User:Topcat77tcook

Thomas R. Cook (05-23-1952) I was born in Silver Creek New York on May 23rd 1952 and grew up on Long Island until my father, Walter Cook, moved us across country to Northridge, which is a very nice suburb of Los Angeles, California. My lifelong love of comic books and animation led to a job as an assistant animator at Hanna-Barbera Studios in 1979... here is how that came about. In early 1979 I attended an extension class at Cal State Northridge focusing on comic book art. The teacher of the class was Golden Age comic artist Don Rico. During the course Don asked us to bring in our portfolios so he could see where we were as far as our drawing skills were concerned. He told me that they were working on a show Called "The Challenge of the Super Friends" and that they had many great animators that were used to drawing the cartoony characters such as Fred Flintstone and Scooby Doo but that they were having difficulty with the realistic anatomy of the Super Friends. After returning my portfolio which consisted of nothing but Super Heroes he asked if I would be interested in attending a class in order to learn the art of animation. The class was run by Hanna-Barbera Studios and was a free class but you needed to get a recommendation from an employee of the Studio. Luckily for me Don Rico was working there as a storyboard artist and he said he would recommend me for the class. I was thrilled to accept the offer and so began my career in animation. There were about 30 students and each week we were given assignments that taught us the basics of animation starting with inbetweening and clean-up. After a month they told us that they were going to hire 4 of us from the class and I was one of the lucky four along with Barry Cook, Pete Gulerud, and Stan Wallace. More to come later...