Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Talking to Roman Arambula -- Part II

Roman today.

When Gamma came to an end in the late sixties, Mr. Arambula was quickly hired by a small animation studio in Dallas ...

TAG Interview with Roman Arambula

Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link

Then as now, the Dallas animation community was not large, and Roman moved his growing family to Los Angeles, where he soon quickly work at Hanna-Barbera. "In those days, the studio was much like Gamma," says Roman,"with lots of cubicles, lots of artists, and lots of production ..."

Along with animation work, Roman freelanced in comic books, a field he had earlier pursued in Mexico. He continued the sideline in the United States.

But Mr. Arambula's sideline ultimately became his main vocation when he took over Floyd Gottfredson's daily "Mickey Mouse" strip on the Disney lot, continuing Floyd's legacy for close to two decades. Today, happily retired, Roman is now working on several graphic novels of his own design and creation.

3 comments:

Chris Sobieniak said...

I suppose that film Roman was talking about that was done at "Les Studios Idefix" in France was "The 12 Tasks of Asterix", one of my favorite films from that period.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the interview-great stories. Sadly, the moral of the story is don't file a grievance. It's interesting how these stories are told to a union representative and they just get shrugged off as, "that's the nature of the beast". The point Roman made about vacation time being a joke because we have to pad all the time around it with double workload hits home. What did he mean exactly by the unions in Mexico being "red"? Communistic? More unified? Whatever he meant, it sounded more effective than our union. Or, maybe it was just the times.

Steve Hulett said...

I can't speak to the grievance filed on Roman's behalf, as it was before my time.

I can tell you that I've filed a lot of grievances in the years I've been here, and few artists have suffered long-term negative consequences from filing.

Understand that I consider grievances the weapon of final resort after everything else has failed. And also understand that politics always enters into it.

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