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Jules Engel (; March 11, 1909 – September 6, 2003) was an American filmmaker, painter, sculptor, graphic artist, set designer, animator, film director, and teacher of Hungary origin. He was the founding director of the experimental animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, where he taught until his death, serving as mentor to several generations of animators.
At the age of 17 Engel moved to Los Angeles seeking an athletic scholarship to either USC or UCLA. He lived in Hollywood while attending the Chouinard Art Institute and started to draw for magazines. He worked in the studio of a local painter sketching landscapes, Ken Strobel. Through his relationship with Strobel, he was referred to work as a background artists and as an inbetweening animator in Mintz Studio, the studio founded by Charles Mintz and his wife Margaret J. Winkler, which later became known as Screen Gems.
Fantasia
At Disney Engel worked in the film Fantasia, released in 1940. At the time, Disney intended to integrate "low" art (animation) and "high" art (classical music), and the studio needed someone who was familiar with the timing of dance. Because of his drawing talent and his growing knowledge of dance, Engel was assigned to work on the choreography of the Russian sprites and Chinese mushrooms dance sequences of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, animated by Art Babbitt. For these sequences, Engel emphasized the contrast between the bright figures and dark ground, which critics consider as an important development of modern animation away from naturalism.
Bambi
David Hand, director of Bambi, asked Engel work with him on the film. Engel did the storyboard for the sequence where Bambi first encounters the doe Faline. After completing the sequence, he did color sketches that diverged from the naturalistic color schemes being used in production.
Engel's time at Disney would come to an end with the development of the Disney animators' strike. While the union won the case over the studio, Engel didn't go back, largely because while he enjoyed the place, he felt uncomfortable being surrounded by colleagues that he felt didn't share his passion for the aesthetics of animation.
The environment at UPA was much more open to experimentation, unlike at Disney. Engel brought to UPA his distinctive use of color, influenced by abstract painting and the work of Kandinsky, Klee, Miró, Matisse, Raoul Dufy, as well of the Bauhaus book Language of Vision. Engel would later claim responsibility for discovering the children's book Madeline, and suggesting to Stephen Bosustow to buy, copyright, and develop the series.
Klynn closed the studio in 1962 when Engels left for Europe, but reopened it by 1965 as Format Productions.
After moving to the village of Coaraze, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, he directed an experimental live-action, partially animated film also called Coaraze, which won the Prix Jean Vigo in 1965. In the late 1960s he began making his own personal fine art animation. He also made several documentaries on other artists.
In 1969, Engel became the Founding Director of CalArts' Animation Program; subsequently becoming the Founding Director of the Experimental Animation Department in the School of Film and Video. Engel's department became known for its animation teaching. CalArts, located Valencia, is the first higher education institution in America to offer a formal degree in animation.
In 1973, Engel self-published a collection of typographic art, entitled 'Oh'.'Oh', Jules Engel, 1973
During the 23rd Annual Annie Awards, in 1995, he received the Winsor McCay Award for his lifetime contributions to the field of animation. He was also recipient of five Golden Eagle awards, the Fritz Award, the Norman McLaren Heritage Award, and the Pulcinella award for Career Achievement.
Engel was also a painter and produced a prolific body of oil abstract paintings, lithographs and other graphic artworks. During the late Forties and early Fifties his works were exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the De Young Museum, and throughout his life he exhibited in more than sixty museums and galleries such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Walker Art Center. He was still working on a new series of lithographs just before his death.
Many of his students carried out his influence through their work, including John Lasseter, Henry Selick, Tim Burton, Stephen Hillenburg, Joanna Priestley, Christine Panushka, Peter Chung, Glen Keane, Ellen Woodbury, Eric Darnell, Mark Osborne, Steven Subotnick, Patrice Stellest, and Mark Kirkland.
The Engel Animation Advancement Research Center (EAARC) offers a slate of animated shorts drawn from leading international festivals. The program is structured around the themes of personal struggle and forbidden desire in the context of a polarized, conflicted world.REDCAT. Both iotaCenter and CVM have preserved a number of Engel's films; CVM established the Jules Engel Preservation Project shortly after Jules' death. Engel's 1976 film Shapes and Gestures was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, co-written, co-produced, and directed by Stephen Hillenburg (one of Engel's students), is dedicated to him.
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Categories: 1909 Births, 2003 Deaths, American Animated Film Directors, American Sculptors, American Graphic Designers, American Scenic Designers, Hungarian Emigrants To The United States, Hungarian Animators, Chouinard Art Institute Alumni, Jewish American Artists, United States Army Air Forces Soldiers, First Motion Picture Unit Personnel, United States Army Personnel Of World War Ii, Animation Educators, American Film Educators, Evanston Township High School Alumni, Format Films, 20th-century American Jews, 21st-century American Jews
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