With a two-week vacation in the offing and wanting to stretch my drawing muscles I asked around about which TV animation “factories” were in need of story board artists and was told that among those hiring Bagdasarian Productions was the “toughest” to work for so I approached them first. Although accepting work from another studio that had chipmunks was probably a conflict of interest by Disney’s standards, I proceeded to do in two weeks about four weeks of boarding. Just coming off months of DICK TRACY merchandising projects and producing two TRACY read-alongs for Disney Music it only seemed natural to do Alvin and the Chipmunks in CHIP TRACY. Following are a few examples from the 125+ page board and the producer’s comments after going over the first half when it was submitted after week one. Bagdasarian only made one comment: “It’s nice to see someone using their imagination.” And when I’d completed the work the check he cut for me was 33% more than the stated fee. I felt pretty good about that. Regrettably thought, they had to revise about 15% of the board as it would have cost too much to do it the way I’d drawn it.
