I haven’t followed the fortunes of animator Amy Winfrey for a long time. It’s always nice when you are distracted from an artist’s work for awhile and return to find them flourishing.

Her simple and adorable MuffinFilms series got me through many a dark night of the undergrad (particularly the abstract and enigmatic “I Dream Of Muffins”) I must be the only person in the world to not know that she has two seasons in the can of a now-not-so-new animated series on Nickelodeon, based on her webisodes of Making Fiends. I’m so happy for her.

Amy Winfrey’s influence on me reached its highest point when I briefly considered going to animation school at UCLA, because she did. I thought, at the time, having alienated many of the actors I knew by choosing to direct choruses exclusively, that creating animated work was the only way I would ever realize my theatrical ideas. I sincerely believed that I had to give up what I insultingly called “live-action.” I even made a derivative homage film, vaguely in her style, called “The Misfortunes Of An Arrogant Child.”

Unlike Amy, I had no sense of humor.

Luckily for both the world of animation and for my own artistic ego, some years after that, Theatre of NOTE allowed me to realize some of those weird visions, in the flesh – with actors far better than anything I could have ever hoped to draw. The moment I was able to work with real people, I forgot entirely about cutting little characters out of cardboard.

I still have been thinking of making animated films, though – lately I’ve wanted to create a series of rocks reading poetry. It’d just be a rock moving slightly with stop-motion, almost no movement, with a human actor’s voice reading the poem. I don’t quite know why.

Anyway, thank you, Amy, for bringing me hope.

Making fiends, making fiends,
Vendetta’s always making fiends
While Charlotte’s
Making
Friends…