J.J. Sedelmaier, president of J.J. Sedelmaier Productions Inc., at his animation studio in White Plains.
The 4,000-square-foot office occupies the 10th floor and penthouse of the Bar Building at 199 Main St. in downtown White Plains. As the landmarked building”™s name suggests, a law firm once did business on those top floors. The commercial enterprise there now is more focused on wit than writs.
“The Bar Building is the home of Beavis and Butt-Head, the Ambiguously Gay Duo, Harvey Birdman,” said J.J. Sedelmaier, the producer and director who brought those made-for-television cartoon characters and numerous others to life at J.J. Sedelmaier Productions Inc., the animation studio that has called the Bar Building home since 1990.
Beavis and Butt-Head might be household names in Westchester and well beyond, but Sedelmaier? It”™s a name and a studio better known to Manhattan television comedy insiders ”“ the hip folks at “30 Rock,” “Saturday Night Live,” “The Colbert Report” and “The Daily Show” ”“ than to suburban White Plains. Corporate clients too seek out Sedelmaier ”“ the company president and his studio”™s stylistically versatile work ”“ when looking to have commercials made that are edgy and clever and wondrously animated. Sedelmaier is the man and the studio that put the fizz in and brought to life 7Up”™s Old Masters commercial, for one.
It all started here, this business and art of animation, here in the New York metropolis, Sedelmaier would have us know. He and his industry colleague Howard Beckerman, who teaches animation at New York”™s School of Visual Arts and authored “Animation: The Whole Story,” have spent a year preparing “It All Started Here,” the Westchester”™s Arts Council”™s winter exhibition that celebrates, in film and gallery displays at three locations in the county, the 103-year history of animation in the area.
The gallery exhibit, which runs from Jan. 20 to Feb. 28, will open Saturday, Jan. 17 with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. in The Arts Exchange at 231 Mamaroneck Ave. in White Plains. Animated films will be shown at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville and The Picture House in Pelham.
“I don”™t think anything”™s ever been done on New York animation like this,” the 52-year-old Sedelmaier said in his studio office last week. The exhibit, about half of which includes drawings and prints, cartoon storyboards and animation equipment that traces the industry”™s evolution from mechanical flip cards to digital technology taken from Sedelmaier”™s vast studio collection, will show that “animation isn”™t just done in California.”
“Animation started here because this is where all the newspapers were and this is where all the comics were. This is what initially fed the industry.”
In Westchester, “A lot of people have heard of Blue Sky,” he said. The acclaimed animation studio owned by the News Corp. subsidiary, Fox Filmed Entertainment, this month relocated from White Plains to Greenwich, Conn. Fewer know that several Blue Sky Studios animators, including co-founder and Academy-Award-wining director Chris Wedge, previously worked at Mathematical Applications Group Inc. (MAGI) / Syntha Vision in Elmsford. That company did groundbreaking work for the 1982 Disney science fiction movie “Tron,” the first feature film to use computer animation, Sedelmaier said.
In New Rochelle, Terrytoons for 40 years produced cartoons for theaters and television that included “Mighty Mouse” and “Heckle and Jeckle.” In the Bar Building before Sedelmaier”™s arrival, the lawyer-heavy list of tenants included Carl Machover, a renowned computer industry pioneer who did the first computer-animated commercial for Xerox Corp. in the ”™70s.
A Chicago native, Sedelmaier was not the first in his family to leave his mark on the television industry and the making of commercials. His father, Joe Sedelmaier, is a former art director and producer at prominent ad agencies who started his own film production studio in the late 1960s, where he made some of the most memorable commercials in the medium”™s history. Wendy”™s “Where”™s the beef?” ad was his creation.
“His influence was in casting,” said the son. “He changed the face of TV advertising by using everyday people.”
Studio head J.J. Sedelmaier checks a tractor drawn by animator Dave Lovelace for a fertilizer pitch.
“I learned a lot from him in terms of doing your own thing and trying to find something you do for a living that you enjoy.”
An art major at the University of Wisconsin, Sedelmaier left the Midwest for New York City 30 years ago. “I moved to New York to get into comic books, but it was pretty lethal in the late ”™70s,” he said. “The majesty of comic books hadn”™t hit yet. I realized when I got here that that bubble had burst” for his cartoonist ambitions.
But the Chicagoan discovered a community of talented filmmakers and artists working in independent animation. “It wasn”™t formula-based. This had been going on in New York since the ”™50s.”
In Greenwich Village, he met his future wife, Patrice, an aspiring actress. Sedelmaier expanded his skills in the animation craft and business at large New York studios, where he worked on mainstream kiddie cartoons such as the Berenstain Bears and Strawberry Shortcake series.
At the start of the ”™90s, he and his wife started their own studio company in the Bar Building”™s penthouse loft. Patrice Sedelmaier serves as vice president and business manager. “She”™s the other side of the brain,” he said. “We overlap 50-50 on the strategy of how the business is going to be run.”
In 1992, MTV producers approached them about doing a cartoon series featuring Beavis and Butt-Head, sparked by viewers”™ initial response to the cartoon duo on MTV”™s Liquid Television. “In essence, we were the only ones stupid enough to do it,” Sedelmaier said. An animation series had not been done in New York in years. “The idea was to use digital technology,” which was just emerging as a changing force in the tradition-steeped industry.
The White Plains studio worked about six months on the original Beavis and Butt-Head series and grew to 50 employees to handle the fast-produced and comparatively underpaid work. Sedelmaier, who was drawn to animation”™s intimate, hands-on work, wearied of the “distant management” the production required. The demanding series also cut off the studio from smaller projects “and the commercials that we enjoy doing and are more profitable to work on,” he said.
“We were probably very fortunate to have done Beavis after opening about a year because it taught us what we don”™t ever want to do that again. Just the whole way of working is more important than just getting the big job.”
In taking on clients, “We kind of weigh our priorities on a personal and professional level at the same time. I don”™t think you do that if you”™re working with someone other than your spouse.”
The Sedelmaiers now have five studio employees. “We stay very small,” he said. “It”™s not only good for the company, it”™s good for the people who work here. You get opportunities you wouldn”™t get from working in a large studio.”
The studio did likely its most influential work to date with its animated cartoon shorts for “Saturday Night Live.” Working in collaboration with writer and comedian Robert Smigel, Sedelmaier exclusively produced and directed the first three seasons of the celebrated and hilarious commercial spoofs and Saturday Night Funhouse series.
“They’re grueling, absolutely grueling,” Sedelmaier said. “We did some of those cartoons in a week and a half.”
“The SNL cartoons really helped shake things up in terms of people”™s opinion of animation. These really were adult cartoons. You can see the influence” on cartoon parodies since.
“I learned a lot from doing those SNL cartoons.” On the down side, the business owner learned that advertising people had begun to think “it was the only thing we did. As a result we were getting pigeonholed even though we”™ve always been loosey-goosey” in adapting styles to serve a client”™s message and product. “We had lost our image of versatility.” That led the studio to back off from SNL work.
Sedelmaier said the animation industry has bend hit hard by the recession. “We see jobs get awarded and killed after they”™ve been awarded. The industry is slow. A lot of really creative people are out of work.”
Sedelmaier hopes the Obama administration and the optimism it has sparked among citizens will put the nation and his industry back on track. But, though his studio and others are taking on more work for clients who have turned to the Web to pitch products, the future for the animation industry is not especially rosy.
“It”™s going to be mainly a freelance industry now because of all the people on the street and a couple of places like Nickelodeon shutting their doors,” he said. “It would be very rough if we didn”™t have the reputation we have.”
