Brad Bird and Jerry Rees Letter

One of my mementos I picked up along the road to developing as an animator is this letter I received from Brad Bird and Jerry Rees.

Notice the lack of a formal letterhead on this letter from Brad and Jerry. They definitely weren't wasting any of the budget on non-essentials.

Several months after receiving Brad and Jerry's response to my portfolio and sample animation scene of The Spirit, I visited with them at their KINETOGRAPHICS office in San Rafael, California and showed them my animation reel from "Rock & Rule," which consisted of my characters Cindy Schlepper, Officer Quadhole, and Mylar the Club Owner. At that meeting, I was offered a spot as an animator on their Spirit crew once they got the project off the ground...which unfortunately never happened. A few years later, Brad tracked me down and asked me to animate on his "Family Dog" episode of Steven Spielberg's TV series "Amazing Stories." However, my plate was extremely full at the time and I had to decline his offer.

The following is my interpretation of The Spirit for animation. It would have been fun to do.

John Celestri's interpretation of Will Eisner's Denny Colt aka The Spirit.