From his early, revolutionary work at Disney on ‘Tron’ to his Oscar-nominated short, ‘Technological Threat’ and Coca Cola ‘Polar Bear’ commercials, the long-time industry veteran was front and center at the nexus of revolutionary change from hand-drawn to computer animation.
'Mr. InBetween: My Life in the Middle of the Animation Revolution,' by Bill Kroyer, now available at mrinbetween.org. Unless otherwise noted, all images courtesy of Bill Kroyer.
“It’s called Mr. InBetween because not only did I start out doing in-betweens, which people don’t really do anymore, but my career ended up being in between the two great eras of animation,” Kroyer explains. “There was the hand-drawn era, and then the computer era. And I was right in the middle.”
Kroyer’s career began in 1975 at Disney at a time when the “new guard” of animation greats like John Musker, Brad Bird, Andrew Stanton, John Lasseter, and Henry Selick (to name a few) had begun their careers at the studio. Kroyer muses that back then, the tools and techniques of animation had remained unchanged for over 70 years. “An animator from Snow White or the old Fleischer Studios in the 1930s could have sat down at my desk at Disney and gone right to work,” he recalls. “From 1915 to 1985, no one changed anything. Then, all of a sudden, in 10 years, we went from never using computers to Toy Story. That was the symbol of the new age.”
The shift from hand-drawn animation to digital tools transformed the industry - not only in terms of technology but also in how individual artistry was perceived. “Back then, you could instantly tell a Milt Kahl scene from a Freddie Moore scene, a Bill Tytla scene, or a Frank Thomas scene,” Kroyer notes. “You could tell a Chuck Jones short from a Bob Clampett short just by the drawing style. The individual skill was amazing. But with CG, everything started to look more uniform. The computer has leveled the playing field, and it’s getting harder to identify specific animators by their style.”
Which gets to one of the reasons why Kroyer wrote “Mr. InBetween: My Life in the Middle of the Animation Revolution.” “The purity of the hand-drawn world is a civilization gone with the wind,” he shares. “I want people to get a little sense of what that was like before it all changed with the transition to computers, which has been one of the most impactful transitions in the history of art. Remember, animated films are the only films where 100% of what you see on-screen is created by someone. So, our medium was more impacted by the computer than any other. And I happened to be right there at the very, very beginning. With Tron, I stumbled into this thing that nobody had ever done before. And I got hooked on it very early. I was exposed to every step along that transition. And I just thought it would be interesting for people to read about that. Not as a history book, with names, dates, and events, but from my personal experience.
Screen cap from original ‘Tron’ trailer.
As he details, one of the defining moments of Kroyer’s career came with Tron, the groundbreaking 1982 film that introduced the world to CGI in a live-action setting. But at the time, no one - not even the filmmakers - fully understood how it would work.
Bill at the Chromatics – the first animator pictured at a computer!
“When we sold Tron to Disney in 1980, the tools to make it didn’t even exist yet,” he adds. “You look at some of the sample reels from the studios that made the film, they were terrible. We jumped off the cliff and built our wings on the way down.”
Each day on the production meant breaking new ground. “Almost every single day, I was doing something for the first time in history,” he says. “Whether defining a scene, figuring out how to animate movement, or integrating CGI with live action - nobody had done it before.”
Kroyer also describes Tron as a “one take movie.” “We hardly ever got a chance to do retakes because of how much work was involved. Now, of course, you look at a visual effects shot, it’s the 143rd version of that shot.”
Take a look at the original Tron trailer:
Even Hollywood’s top visual effects artists were baffled. “When Richard Taylor (the film’s VFX supervisor) presented Tron at the Academy’s visual effects bakeoff, there wasn’t a single question,” Kroyer recalls. “These were the greatest VFX artists in the world, and they had never seen anything like it. They later told us, ‘We think you guys cheated because you used computers - and we don’t understand computers.’”
(From L-R) Jeff Kleiser (computer production supervisor: Digital Effects Inc.), Kenny Mirman (design supervisor: Robert Abel and Associates), Richard Taylor and Bill Kroyer on the 2022 Disney+ documentary series ‘Disney’s Prop Culture’ ‘Tron’ episode. Image credit: Disney+/Richard Cartwright.
