aka Snidely Whiplash Teaches Rocket J. Squirrel about Enumerable Sets
One of my previous posts was titled "Lost in Our Vaults Until Now" but this one might truly be called "Lost in [Bob's] Garage Until [8 years ago]!"
A friend of mine named Bob Konikow used to own his own animation studio in California back in the 70s. One idea they had at the time was to create a series of math-related animated shorts, and in one case, they even went so far as to write the script, do some preliminary design work, and even record the dialog, but they never finished it!
Flash-forward some 40 years, and he and I are going through the hoard in his garage, when we came across those original audio recordings on tape. Luckily, he also still owned a (working!) reel-to-reel tape deck, and was able to digitize those recordings onto his computer.
Now, here is the best part. It's who he got to do the voices for his short. There are two parts in the script and he hired June Foray and Hans Conried to do the voices!
In case you don't know, June Foray is one of the most famous animation voice-over artists going, having voiced Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Tweety's Granny, Bug's Witch Hazel, and many many (many) more!
In case you don't know, June Foray is one of the most famous animation voice-over artists going, having voiced Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Tweety's Granny, Bug's Witch Hazel, and many many (many) more!
Hans Conried was a popular "character actor" - including playing Dr. Terwilliker in "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T." - who also provided voices for many animated characters, notably Disney's Captain Hook, and Snidely Whiplash, also from the Bullwinkle show.
When I heard these two great voices again, and saw a couple of scene ideas, I asked him if I could take a crack at animating it, thinking others might enjoy hearing these two working together. (Sadly, neither are with us anymore.) So we did.
At the time, my friend liked the finished result well enough to re-kindle the idea of making a series a shorts, which is why I held off on posting the entire video before. But now Bob Konikow is no longer with us either, so I decided to finally upload the whole thing. After all, my original purpose for getting involved at all was so that people could hear these voices again, and now they can.
<Previously published May 2014>
