Richard Condie

Last updated
Richard Condie
Born
Richard Condie

1942 (age 81–82)
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Occupations
  • Animator
  • filmmaker
  • musician
  • voice actor
Years active1971–present
Notable work

Richard Condie, RCA (born 1942) is a Canadian animator, filmmaker, musician and voice actor. Condie is best known for his 1985 animated short The Big Snit at the National Film Board of Canada and has won six international awards for Getting Started in 1979. Condie lives and works in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Contents

Education and career

Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Condie moved to Winnipeg at the age of four. There he attended Kelvin High School, graduating in 1961. He received his Bachelor of Arts in sociology from the University of Manitoba in 1967. Prior to entering the animation field, he worked periodic stints as a musician for the Manitoba Theatre Centre and CBC TV from 1964 to 1965. In 1967 Condie moved to Vancouver where he worked as a sociologist at the University of British Columbia. Two years later he returned to Winnipeg and tested out a number of occupations. [1] In 1971 he was awarded the first of two grants from the Canada Council, which he used to produce the animated short film Oh Sure. [2] The film was later purchased by the National Film Board of Canada, with whom Condie was to work extensively. [3]

Condie's best known animated work is 1985's The Big Snit , an offbeat parable about marriage, Scrabble, sawing, and nuclear war. [4] The Big Snit was nominated for an Oscar and won the Genie Award for Best Animated Short, along with over a dozen international awards. The Big Snit was also voted as #25 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by animation professionals. [5]

Condie co-produced fellow Winnipeg animator Cordell Barker's acclaimed short The Cat Came Back . Condie was also the voice of the main character and sang on the soundtrack. He entered the field of computer animation with his 1996 short La Salla . In 1998 he did some television script writing for Nelvana, then created the television pilot The Ark for the company in 2002. [6] Currently Condie is painting, creating music and working on a series of panel cartoons.

Condie's work, featuring the constantly moving - "boiling" - line animation style, has been characterized as "wacky, weird, [and] bizarre." [6] Others have referred to his "raw visual style and insanely honest and humorous character portrayals." [3] University of Manitoba film historian Gene Walz stated that Condie "is an auteur-animator, one with excellent antennae for sensing society's ridiculous foibles and painful vulnerabilities." [7]

Condie is a founding member of the Winnipeg Film Group, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the International Animated Film Association. [2]

Collaborators

Throughout his career, Condie collaborated with a very small number of individuals to create his films. He worked closely with musician Patrick Godfrey. [8] Another close collaborator was Condie's sister, Sharon Condie. John Law and the Mississippi Bubble was inspired by Sharon's research; she also wrote the script, did some of the animation and painted backgrounds for the film. [9] She also created the backgrounds for two other of Condie's films, Getting Started (1979) and The Big Snit (1985). [10] Other collaborators included actor (and singer) Jay Brazeau and producers Michael Scott and Ches Yetman. [11]

Awards and legacy

Richard Condie won six international awards for Getting Started in 1979. The film received awards at Kraków, Zagreb, Tampere (Finland), and was named best animated film at the Genie Awards. Pig Bird, released in 1981 also won five international awards, including recognition at Zagreb for best educational film. In all, The Big Snit garnered a total of 16 prizes including: The International Film Critics' Prize at the 15th Annecy International Animated Film Festival; Best Short Film Award at the Montreal World Film Festival; the Hiroshima prize, Japan 1985; A Silver Plaque at the 21st Chicago International Film Festival; and the Best Animation Film at the XVI Tampere International Short Film Festival. It was also included in the Animation Show of Shows. Following the enormous success of The Big Snit, Condie released The Apprentice/L'Apprenti in 1991. The film won awards in Chicago in 1992 and Winnipeg in 1993. Condie's last animation, La Salla, won nine awards, including ones from Winnipeg (1996), Vancouver (1996), Chicago (1997) and Jerusalem (1998). La Salla was also nominated for an Oscar. In total Condie has won over 40 international and Canadian awards for his films. [11]

In addition to Condie's many awards, his films have been featured in over 100 exhibitions and major retrospectives all over the world. These have taken place in such widely diverse locations as Berkeley, California (1980), New Delhi, India (1981), London, England (1985), Kraków, Poland (1986), Espinho, Portugal (1991), and Brussels, Belgium (1998). [1]

In 2005 Condie donated drawings, animation cels, backgrounds, layouts, dope sheets, award notifications, exhibition programs, digitized photographs, as well as publication and periodical information related to a number of his films to the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections. [12] Approximately 100 painted cels as well as two backgrounds created by Sharon Condie for the film The Big Snit were acquired by the University of Manitoba Libraries and deposited in the Archives in 2006. [2]

Selected filmography

Music

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Film Board of Canada</span> Public film and digital media producer and distributor

The National Film Board of Canada is a Canadian public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and alternative dramas. In total, the NFB has produced over 13,000 productions since its inception, which have won over 5,000 awards. The NFB reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It has bilingual production programs and branches in English and French, including multicultural-related documentaries.

