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Animation institute proposed for Racine YMCA tower
BY MICHAEL BURKE, Journal Times RACINE
- The city could become a Midwest Mecca for budding animators under a three-pronged, $5.5 million proposal to create a new Wisconsin Institute of Digital Arts and Animation in the former YMCA residence tower. Karen Johnson, founder and president of Karen Johnson Productions Inc., has given the YMCA Board of Directors her bold proposal and purchase offer. If accepted, and if Johnson gets the state funding she seeks, she would also move her locally based business into the downtown building. "I fell in love with it," Johnson said about the YMCA tower, "because of the synergy with all the arts moving downtown, and what a great place for our studio and our school!" Johnson's present studio, at 1550 Yout St., is threatening to become too small, especially if the firm's plans for a new Internet venture pan out.
The institute would teach hand-drawn animation and animation technology, Johnson said, for a broad spectrum of uses including the Internet, feature films and TV commercials. Johnson would cofound the nonprofit institute with her brother-in-law, Bill Kroyer, owner of Kroyer Films in Los Angeles. He is a Hollywood animator who's worked on such big-budget productions as the two "Babe" movies and "Fern Gully, the Last Rainforest." Kroyer's wife, Sue Nelson, is Johnson's sister and also an animator. Kroyer said animation, which at one time was seen mainly in the all-cartoon-style films, has been creeping into more and more mainstream films, such as "Babe" and "Stuart Little." With that, the demand for animators has grown.
Apart from Hollywood and an animation school in Toronto, there would be few, if any, schools to compete with Racine's institute, said Kroyer, who has an Academy Award nomination under his belt for the animated short "Technology Threat." "Instead of kids saying, 'I'll go to Hollywood to get these things,' they can get them in Racine, Wisconsin," said John Dickert, a public affairs adviser who is helping make government contacts on Johnson's behalf. The institute would serve post-high school students from here and elsewhere, who could live in a dormitory on the tower's top floor. "To have a school attached to a working studio is invaluable," Johnson said. "A school cannot possibly keep up with the technology.
We do things completely differently than we did a year ago." Students could also work as interns for Johnson's company, she said, thereby getting real-world experience in their chosen craft. A third part of the interwoven plan is to establish a chapter of the Institute for Entrepreneurship, which targets at-risk youth, in the same building. "This (whole plan) is something that could set Racine apart," Dickert said. Johnson's plan for the YMCA tower would elbow aside a prior proposal by Firstar to put low-income housing for seniors there. Firstar has made a purchase offer to the YMCA board and is pursuing a low-interest state loan.
"I really believe that's the best use of the building," Johnson said of her proposal. At first, the animation institute would probably offer two five-week summer sessions. The teachers might be Johnson's own employees or experts and animators from Hollywood brought in through Kroyer's contacts, Johnson said. "Down the road, it could become a full-time school" and a degree-granting institution, she said. Among the various partners in the proposal is the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, which could help make that transition. Similarly, she said, the proximity of Gateway Technical College would work well with the project. Dickert said the institute's presence would also help feed the resurrection of downtown Racine, which is working to make Sixth Street Racine's Heart of Arts.
"These campus kids are going to need a place to go downtown," he said. "It just fits like a glove with downtown." The $5.5 million price tag is comprised of $4 million worth of building renovation and $1.5 million in technology. Johnson said teaching would be done on the floor below the dormitory, with about 10 classrooms and an auditorium. Her animation business would occupy the floors below that. Karen Johnson Productions, which now employs about 20 animation and production artists, does all types of two- and three-dimensional animation design and production. Its work has included professional sports scoreboards: Barbie, Rockett's and Disney interactive computer games; and animated characters for television and feature films. Dickert and Johnson have been meeting with state officials about the possibility of grants and/or loans. The agencies have been highly interested, he said - partly because it fits with Gov. Tommy Thompson's recent push to stop the "brain drain" from Wisconsin by making available state money for technology. "This is what (he's) talking about," Dickert said, "and we have it."