Peek inside one animator’s ‘Head’ reveasls alien concepts

Tuesday, April 9, 1996

Jim and Roy’s saga passes trial phase of MTV season successBy
Jason Packman

Daily Bruin Contributor

Meet Jim. He’s just your typical urban dweller, with all your
typical urban problems.

But there is one big difference between you and Jim: his head.
He has a huge head, a head big enough that his friend, Roy the
alien, can live there.

The adventures of Jim and Roy form the basis for 26-year-old
Eric Fogel’s animated series, "The Head," which is shown on the MTV
animation anthology show, "Oddities."

The idea for "The Head" began in Fogel’s sketchbook.

"One day, I was looking through an old sketch book that I had
kept in college and I found a drawing of this guy with a gigantic
head," says Fogel.

From there, he came up with the idea of the symbiotic
relationship between "The Head," Jim and Roy the alien.

"The guy would provide the alien with a home in his head, and in
return, the alien would provide the guy with certain elements that
he was lacking in his personality, like self confidence. He sort of
teaches Jim to be a hero," says Fogel.

There were only so many stories that Fogel could tell with just
two characters. So, he came up with a support group to help Jim
out.

"We wanted Jim and Roy to be involved in a sort of support group
of these very bazaar characters, so we created a ‘Human Anomaly
Support Group,’ which is basically a group of people that all have
various things wrong with them but they still are great people and
they help Jim out," says Fogel

With this basis, the shows first 13- episode run was a success.
MTV decided to give new life to Jim by ordering seven new
episodes.

"We were really lucky. The situation was there for us to do
another season, and we jumped at the chance to do it because I knew
that I wanted to make the shows better, and I was glad that I was
able to have that chance to do that," says Fogel.

The second season takes a different angle than the first. While
the first was a serial, each episode stands alone in the new
season.

"With the new episodes, we really wanted to concentrate (on)
having each adventure have a different message to it," says
Fogel.

"We’ve got one episode where Jim and the team have to battle
these giant man-sized rats, and at first, it sort of plays out like
a traditional monster movie, with the rats killing and attacking,"
says Fogel. "But the whole episode is about communication, and once
they learn (how) to communicate with the rats, they find out that
the rats are really open and benevolent creators."

Each episode of "The Head" takes 11 months to produce, and like
most commercial animation, the process involves two distinct parts
on two separate continents.

"We do here (in New York) at the animation studio everything
throughout the layout stage of production," he says. "Then, all the
artwork is shipped to Korea. They do the finishing, the
in-betweening, the inking, the painting and the filming."

Even though it is too expensive to do the animation in New York,
Fogel would rather not see the animation shipped overseas.

"If I had my wishes, I would do it all here. It’s the only way
to get total control. If you send it to Korea, you may get back
what you are looking for, and you may not," he says.

An example of this is Fox’s "Batman: The Animated Series." Fogel
loved the show, but saw quality fluctuate because of how they
farmed out the animation to Korean studios.

"(The episodes from "Batman: The Animated Series") had a weird
sort of constancy because they used five or six different studios
in Korea," he says.

All this is a far cry from the work he did as a kid. Even as a
kid, he worked at combining art and storytelling.

"Growing up, I always made little comic books and just drew
pictures on pieces of paper. I was really interested in the
storytelling concepts of that, and animation just seemed like the
next logical step," he says

While a student at NYU Film School, he developed a character
called the Mutilator. Fogel describes him as a "postapocalyptic
super-hero." This was picked up by Spike and Mike’s Sick and
Twisted Film Festival, the same festival where Mike Judge’s "Beavis
and Butt-head" got their start.

Like Judge and several other animators, Fogel has gotten a big
boost from MTV’s support. While he’s grateful for that, Fogel still
lacks a sense of job security.

"I think the defining thing about MTV is that it is always
changing. So in the last few years, it has been animation," he
says. "Now they may decide to explore other areas and redefine
itself again."

Fogel is now working on a live- action, low budget feature that
he hopes to write and direct. He describes it as "a lower class
suburban thriller." Animation, however, is still his first
love.

"You don’t see animated features coming out designed for adults.
I would really love to be involved in an animated feature that’s
more adult."

The adventures of Jim and Roy form the basis for …"The
Head"… shown on the MTV animation anthology show,
"Oddities."(Eric) Fogel is now working on a live-action, low budget
feature that he hopes to write and direct.