He laughs when noting that there was more computing time in one frame of Tron: Legacy (2010) than in the entire original Tron film. “It’s similar to how the Apollo program sent astronauts to the moon using a computer with less power than in your watch. That's kind of how we made movies in the old days. It's almost hard to get your head around.”
Despite its lasting impact, Tron struggled at the box office. “We knew we had accomplished something historic,” he says. “It was absolutely a joyous feeling to have created such a monumental thing, which is why its failure at the box office was so confusing and devastating. But it came out during one of the greatest summers ever - E.T., Blade Runner, Star Trek II. Audiences like technology, but at the end of the day, they respond to story and character more than anything.”
Today, Tron remains one of the most visually distinct films ever made. “If you pull a single frame from Tron, people immediately recognize it,” Kroyer says. “How many films can you say that about?”
Bill in his TRON helmet.
After Tron, Kroyer was fascinated by computer animation but frustrated by its limitations. Determined to merge the expressive power of hand-drawn animation with digital tools, he launched Kroyer Films and created Technological Threat, a 1988 Oscar-nominated short that blended 2D and 3D animation.
“That film was the moment when the two worlds met - hand-drawn and CG, neither able to fully replace the other,” he explains. “It’s still a defining moment in animation history.”
‘Technological Threat’ (1988).
Kroyer continues, “One point I make in my book is that animation is one of the only forms of filmmaking where one person can sit in a room and create an entire movie that will entertain an audience. The individual animator still has that ability. I describe a situation when I was nominated for an Oscar (for Technological Threat). I was with the other nominees. Who was I sitting between? Cordell Barker on one side, who literally did his entire film, The Cat Came Back, by himself in his apartment, and on the other side, John Lasseter, who did Tin Toy at Pixar in 3D. I’m in the middle. And my film combined hand-drawn animation and computers, what hadn't been done before. So, it was such an oddly metaphorical gathering. Cordell, in a lot of ways, represented the thing that all of us animators love the most. And that was the ability to sit there by yourself in a room and make a movie. What a great, powerful thing that is. And people are still doing it. It’s wonderful.”
He continued his hybrid approach with the animated feature film, FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992), which used 40,000 frames of computer imagery, title sequences for Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and the Coca-Cola polar bear commercials, which marked a symbolic moment in animation’s evolution.
“The bear had to slap and splash the water in one of the Coca-Cola commercials, but at the time, CG couldn’t do water effects,” Kroyer says. “The client demanded it. So, we had a 2D animator hand-draw the splash on paper, then composited it into the CG animation. That was one of the last times hand-drawn animation was used like that in a CG film.”
By the time he joined Rhythm & Hues, it was clear that CG had won the battle. “Traditional 2D animation was still being done, but the industry had shifted,” he acknowledges.
Beyond filmmaking, Kroyer spent years teaching young animators at Chapman University and through the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But making the transition from director to teacher wasn’t easy.
“One of the biggest lessons I learned was that being a good teacher is completely different from being a director,” he says. “Students don’t always do the work or show up, and you can’t treat them like a production crew. You have to be a coach, a guide - even a psychologist at times.”
The ‘FernGully: The Last Rainforest’ (1992) crew.
Looking back, Kroyer values the friendships he forged throughout his career. “The people I met - whether big-name directors or PAs - were what made this career special. I’ve kept those friendships for 45 years, and I’m prouder of that than anything I did on screen.”
As artificial intelligence and new technologies reshape animation yet again, Kroyer sees parallels to past industry disruptions.
“From the very beginning, people asked, ‘Is this technology good? Will it replace artists?’” he says. “I hope my book gives people a reference point to see that these debates aren’t new. At the end of the day, no technology is inherently evil - it’s about how we use it.”
And, he argues, artists will always find a way to make something meaningful. “Give an artist a pencil, and they’ll draw something. Give them sophisticated tools, and they’ll create something extraordinary.”
For those eager to explore Kroyer’s personal journey through animation history, his book Mr. InBetween is available now. You can find a purchase link and discount code, MRIB25, for both the paperback and eBook on his website, https://www.mrinbetween.org. Published by CRC Press.
Dan Sarto(link sends e-mail) is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
