Customer Reviews

Animation by Filmation

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I searched for this title on Amazon because it was mentioned and pictured in the documentary on BCI's DVD release of Filmation's FLASH GORDON animated series. With BCI getting ready to release many more old Filmation shows on DVD, isn't it about time to re-release this title? I urge the original authors, Michael Swanigan & Darrell McNeil, if they read this, to contact Amazon about making this title available to the public again. Although I never got a chance to read this book, the rating given above is for Swanigan & McNeil's other book, HANNA-BARBERA'S WORLD OF SUPER ADVENTURE, which I have and recommend. It too has been long out-of-print and should be reprinted and expanded with even more illustrations.

This book is marvelous, the only reason it is hard to find is 1/it was published back in 1993. 2/the publishers shut down very shortly after publishing it, the copyright owners of the book were originally going to re-publish it through someone else due to that small tiny company shutting down strait away but they never bothered to in the end which is why only a very tiny amount of copies still exist. I was lucky that someone sold there old copy in the used and new section of Amazon.com and when recieving it was just like new. It gives you episode guides to nearly all their shows, but some do not have guides. but believe it or not SPORT BILLY is my life time favourite but through my experience he was not a very high rated show, not even as much as Tarzan who was a poor rating him self in the 80's after it finished airing in the 70's. I have bean looking for a sport billy guide for years and no site on the net has one which made me think this book will tell me some stuff about sport billy and it's creators but no way is it going to have an episode guide, then when it arived sport billy had an episode guide which I was really amazed about, which can only mean not one private fan who have put their own sites up with a-z series index's and guides have got hold of this book yet, which makes me think it is even more limited in prints than I thought originally which makes sence being it took me 4 years to come across a copy.

The book is Awesome so if you get a chance... pick it up!!! I happen to have been an animator at Filmation Studios from 1980 until they closed their doors. It was best place I ever worked as far as the friendship between the artists and the fun we had daily. I was coach of the softball team for a number of years and bowled with a number of the management and animators as well. My heart almost stopped when I heard that a French company was going to purchase Filmation and that they mainly wanted us because of the large library of shows that they could release on video and that they had NO desire to keep the Studio open for any new production. Lou Scheimer battled as long as he could to keep us in business and I am "Eternia"lly grateful to him.

I think it's pretty sad they don't got a book like this out there for people to pick up and be inspired by when shows like He-Man did a tremendous job for helping domestic animators and writers get started. Shows how much people care about America when the last animation company to keep jobs here are shunned in favor of publishers and big business playing suck-up to red China.