There are two seniors on campus who spend their days watching cartoons -- and they're getting credit for it.
But there is no Bugs Bunny or Fred Flintstone for Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who watch only the cartoons they draw, frame by frame, for 2,500 meticulous frames.
Lord, who draws "Loudmouth" for The Dartmouth, and Miller, who draws "Sleazy the Wonder Squirrel" for The Dartmouth, are making full-length, video cartoons that will be shown in the Loew Theater May 22 for the Dartmouth Animation Festival.
Both cartoonists have received major accolades for their work; Lord's "Self-Mambo," a "3 minute self-portrait" appeared on the Cartoon Network this past October, and Miller took Sleazy to the International Animation Festival in Stuttgart, Germany last Spring.
Lord and Miller became friends in an animation class their freshman year, and they now share an animation studio in Clement Hall, behind the Hood museum.
The walls of the studio are covered with sketches and color drawings of their latest projects. The room also holds several technical-looking animation machines, rows of paint and colored pencils, a laptop computer and a giant inflatable Tabasco bottle.
Theses in technicolor
Most senior projects have boring, jargon-filled titles comprehensible only to an academic. Lord's project, on the other hand, is called "Breakfast of Champions" and Miller's is called "Sleazy Goes to France."
"Sleazy Goes to France" is a seven-minute, full-color cartoon loosely based on the Sleazy cartoons Miller wrote for The Dartmouth while he was in France.
"I was in Lyon for an LSA my sophomore winter. It rocked the cat's pajamas," said Miller in his typically outrageous cartoonist-speak.
Miller said Sleazy and Herschel host their own talk show in the film. Their guest is Godot, of Samuel Beckett's play, "Waiting for Godot." As anyone who read Beckett's play in high school English class knows, Godot never shows up.
"Instead of waiting, they go looking for him," Miller said. "His name sounds French, so they go to France."
Lord's current project is no less comic. The premise behind his five minute cartoon is "a culinary revolution, an insurrection," he said. The title of Lord's work, which changed every few minutes of the interview from "Man Bites Breakfast" to "Crispy in Milk," will now be called "Breakfast of Champions," Lord said.
The cartoon will depict the struggle between the "oppressed cereal Mamb-Os" and "The Man," Jethreson Oliver Blocknut. It is "a giant confrontation between the forces of good and evil, of big and of small, of the bully and the bullied," said Lord in his comic deadpan. "It's a morality play."
Both films will be accompanied by scores composed by Andy May '97.
Cartoonists' capital
Cartoons are costly things to make.
Miller and Lord say they expect their cartoons to cost about $2,500 each. But Miller is assisted by the Hopkins Center's Peter D. Smith Initiative Fund, which provides him with $1,500 toward supplies.
Lord funds his project on a different sort of grant.
"I'm on the Mr. and Mrs. Lord Fund; I use my own hard-earned cash I embezzled from others," Lord said, never looking up from his pencil sketch.
The process of creating these films is onerous, as well as expensive. Lord and Miller must illustrate up to 2,500 images, each of which will appear on the screen about one-tenth of a second.
Lord and Miller have hired Steiner Kierce '97 and Stephanie Waddell '97 to add color to their illustrations.
By the end of May, Lord and Miller will have finished all the images, filmed and edited them in New York, added the soundtrack and made copies of the final print.
A future in cartooning
The pair have ambitious plans for after graduation.
"We're going to Neverneverland," said Lord, still deeply engrossed in his sketch. "Actually, Chris has aspirations to be a Chippendale dancer."
Miller, interjecting a bit of reality into the impromptu script, said they are both planning to move to Los Angeles. The two agree that their long-term goal is to have a production company.
"We might have to go pay our dues first, monkey around for someone else," Lord said. "But the end goal is that we get to create our own stuff."
While the two have never officially collaborated on a project, Miller and Lord work closely, making suggestions and bouncing ideas off each other.
