The Background Dept. – ‘ An American Tail ‘ production
Sullivan Bluth Studios – Van Nuys California
In this episode, BG Artist Barry Atkinson guides us through the BG Department during a typical casual Saturday in the Spring of 1986. We visit the work space of BG Supervisor Don Moore and meet BG trainee David McCamley. Barry then points out several of Don Moore’s BG paintings and Color Keys giving a quick snapshot of how a traditional animation background team was during the era.

The Background Dept – BG Artist Barry Atkinson – Don Bluth Studio 1986

Show Notes :

BARRY ATKINSON
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Barry Atkinson is a graphic and digital artist who is employed by Walt Disney Television Studios and Mercury Filmworks production companies. He has gained notoriety through his efforts a background artist on many Disney television series and movies. His notable film work includes Big Hero 6 (2014), Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), Pocahontas (1995), The Lion King (1994), and the Lion Guard (2016) television series. He has recently retired and is busy on his own creative personal projects.


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DAVID McCAMLEY
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David is a Seven time Emmy nominated director and producer with over 30 years’ experience in feature animated films, TV animation and short films as director, art director, production designer and writer. He has also created and directed two original children’s TV series.

Recent projects include Production designer and Co-Director on Emmy and Annie award winning ‘Ada Twisty’ for Netflix’s , Production design on ‘Lets get rolling with Otis’ for Apple TV+/ Brown Bag films and production design on ‘Eva the Owlet’ Apple TV+/Scholastic/Brown bag films.

Supervising directing on all three seasons of Beatrix Potter’s ‘Peter Rabbit’, a Brown Bag Films production for Nick Junior which went on to win SIX Emmy awards and a further ten nominations. And he was Supervising Director of the Annie ,BAFTA and Emmy nominated CGI series “The Stinky and Dirty Show; season 1 & 2 for Amazon Studio’s.

He began his career on ‘An American Tail’ at Sullivan Bluth studios, where he was fortunate enough to be trained by some of the top industry professionals. In 1990, David moved to Los Angeles where he worked on numerous features and in 1992 joined Walt Disney Feature Animation contributing his talents to award winning films such as the ‘The Lion King’, ‘Pocahontas’, ‘Hunchback’ and ‘Hercules’. On ‘Tarzan’ he held the position of ‘Supervising Digital Background Artist’ pioneering digital background painting for the studio and was a key member in the development of a new 3D Painting system called Deep Canvas.

In 2000 he returned to Ireland to create and direct the TV series The Island of Inis Cool. The series used CGI characters combined with miniature sets to give it the look and feel of clay-animation. Grabby-Bag, a CGI preschool series for RTE, was his second series, which he created, directed and co-produced with Brown Bag Films. He then went on to direct a new CGI series of Noddy in Toyland, and the pilot episode of Doc Mc Stuffins for Disney Junior.