Two weeks in the past The Each day Heller revealed an interview with the director of Modernism Inc., a documentary movie about Eliot Noyes, the godfather of postwar company Modernism. Among the many solid of eloquent on-screen consultants had been members of Noyes’ household. Eliot Noyes Jr., alongside together with his two brothers and sister, had been enthusiastic narrators of their father’s legacy. Their collective roles within the doc added firsthand emotion to the well-produced movie. What I didn’t know till this previous weekend, once I heard the information from his good friend J.J. Sedelmeir, is that Eli, as he was recognized, had died.
Eli was a serious affect on trendy animation in varied media. Upon inquiring about his work, I used to be referred to his good friend and enterprise accomplice of 21 years, Ralph Guggenheim of Alligator Planet. I requested Guggenheim to share a phase of the transient obituary he wrote—and the next is, partly, tailored from and verbatim of that remembrance.
Eli was a notable determine within the New York animation scene of the Nineteen Seventies. Whereas an undergraduate at Harvard, Noyes was nominated in 1965 for an Academy Award for his eight-minute animated brief movie, Clay, or the Origin of Species. It’s credited as establishing the style of clay animation and stays a traditional of stop-motion filmmaking. Subsequent animated movies employed numerous strategies: animation (Sandman, 1973), pixelated cease movement (Peanut Butter and Jelly, 1976). He went on to make documentaries, animated TV collection, and CD-ROM interactive content material, often forward of the expertise curve. He collaborated with the photographer Duane Michaels, created ID packages and TV collection for Nickelodeon, even U.S. postage stamps.
Accompanying his father to the Aspen Design Convention, Noyes and Claudia Weill documented the confrontation between established architects and the brand new era of socially aware younger abilities of the period in Aspen 1970.
Ralph Guggenheim writes:
“An unbiased artist and animator, Noyes introduced his playful inventive abilities to form the look and
spirit of youngsters’s programming within the early days of cable TV, particularly for the Nickelodeon community. Eli was one of many first inventive contributors to Nickelodeon. Nickelodeon’s first present, “Pinwheel,” featured Noyes’ animated pinwheels made with sand. In 1983, Eli and Package Laybourne began Noyes & Laybourne Enterprises, an unbiased studio situated in NYC’s Soho. Within the early 80s Nickelodeon was full of content material it acquired, with quite a lot of kinds and appears. Packaging was the one technique to categorical a character. Noyes & Laybourne contributed to the look of Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite with playful community IDs. They subsequently created the unique exhibits “Eureeka’s Fort” and “Gullah Gullah Island.” For MTV additionally they produced community graphics and created a showcase of unbiased animation in “Liquid Tv,” which launched collection like Mike Decide’s “Beavis and Butt-Head” and Peter Chung’s “Aeon Flux.” Different shoppers included HBO, IBM, Scholastic, ABC Sports activities, Reebok and Xerox.
In 1988 Noyes and Laybourne joined Colossal Footage. Identified for quite a lot of particular results and animation strategies, Colossal was the best house for the wide-ranging curiosity that Eli dropped at initiatives. In 1991 Eli Noyes and household moved to San Francisco, the place he directed animation, dwell motion and interactive initiatives for commercials and TV improvement. At all times early to embrace expertise, Eli created “Ruff’s Bone” (1994) at Colossal, a groundbreaking interactive CD-ROM product for Broderbund Software program. He moved on to work on interactive initiatives at Pixar, and with programmers on the Disney Channel and The Disney Imagineers to create one of many first program blocks that mixed TV and the web, ZOOG Disney. Eli subsequently introduced that have to the primary “convergence community” Oxygen, as Inventive Director within the late ’90s. Noyes partnered with Toy Story producer Ralph Guggenheim in 2003, forming Alligator Planet, the place he created movie, print and media works together with brief movies, animated segments for documentary movies together with Oscar nominee The Most Harmful Man in America (2003). His 2011 “Go Inexperienced” stamps for the U.S. Postal Service featured easy actions everybody can take to preserve pure sources and promote the well being of the surroundings.
