Over 11 years and 570 episodes, John Rabe and Team Off-Ramp scoured SoCal for the people, places, and ideas whose stories needed to be told, and the show became a love-letter to Los Angeles. Now, John is sharing selections from the Off-Ramp vault to help you explore this imperfect paradise.
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A big congratulations from all of us at KPCC to Charles Solomon for winning an Annie award this weekend!
The International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood, gives out the Annies. "How to Train Your Dragon 2" won best animated film at the 42nd Annie Awards Saturday, held at UCLA's Royce Hall. Charles Solomon was awarded the Annies' June Foray Award, "for his significant and benevolent or charitable impact on the art and industry of animation."
(Solomon interviewing Disney's Scott Watanabe and Paul Felix about "Big Hero 6." Credit: John Rabe)
Charles, a veteran of Airtalk's Filmweek as well as Off-Ramp, penned “Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation” in 1989, which was the first film book nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Award.
One of his recent books was a lavishly illustrated tribute to Disney's Golden Books.
In 2008, with Queena Kim, Charles won an L.A. Press Club award for a profile of animation artist Tyrus Wong. He's also a lecturer in animation at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and has been involved in many fundraisers for animators in need.
Watch a zoetrope demonstration
By the way, the award, which you can see Charles holding in the photo, is in the shape of a zoetrope, an early animation device. To use it, you put a strip of drawings inside the cylinder, spin it, then view from the outside, through the slits. The Annie award is a working model.