MR. MEGALIS
Some time around 1990 I had moved on to stints art directing videos at Bloomberg LP while teaching Illustration at The New School. During one of my classes I got a surprising call from Nickelodeon. I had just happened to send them a VHS (there’s that age thing again) of some of my experimental animations at the very moment they were looking to develop a new animated series.
Thus began a full fledged career in animation. I started my own studio - Crank! It! Out!, Inc! where we animated the Henry and June shorts for KaBlam! I really did not know s__t about animation at the time but dove in anyway. Sometimes you just have to close your eyes, take the bungee leap, and hope for the best. After some 4 years of endless sketching and scanning (by the end of which I had learned a considerable amount) the show came to an end. But not before I was able to sneak in a “Son of Hercules” short. At the time Disney’s “Hercules” was about to premiere and Chris Viscardi at Nickelodeon wanted to scrap my short. I’m not sure why in hell he listened to me but I assured him my Hercules would bear no resemblance to the Disney lug. I can’t say I was completely happy with the results per se, but there were a few nice moments in the 7 minute short and I had the pleasure of being introduced to the very talented Tom Megalis who supplied the voice for Hercules as well as several ancillary characters.