Roman Kroitor was a Canadian filmmaker who was known as a pioneer of Cinéma vérité, as the co-founder of IMAX, and as the creator of the Sandde hand-drawn stereoscopic 3D animation system. He was also the original inspiration for The Force. His prodigious output garnered numerous awards, including two BAFTA Awards, three Cannes Film Festival awards, and two Oscar nominations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Len Cariou</span> Canadian actor and stage director (born 1939)

Leonard Joseph Cariou is a Canadian stage actor, singer and stage director. He gained prominence for his portrayal of Sweeney Todd in the original cast of Stephen Sondheim's musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979) alongside Angela Lansbury for which he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. He also received Tony nominations for his roles in the Betty Comden and Adolph Green musical Applause (1970), and the Sondheim musical A Little Night Music (1973).

<i>The Big Snit</i> 1985 film

The Big Snit is a 1985 animated short film written and directed by Richard Condie and produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

Ishu Patel is an Indian-Canadian animation film director/producer and educator. During his twenty-five years at the National Film Board of Canada he developed animation techniques and styles to support his themes and vision. Since then he has produced animated spots for television and has been teaching internationally.

Bill Guest (1928-1985) was best known as quizmaster of the Winnipeg edition of Reach for the Top from 1962–1985 and quizmaster of the national finals between 1969 and 1985 when the show aired on CBC Television.

The Winnipeg Film Group (WFG) is an artist-run film education, production, distribution, and exhibition centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, committed to promoting the art of Canadian cinema, especially independent cinema.

<i>The 50 Greatest Cartoons</i> 1994 book by Jerry Beck

The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals is a 1994 book by animation historian Jerry Beck, with a foreword written by Chuck Jones.

The International Animation Festival Hiroshima, founded as International Animation Festival for the World Peace in 1985, was a biennial film festival for animated films held in Hiroshima, Japan. Its last edition was held in 2020.

<i>O Canada</i> (TV series) Anthology series of Canadian cartoons

O Canada is a Canadian animated television anthology series, broadcast in the United States, and all across the Asia-Pacific region on Cartoon Network. O Canada was the first Canadian cartoon series to air on Cartoon Network. The show also frequently aired in Canada on Teletoon, but not as much as it did in the United States on Cartoon Network.

<i>The Cat Came Back</i> (1988 film) 1988 Canadian film

The Cat Came Back is a 1988 Canadian short animated comedy film by Cordell Barker, produced by fellow award-winning animator Richard Condie in Winnipeg for the National Film Board of Canada. It is based on the children's song "The Cat Came Back" by Harry S. Miller. It was in UK theaters with Touchstone's Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerald Potterton</span> British-Canadian animator and director (1931–2022)

Gerald Potterton was a Canadian director, animator, producer and writer. He is best known for directing the cult classic Heavy Metal and for his animation work on Yellow Submarine.

La Salla is a 1996 animated short by Richard Condie, produced in Winnipeg by the National Film Board of Canada.

Getting Started is a 1979 animated short by Richard Condie and produced in Winnipeg by the National Film Board of Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Culture of Manitoba</span> Overview of the culture of Manitoba (Canada)

Manitoban culture is a term that encompasses the artistic elements that are representative of Manitoba. Manitoba's culture has been influenced by both traditional and modern Canadian artistic values, as well as some aspects of the cultures of immigrant populations and its American neighbours. In Manitoba, the Minister of Culture, Heritage, Tourism and Sport is the cabinet minister responsible for promoting and, to some extent, financing Manitoba culture. The Manitoba Arts Council is the agency that has been established to provide the processes for arts funding. The Canadian federal government also plays a role by instituting programs and laws regarding culture nationwide. Most of Manitoba's cultural activities take place in its capital and largest city, Winnipeg.

<i>Runaway</i> (2009 film) 2009 Canadian film

Runaway is a 2009 short animated comedy film by Canadian animator Cordell Barker. It received a special jury award for short films at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and was named the best animated short film at the 2010 Genie Awards. In 2010, the film won the Yorkton Film Festival Golden Sheaf Award for Best Animation.

The Apprentice is a 1991 animated short by Richard Condie, produced in Winnipeg by Ches Yetman for the National Film Board of Canada.

How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels is a 1996 animated short by Canadian animator Craig Welch, produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

John Spotton C.S.C. was a Canadian filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada.

Galen Sander Fott is an American director, animator, writer, and actor. His animated short films have won awards and have screened at film festivals in London, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Houston, and San Francisco.

References

  1. 1 2 University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections, Richard Condie fonds, A05-93, "Biographical Information."
  2. 1 2 3 "Richard Condie fonds"
  3. 1 2 "Richard Condie Biography"
  4. ↑ The 100 Most Influential Sequences in Animation History - Vulture
  5. ↑ National Film Board. The Big Snit. 1985; Archived 2005-09-30 at the Wayback Machine Beck, Jerry. The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals . Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1994. ISBN   1-878685-49-X]
  6. 1 2 "Richard Condie" Archived 2008-04-23 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ↑ "Richard Condie"
  8. ↑ Patrick Godfrey, Animations.
  9. ↑ Ohayon, Albert. "John Law and the Mississippi Bubble: The Madness of Crowds". NFB.ca Blog. National Film Board of Canada . Retrieved 22 June 2011.
  10. ↑ National Film Board, Getting Started, 1979; The Big Snit, 1985.
  11. 1 2 "Richard Condie"
  12. ↑ Walker, Morley. "The Big Gift." Winnipeg Free Press, February 7, 2008.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.