History

My connection with Buzzco Associates began more than a decade before it was incorporated. I was an illustration student at the Rhode Island School of Design and one day I climbed up the hill to Brown University to hear Jack Zander give a talk about his New York animation studio. I had never considered animation before his presentation (there weren't many art schools teaching animation back then, including RISD.) But while watching Zander's commercial demo reel, I saw a way to marry my love of drawing with my love of acting and storytelling...without the stage fright. I asked him for a job right then and there and he said I should show him my portfolio when I could come to New York.

Zander didn't have a position to offer me, but he gave me a list of studios. I landed an internship with the newly created Perpetual Motion Pictures, where, after I graduated a few years later, I was hired fulltime. Veteran animator Vincent Cafarelli soon joined the staff and he became my mentor and teacher. Marilyn Kraemer joined about five years later as a bookkeeper.

In 1982, when Perpetual had grown to about 75 people, co-owner/producer Buzz Potamkin (interested in doing more for broadcast TV and the new cable networks) and co-owner/director/designer Hal Silvermintz (interested in the more profitable commercial work) parted ways. The staff was divided--Marilyn, Vinny, myself and others were recruited by Buzz for his studio, "Buzzco Productions" and Hal took the rest of the staff for "Perpetual Animation."

This site is less concerned with marketing for future work, but it is a tribute to Buzzco Associates and the people who worked there. And I wanted to tell the story of Buzzco from a personal perspective. It was the best of times.

I believe our most important work is the educational films. It started with our seminal relationship with Children’s Television Workshop: Sesame Street (It’s Hip to Be a Square, Jake the Snake, Animal Elevators, I Eat the Colors of the Rainbow among others), Electric Company, Square One TV.

We were approached by Planned Parenthood Federation of America to make a half hour video explaining puberty and sexuality to 10-14 year olds and their families. It was a daunting effort conditioned by a curriculum of hundreds of pages. We collaborated with writer Jim Thurman, a CTW veteran, an incredible cast, our staff, and Planned Parenthood educators. It generated an enormous reaction from educators — and was highly recommended by librarians, medical associations, even the religious right.

As an animated film, it won the prestigious Annecy Cristal award. It stayed relevant well through the 21st century, in fact, we were asked by various institutions to replace their VHS tapes with DVD’s! Now we are happy to have it streaming here.

Another milestone was a 17-minute DVD “It’s Still Me!- A guide for People with Aphasia and their Loved Ones” originally distributed by The National Aphasia Association. It was inspired by my mother, who had suffered a massive stroke that left her with aphasia, the inability to communicate with words. When people would come to visit her, they would speak only to me. They would ignore my mother, who was perfectly able to follow the conversation. She wanted to be involved. Although I created the DVD after she had passed, I'd imagine her nodding and pointing to the screen to show her friends she could be understood. 

I still get fan letters from people who find the explanations of aphasia and methods for non-verbal communication useful and hopeful. 

We continue to help organizations like TED-Ed, iHeed, the Albuquerque Balloon Museum, Macmillan Cancer Care and others explain complicated subjects through animation.

So without either Rick or Marilyn who had changed careers, I started animating without staff support. And although it was supposed to have been my last work, I found that I enjoyed the "zen" of animating alone. Without the pressures of running a studio, I enjoyed drawing again! There were stories I had to leave out of “I, Candy”— 22 minutes was long enough!— so I started “Miracle on Central Park West”.

Leon Joosen, who became a friend from the AMPAS New York screenings, came to work at Buzzco’s space. There was plenty of room for him to spread out his own work (this space had once held about a dozen employees at its start) and I was glad for the company. I saw that he was excellent in making papier-maché sculptures. Since my script for Miracle on Central Park West required backgrounds on the sidewalks of the NYC’s Upper West Side, I thought it’d be so much fun to create small-scale buildings that, when photographed, would become the backgrounds for my characters. We raided my recycle bin for boxes and cartons which magically became brownstones, apartment buildings and synagogues. 

I went to my cinematographer friend John Donnelly to shoot it. He had a digital camera set-up to shoot my 3-dimensional buildings. I knew the length of each scene from my storyboard but John’s experience with lighting, camera angles and lenses added so much more! So not exactly alone (I had some great voice talent as well), I made another film— doing all the drawings myself!

It was completed in February 2020 at the onset of Covid restrictions stopping in-person screenings or even seeing other people!

I took to the isolation to start another film, A Tale of Two Weddings, another story that didn’t make it into I, Candy. It describes a weekend when I attended two different family events, 72 hours and 6,000 miles apart. Again, I loved having a project to keep me occupied and I finished the drawings at the beginning of 2021.  When I tried booking the final mix, it was scheduled multiple times and cancelled by outbreaks of covid. I finally completed it in March of 2022— and instead of entering it into festivals, it'll be available here!

In the meantime, Lanny’s dear friend, Broadway producer, Jamie DeRoy, asked me to help her make a music video. I thought I’d make a limited animation which should have taken only about a month. When she said she wanted to enter it in film festivals, I decided I’d do it all the way…and it’s gotten into more festivals than my latest personal films! Then, a documentary friend of hers asked me to create an animated introduction and other scenes for a documentary whose subject I found interesting. And Jamie came back with a second music video Daddy's Girl,  finished in August 2022, is making its way through film festivals!

And animation schools still ask me to speak to their classes— and what is clear is that I’m not ready to stop!