Hollywood cartoonist who created “Turbie the turtle-duck” will be demonstrating cartooning on May 21 at 6:30 p.m., at Santa Clarita Artists’ Association (SCAA) general meeting at Barnes and Noble.  He will talk about his approach to illustrating cartoon characters for children’s books and demonstrate the anatomy of a cartoon character.  The public is invited.
Rich Arons developed, directed and produced hundreds of television cartoons for Steven Spielberg including such hits as Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Freakazoid! and Toonsylvania, winning two Emmy awards, a George Foster Peabody award and a Cartoons on the Bay award.  He’s also written songs for several memorable musical cartoons he directed.
Arons is a distinguished and accomplished artist, working in the animation industry since 1978.  He has written and illustrated a series of children’s books about “Turbie the Turtle-Duck” being published by Hound Comics.  Each of the Turbie books illustrations is a fully realized work, painted in Arons’ unique style.  These are fanciful tales about the comical, and at times, dramatic adventures of a young boy and his unusual flying pet.
As a founding member of Gang of Seven Animation, Arons has directed dozens of television shows, commercials and has co-directed the CGI feature film, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.  He also worked on stories for several major feature films, in both traditional and CG animation styles.  He story-directed on Warner Brothers’ Space Jam, starring Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny; helped story-develop Twentieth Century Fox’s Ice Age; and computer-animated for Steven Spielberg’s production of Casper The Motion Picture.  His YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/richarons has original cartoons such as his Binky and Little Treezer Series as well as his Birthday Happy to you cartoon greeting cards. Readers may view his work on www.richarons.com.
Trained in classical drawing, he studied animation and earned his degree at the Disney school at the California Institute of the Arts, under several great Disney artists of animation’s golden era.  Arons is a member National Cartoonists Society.
The SCAA meeting will be held in the community room at Barnes & Noble, 23630 Valencia Boulevard in Valencia at Magic Mountain Parkway.  For more information on SCAA, visit www.santaclaritaartists.org or call 661-244-7689.