Is to introduce the world to Ken Mundie. Ken at 80 years old, is still a prolific animator. This alone is amazing, but that Ken remains vibrant and inspirational is a great testament to the artistic process. He is a maverick who has followed his own path.

Ken’s 60 years of animation experience began at WALT DISNEY FEATURE ANIMATION. Later Ken designed and animated a series of film titles for DEPATIE/FRELEING ENTERPRISES. The TV titles included “The Wild, Wild, West”, “Secret Agent Man”, “Rawhide”, and “Death Valley Days”. For feature films, Ken designed the titles for “The Great Race”, “Do Not Disturb”, and “A Fine Madness”.

“The Door” an animated short film, produced and directed by Ken led to him designing and directing the first Fat Albert special for CAMBELL, SILVER, COSBY entitled “Hey, Hey, Hey it’s Fat Albert”. After Fat Albert, Ken continued to work on the development of an animated version of “Odyssey” while designing and animating several commercials for LEO BURNETT, KELLOGS and MATTEL, HANNAH/BARBERA and production designs for the feature film “Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland”.

Currently Ken is working on the Match. If you have any questions about his film please contact Stuart Lowder at: slowderanim@mac.com

From the author of this blog:

I have to say everytime I see Ken’s work I feel like I take an evolutionary step. Ken was brought into a CG company a few years back. He started playing with a Cintiq and he did a 3-4 minute piece the week he was there. The motion on this test moved forward, back, onscreen and off with personality, pacing, wit and liveliness. There were so many animation secrets included in the sequence I couldn’t even name them all. When I see his work my vision expands. There are few artists that have that kind of impact. - Wendy Carmical

Summer 2011 -
Ken is still going strong on the project. Sounds like the film is 1/3 along.

I was a child in the late 60’s early 70’s. I was always fascinated by animated commercials, title sequences and saturday morning cartoons. Some of course were not very well done, but they filled my mornings with delight. I loved The Jacksons, The Osmonds. Also Kimba the white lion, and Mighty Mouse, even Underdog and fractured fairy tales. Not a discerning critic I knew what I liked and styled my early drawings on warner bros. designs.

I had no sense of the people working behind the scenes. These Cartoons were real to me. When I thought about it at all my only concern was how someone was able to draw the same image in different poses over and over again. It seemed impossible.

There was a period in the ealry 70’s when they started rerunning early sixty shows, everyday at 6pm. My sister and I got hooked on the Wild, Wild, West show. I’m sure that the animated titles were what first interested me in the show.

Older and with a background in animation, I now know what it took to get this work done. I still love the titles of Wild, Wild West. They are beautiful. Through a friend I met Ken Mundie about a year ago. He is the animator responsible for them. He also did the first pilot of Fat Albert and directed many of the designs. This site is devoted to his current project. A film called the The Match. The work already looks great.

Fattt Albert

Another achievement of Ken’s is the first pilot of Fat Albert, the animated cartoon series based upon Bill Cosby’s childhood and writing. He was Animation Director and ended up designing many of the characters, and the look. This pilot unfortunately has been lost. If you know of it’s location, please contact this blog!!

Lifting Albert