Jules Engel

In 1938, he was hired by Disney Studios to work on 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 storyboard the Russian sprites and Chinese mushrooms dance sequences of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite.

For the Nutcracker Suite sequence, Engel emphasized the contrast between the bright figures and dark ground. There is debate over whether Engel, Art Babbitt, or Elmer Plummer was responsible for the Chinese Dance sequence. Engel could claim responsibility for the choreography (timing) for the final sequence, but to this day, animation scholars and former students alike continue to debate the issue.

David Hand, the director of Bambi, asked Engel to do color work for the film. Engel worked on the timing for the sequence where Bambi first encounters his childhood playmate, Faline, which required a lot of movement analysis. After completing the sequence, he became committed to the entirety of the project after hearing the score for the film, which he thought had a lot of abstraction and movement. He began doing color sketches because he felt that the color schemes they were using during production was too naturalistic. 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.

During World War II, he served as an animator in the First Motion Picture Unit. alongside the likes of Ronald Reagan, and Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss). Originally, Engel was waiting to be drafted in the U.S. Army, but was rejected because of his poor eyesight (indicated by his glasses), and a bad shoulder. He was adamant in joining the war cause because he did not want to deal with the embarrassment of facing up to his friends who were already drafted. The Air Force eventually recruited Engel for the Motion Picture Unit to work on training videos and war bond advertisements. He would eventually work on drawing aerial maps and instructions for weapons.

Engel was one of a group of animators—including William Hurtz, John Hubley, and Herbert Klynn—who left Disney to join the United Productions of America studio. At UPA, Engel worked as a background artist on cartoons such as Gerald McBoing Boing, Madeline, and Mr. Magoo. The environment at UPA was much more open to experimentation, unlike at Disney. It was during this period where Engel was inspired by paintings by Kandinsky, Klee, Miró, Matisse, and Dufy, as well as 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.

In 1945, Hazel Guggenheim arranged for Engel to have his first exhibition of painting at the Frederick Kahn Gallery in Los Angeles. As the story goes, Engel and Guggenheim were visiting the gallery when Ms. Guggenheim suggested that Mr. Kahn should give Engel an exhibition. Taken by surprise, Engel agreed to have an exhibition if Kahn would agree not to sell anything.

With former UPA colleagues Herbert Klynn and Buddy Getzler, Engel launched Format Films, and produced several popular US television series, including The Alvin Show (1961–62) and The Lone Ranger (1966–67), as well as one-off animated shorts, among them the Ray Bradbury-scripted and Oscar-nominated Icarus Montgolfier Wright (1962) and eleven subcontracted Road Runner shorts for Warner Brothers.

In 1962, Engel left for Paris where he directed a French animated cartoon, The World of Sine, which received the French Label Qualité Award. The World of Sine was purchased and released throughout Europe by Jacques Tati.

In 1964, Engel co-directed The Little Prince with Raymond Gerome. This was a theatre production in Paris combined with animation and live performance on stage.

He was set designer for Le Jouex, an avant garde play starring Michelle Boucett.

While in Paris, Engel come to the attention of cartoonist Siné, a fan of UPA's work. Engel directed an experimental live-action film, Coaraze, which won the Prix Jean Vigo. During his stay in Paris, he was friendly with other artists, including Man Ray. In the late 1960s he began making his own personal fine art animation. He also made several documentaries on other artists.

Returning to the U.S., Engel continued his films on artists, directing a film for Tamarind Lithography Workshop called A Look at a Lithographer and American Sculpture of the Sixties and also a film, Max Bill, about the Swiss artist.

In 1968, Engel's friend Anaïs Nin introduced him to Robert Corrigan, the first president of Cal Arts. Corrigan hired Engel to start an animation program at Cal Arts' new campus in Valencia. In 1970, Engel became the Founding Director of CalArts' Program in Experimental Animation, widely recognized as one of the world's foremost centers for animation arts. In 2001, CalArts hailed his indelible contribution to the arts by conferring on him the title of Institute Fellow, the highest honor it awards to faculty. The Fellowship has only been given to two other faculty to date, Alexander Mackendrick, and Mel Powell.

In one of his final acts, in May 2003, Engel established the Jules Engel Endowed Scholarship Fund. The recipients of the awards are those students who have carried out their work at CalArts in Jules' name, having demonstrated rigor, daring imagination and great curiosity about the world, leading to inventive, interdisciplinary projects.

Engel was also a painter and produced a prolific body of oil paintings, lithographs and other graphic artworks. His paintings are in the collections of major museums, and recently there have been exhibits of his work at Tobey C. Moss Gallery in Los Angeles. He was still working on a new series of lithographs just before his death.

Today, many of his students carry 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, Fern Seiden, Patrice Stellest, Janeann Dill 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.

Christine Panushka and Dr. Janeann Dill, two former students of Engles, currently act as his representatives for some matters (excluding his films). Panushka served as the executor as Engel's estate, while Dr. Dill is his biographer. In 2003, the Center for Visual Music (CVM) and Cal Arts presented a major retrospective of Engel's films at Cal Arts' REDCAT Theatre. 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.[1]

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, co-written and directed by Stephen Hillenburg (one of Engel's students), is dedicated to him.