Meeting Paul Rudish – KLIK! 2013
Friday afternoon at Amsterdam’s animation festival KLIK! and finally the talk everyone has been waiting for arrives. Paul Rudish is in the building and ready to divulge all about his new venture with Disney directing Mickey Mouse shorts. Paul Rudish is best known for his work at Cartoon Network, designing and directing a whole host of programmes including Dexters Lab, Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack. This talent and creativity attracted the eye of Disney and he was asked, along with his team, to come up with a whole new take on Mickey Mouse. His idea was chosen and gave birth to the new improved Mickey shorts.
With 20 episodes originally green lit, Paul decided to take Mickey and the gang on a exciting trip around the world. During the talk we were treated to some of those new episodes. As each one played out Paul was on hand to comment on the design process and how he and the writer had come up with the story lines. All the shorts mainly focused on a different country or place, we were swept from Venice to Austria, Paris to Japan. Each location allowed them to experiment with new styles, with my personal favourite ‘ Yodelberg’, coming straight from the art of Mary Blair. It was great to see Blair influenced work right up there on screen, instead of tucked away in a making of book. Paul explained how he’d delved into the Disney archive to try and come up with something that mirrored the Disney ideals and style but yet stood out as some thing new and interesting for the 21st century. Looking back he found out quickly that he loved the 50’s style Mickey Mouse and based all his new designs around that. His time in the archive has definitely had an effect, as all the shorts were littered with in jokes and old Disney favourites such as Cinderella in ‘Croissant de Triomphe’ and the long forgotten character Clarabelle cow.
After his talk I managed to catch up with Paul and ask him a few questions about his career and the new shorts. Due to some computer error the recording was sadly lost so, a summary is now sadly all we have.
Once you view the shorts, you can quickly notice how much of a break in convention they are but Paul explained that this wasn’t really an issue when seeing it past all the Disney big wigs. The fact that many of the characters are drawn with broken lines, Mickey even getting naked in one episode could have been a straight no no and Paul was just as surprised, as any viewer, with getting away with it. He explained that his passion for this limited animation and somewhat Cartoon Modern style came right after he left Cal Arts and joined Hanna-Barbera. Looking through the archives and just being at the studio really inspired him and with a few of his classmates specialising in this limited technique it was as if it was written in the stars. When Turner bought out Hanna-Barbera and started re-running all the old toons back to back on it’s new channel Cartoon Network, it became an instant success and bought on the need for new toons. Paul and his colleagues were asked to pitch two new ideas, which led him to directing Dexters Lab and Powerpuff Girls and later on Samauri Jack. These became massive successes and became legendary mainstays of Cartoon Network.
Paul Rudish is very much a pioneer of the modern cartoon and will certainly be remembered in his creation of the much loved Cartoon Network favourites. Bringing his style and approach to Disney seems to have seen the studio move into a new direction and finally try new things. It took a brave man to break the Disney convention and for this, Paul Rudish, we salute you.