{"id":163568,"date":"2024-06-06T10:21:58","date_gmt":"2024-06-06T14:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=163568"},"modified":"2024-06-06T16:51:55","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T20:51:55","slug":"from-rugrats-to-50th-reunion-norton-virgien-74-traces-the-career-of-a-hollywood-animator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2024\/06\/06\/from-rugrats-to-50th-reunion-norton-virgien-74-traces-the-career-of-a-hollywood-animator\/","title":{"rendered":"From ‘Rugrats’ to 50th Reunion, Norton Virgien ’74 traces his career as a Hollywood animator"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As an engineering major, Zain Erakky \u201926 of New York City does not plan to pursue a career in animation or film. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as someone who grew up enchanted by the ingenious children on the animated series Rugrats<\/em>, Erakky made sure to get a front-row seat after hearing that Norton Virgien \u201974, well known for his many director and producer credits for the award-winning franchise, was giving a talk on campus as part of the Distinguished Alumni in Residence program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNorton was an inspiration for me growing up, with all those cool inventions the Rugrats made,\u201d Erakky said, such as a super binky, coconut phone, and a hovercraft. Erakky remembers the wild adventure when Tommy Pickles climbed a plunger handle to explore a bathroom toilet, with hilarious results. \u201cI always wanted to do that stuff in real life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2024
Longtime Hollywood animator Norton Virgien \u201974, well known for his work on the Rugrats<\/em> franchise, visited campus as the College Key’s Distinguished Alumnus in Residence and gave a talk on March 27, 2024, in the Benjamin Mays Center. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The biggest takeaway for Erakky after hearing Virgien? How the veteran, Emmy Award\u2013winning Hollywood producer and director went through dry spells in his career and still came out on top. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat he faced rejection is inspiring. It was super powerful to see someone who helped to create something from my childhood, and to hear how he had sometimes failed \u2014 but he was fine with that,\u201d Erakky said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virgien, who returns with Bates classmates for his 50th Bates Reunion this weekend, was on campus on March 27 as a guest of the College Key’s Distinguished Alumni program. During his visit, he met and talked with students about his 49-year (and counting) run in Hollywood. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2024
Virgien speaks with Xucheng Zheng \u201927 of Shanghai, China, after his talk in the Benjamin Mays Center on March 27, 2024. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In an interview, Virgien spoke frankly about how creatives like painters, dancers, writers, or poets will face periods of financial insecurity if they decide to be independent artists. \u201cPretty much my career has alternated between projects that I’ve loved and time looking for the next project that I’m going to love,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are often breaks, and that makes it an adventure financially, however well you did while you were busy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After graduating from Bates, Virgien headed to Hollywood, where he started as a draftsman back when animation was done by hand, and creating the movement of a single character required up to 24 slightly different drawings for just one second of animation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2024
From left, Paula Laverty P’10 and two classmates, Don McDade ’74 and Karen Harris ’74, react to Virgien’s remarks on March 24, 2024. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In Hollywood, he quickly picked up freelance work as a draftback, an illustrator who copies the initial image drawn by the lead artist. But largely he learned by listening and heeding advice \u2014 even if that meant giving up what he loved to do: bringing drawn characters to life by creating original illustrations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virgien\u2019s mentor in those early days was Fred Hellmich, an animator for Disney (The Aristocats, The Jungle Book<\/em>) in the mid-1900s who later opened his own studio with Virgien as a partner. (Fun fact: They did the Disney-inspired animated sequence in the movie 9 to 5<\/em> with Lily Tomlin as Snow White).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2024
Virgien meets with students during his visit in March 2024. He says he remains proud that Rugrats<\/em> had genuine appeal both children and adults. Virgien was co-director for The Rugrats Movie<\/em> in 1998, producer of Rugrats in Paris<\/em> in 2000, and director of Rugrats Go Wild <\/em>in 2003. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hellmich saw that his mentee had a keen sense for storytelling in his work, a talent that Virgien\u2019s Bates mentor, the late Dana Professor of Art Don Lent, had seen as well. At the time, Virgien was helping Hellmich with a Disney project, and Hellmich paid him the compliment of telling him  \u201call he had to do was pretty up my drawings because I had already solved the storytelling problems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virgien wasn\u2019t the only Bates art major<\/a> from the Class of 1974 who trekked to Hollywood to work in animation. By the late 1970s, Charles Grosvenor, who had been encouraged by Virgien to trade East for West, was forging his own career as an animator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the 1990s arrived, Grosvenor was hitting his stride with an equally popular series, but far different from his classmate\u2019s, the heartfelt and vibrantly drawn The<\/em> Land Before Time<\/em>, for which Grosvenor was a producer and director of the television series and nine of the franchise’s movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy friend Charlie went into animation alongside me, and he maintained his really fabulous, illustrative style of drawing and found a whole different kind of career than I did.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
