In 1942, on the age of 17, Mundie enlisted in the USA Marine Corps. He was stationed in San Diego and served within the South Pacific. He later used the GI Invoice to enroll in artwork college in California, the place he studied underneath Elwood James Fordham and Mentor Huebner.
Early in his profession, Mundie was accepted to the Disney trainee program, although it’s unclear how lengthy he spent on the firm or what productions he labored on. In accordance with his household, within the Fifties Mundie labored as an illustrator for The Washington Publish, did freelance animation for numerous studios, and labored as an artist for North American Aviation. The earliest confirmed display screen credit score that we may observe down for Mundie was the 1959 teenage highway security movie Cease Driving Us Loopy, produced by Washington D.C.’s Artistic Arts Studios.
Mundie’s profession flourished within the Nineteen Sixties. It’s not that each one the tasks he was concerned with had been vastly profitable, though some undoubtedly had been, however Mundie was capable of lock down constant work utilizing his personal private illustration fashion, which was rooted in anatomical determine drawing and much faraway from animation character design tropes.
From 1964-1966, Mundie labored at DePatie-Freleng Enterprises as a background painter on theatrical shorts together with the Pink Panther collection. Studio head Friz Freleng additionally employed Mundie to design title sequences in his personal fashion for a number of main Hollywood movies like The Bother with Angels (1966):
Mundie illustrated the good opening sequence to Blake Edwards’ The Nice Race (1965):
His work will be seen within the opening credit for the ultimate season of the long-lasting Clint Eastwood collection Rawhide:
In addition to one other basic western collection, The Wild Wild West:
In 1968, certainly one of Mundie’s best-known works, The Door, scored a launch from Warner Bros. The eccentric quick, which Mundie made totally by himself, was produced by Invoice Cosby’s manufacturing firm Silver-Campbell-Cosby Company. Mixing animation and live-action inventory footage, the anti-war quick is a pure expression of Mundie’s visible fashion, together with his tough gestural figures drawn in grease pencil immediately onto cels.
Working with Cosby as soon as once more, Mundie directed the television particular Hey, Hey, Hey, It’s Fats Albert in 1969. This system aired on NBC on November 12, 1969, and was rebroadcast twice after that, however has sadly by no means been launched onto residence media and is extremely troublesome to seek out right this moment. A replica is held at The Paley Middle for Media in New York Metropolis, however on-line only some temporary clips have surfaced.
Vastly totally different aesthetically and tonally than the later television collection, the pilot was an actual inventive assertion. Mundie and his crew of animators labored 18-hour days for six months to satisfy NBC’s deadline, drawing on cels with grease pencils and coloring every cel themselves. These cels had been then photographed, with live-action footage from Philadelphia used for backgrounds.
Veteran Disney animator Will Finn has written in regards to the quick previously, saying:
Visually, it could be one of the crucial experimental and offbeat cartoons ever run on a significant community. Director Ken Mundie and his band of impartial animators make a degree of rendering every scene with as a lot spontaneity as potential, nearly no single motion is animated, timed, or assisted conventionally or formulaically. One very distinctive selection was that the characters’ faces are much less exploited than are their extremely expressive figures. The poses and proportions are remarkably gestural and tailored loosely as potential for no matter objective matches… Extra than simply about any piece I may identify, this 26-minute movie embraces the chances of xeroxing animators’ roughest drawings and capturing them at their most significant.
The Fats Albert pilot’s eventual erasure by NBC is an effective metaphor Mundie’s bigger animation profession. His journey spirit and private fashion by no means match properly into the broader norms of the trade that thrives on formulation and standardization, however this additionally implies that his earlier work was actually distinctive and stays treasured right this moment. He was a pure illustrator and wonderful artist who was capable of bend that talent set and apply it to the business alternatives that did come his manner, making all of them the extra particular because of his involvement.
Later in his profession, Mundie repeatedly labored as a storyboard artist, ceaselessly in promoting. He hung out on the Leo Burnett advert company in Chicago and likewise labored at Hanna-Barbera. Even at an organization like Hanna-Barbera, which had a set home fashion, Mundie managed to sneak in his distinctive characters, equivalent to on this musical sequence he directed for the collection Yogi’s Galaxy Goofs-Ups:
Within the Nineteen Eighties, he did growth work for the Japanese characteristic movie Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland.
In accordance with his obituary, Mundie “slowed down” in semi-retirement within the Nineties by contributing storyboards to quite a few animated collection together with Pinky and the Mind and Life with Louie. He was additionally employed by Wallace Artistic Inc. to work on lower scenes for the 1997 online game Captain Claw, which featured a formidable mixture of second and cg animation that felt revolutionary on the time.
Wallace Artistic founder Donald Wallace mentioned of Mundie in an interview:
I employed further artists/animators for the undertaking. One gentleman was a veteran Disney animator who was semi-retired and dwelling in Idaho. He and I’d have story discussions over the telephone after which he would ship me artwork and animation by means of the mail, apart from a pair occasions when he traveled to Portland and labored within the studio with us. He was wonderful. I believe he was in his late sixties at the moment however may work tirelessly and for very lengthy hours. Between the 2 of us, we created all of the storyboard panels. He was a superb storyboard artist. He had an unimaginable sense for format and storytelling, and I had loads of enjoyable working with him.
Mundie’s obituary defined that:
To him, artwork was a sort of magic, and it pissed off him when folks didn’t respect that. He liked speaking to and serving to different artists. From portray courses to introductory animation programs, he believed his data and expertise had been meant to be shared.
Mundie is survived by his spouse, Delores; his son, Morgan; his sister, Hazel Crljenko; his nieces, Sally (Greg) Palms and Nancy (George) Kelbley; and his nephew, John (Susan) Crljenko.
