpt from the Disney Channel special that exposed some of the work on the early version of Roger Rabbit to the public.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME4yxyGZNS4

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