This was done for an animated Christmas special being made by Tony Benedict in 1986. Tony was a good guy who I unfortunately didn't get to know very well. I didn't know it at the time but he had worked at many places in the business : Disney, UPA, Hanna Barbera, Depatie-Freleng, and had his own studio. (Check out Tony Benedict's website with lots of good photos and cartoons from those days. ) I don't know what ever became of the project , but I don't think it was ever completed . I found the drawings recently and decided to scan the drawings to see what it looked like after all these years. This is my first rough pass. I turned in a tied-down , fully-inbetweened version to Tony with the effects animation drawn in blue pencil for hand-inking.
In 1986 I was working at Filmation in the "feature unit" (the unit that did the low-budget "Pinocchio" and "Snow White" sequels "Pinocchio & The Emperor of the Night" and "Happily Ever After". It was a living ...)
One day my co-worker, animator Will Finn tells me about this guy Tony Benedict who is putting together a proposal for an animated Christmas special and needs some animators to work on the "trailer" for the special. So I end up going to see Tony Benedict who is making this Christmas special and Tony gives me a scene on the trailer to animate . (this is all freelance work while I'm still working full time at Filmation) I remember very little about the job except that it was a Christmas special, and it involved a little imp character named Grimley who was working for the Devil (yeah, the Devil) ... "Grimley" was one of those compact characters that was all body , with legs and arms sticking out, like "Timer" from the "Time for Timer" spots that Depatie-Freleng and Rick Reinert used to do .
Ok, so I think the premise of the show was that the Devil wanted to "ruin Christmas this year" or something like that, and ol' Grimley was supposed to be in charge of helping Satan ruin Christmas , but he messes up somehow and is on the lam from Hell , hoping that Old Scratch won't catch up to him. I never saw the finished piece so I don't remember exactly how this scene fit into it.
My scene was of Grimley running into a room with an old-fashioned wood burning stove . He zips in , looks around worried that someone is chasing him .... then Satan himself appears from the flames of the wood-burning stove and grabs Grimley by the legs and says something (I can't remember the dialogue) , which I think was "It's time to go Grimley" or "Let's go Grimley" , which I have written down on the drawings when I scanned them, but the original X-sheet is long gone, so I may be off on what the actual line was that the Devil says.
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