In 2004, Charles Grosvenor ’74 and Norton Virgien ’74 created this giddy photo illustration featuring characters from their respective animated franchises, The Land Before Time <\/em>and Rugrats<\/em>. Note that Virgien anticipated that Angelica would join the Bates Class of 2017. (Norton Virgien\/Charles Grosvenor)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Virgien credits the Bates art program and his former professor Don Lent, who died in 2020, for a distinctive level of flexibility. \u201cMany art teachers have an approach that they like to instill in people; Bates encouraged me and Charlie, but allowed us to flourish in our own directions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you look at people who want to work for Disney animation, their portfolios are all quite similar because there are things that one has to think about when learning to animate, [such as] the way the human structure changes when it’s in movement. And that goes back to the 1940s, that the animators then were learning the same tricks of the trade, drawing wise, as what they do now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing up, Virgien and other young creatives were also inspired by the animation of 1968\u2019s Yellow Submarine<\/em>. The film was \u201chighly stylized and very trippy,\u201d Virgien said. \u201cIt opened doors for people who wanted to do work in animation that wasn’t as akin to the traditional Disney product.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The success of Yellow Submarine<\/em> also meant that, for the first time, \u201cadults started watching animated films. Before then, they were considered either for children or for families.\u201d For a new generation of animators, the door was thrown open to be \u201cmore experimental, less predictable, and more designy \u2014 if that’s a word.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The iconic trippiness of Yellow Submarine<\/em>, with its Blue Meanies, Apple Bonkers, and Kinky Boot Beasts, gave young new animators license \u201cto be funnier, or more exaggerated, which probably did something to lead to The Simpsons<\/em>,\u201d said Virgien. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Virgien’s classmate and Hollywood animator Charles Grosvenor ’74 contributed cover art for the Class of 1974’s 50th Reunion yearbook, including this playful, R. Crumb-inspired illustration celebrating the class’s Bobcat spirit. (Jay Burns\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And it influenced Rugrats<\/em>, too, \u201cwhose cinematography mimicked the way babies might see the world with low angles and strange distortions, and all kinds of shows that no longer tried to look like life. They tried to look like quirky drawings come to life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s animation is often done by computer; Disney\u2019s last hand-drawn animated film was Winnie the Pooh<\/em>, in 2011. \u201cWe used to be able to identify certain animators’ work just by the style of it. Now it gets homogenized by the computer process a bit,\u201d Virgien said. \u201cBut as a director you have more control when you don’t have to ask someone to redraw a hundred drawings. You can do more tweaking and less reinventing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with technological advances, the times and places that children and babies can watch animation have expanded. Long gone are the days when cartoon watching meant Saturday morning in front of a television set. Now it\u2019s a tablet or cell phone in a car seat, stroller, or grocery store cart. And the youngest viewers aren\u2019t yet 1 year old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
In his talk, Virgien spoke of the ups and downs that define the career of an artist. \u201cPretty much my career has alternated between projects that I’ve loved and time looking for the next project that I’m going to love,\u201d he said. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s a funny terminology to say, \u2018zero-year-olds,\u2019\u201d said Virgien. \u201cBut coming up with material for the zero-year-old is challenging. For the very youngest, you want to simplify things so that they’re seeing colors and shapes and movement and simple storylines that are about what little kids care about: Who has my ball? There are some very nice shows being made for young kids.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Virgien remains proud that Rugrats<\/em> had genuine appeal for adults. (Virgien was co-director for The Rugrats Movie<\/em> in 1998, producer of Rugrats in Paris<\/em> in 2000 and director of Rugrats Go Wild <\/em>in 2003.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now in his 70s, Virgien is still having a ball as a storyteller. Most recently, he was co-creator of a series set in prehistoric times about a young girl who invents the first wheel as well as other useful tools. Eureka!<\/em>, which earned a nomination for Outstanding Animated Series at the 2023 NAACP Image Awards, is now streaming on DisneyPlus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virgien has a particular reason for reveling in this work: The girl\u2019s ingenuity as an engineer defies past stereotypes, and encourages young girls to excel in the sciences. \u201cYou like to think you’re doing some good in the world as well as making a living,\u201d Virgien said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His audience in March included students such as Erakky and fellow alumni. Beverly Nash Esson \u201973 of Wells, Maine, came to hear Virgien because her children had been Rugrats<\/em> fans growing up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2024
Beverly Nash Esson \u201973 holds a Bates-flavored Rugrats<\/em> drawing that Virgien drew for her young son nearly 30 years ago. Tommy Pickles tells Chuckie that “college is a place adults go when they don’t want to get a job.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In fact, Esson wrote to Virgien in 1995 and asked him if he would send her, as a fellow Bates graduate, a Rugrats<\/em> drawing, which he did. Esson brought it with her to Virgien\u2019s talk to thank him, and hear the story of his remarkable film career. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy son was 6, and he was so thrilled to get this,\u201d Esson said, holding up Virgien\u2019s framed illustration. \u201cMy stock in my family really went up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“My career has alternated between projects that I’ve loved, and time looking for the next project that I’m going to love,\u201d said Virgien, an award-winning TV and fiml animator, this year’s Distinguished Alumnus in Residence and a member of the 50th Reunion class returning to Bates this weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":163583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,11010],"tags":[7442],"class_list":["post-163568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-arts","tag-reunion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163568"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163684,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163568\/revisions\/163684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}