Nik Ranieri was a supervising animator for Disney Animation Studios. I've seen him walking around at conventions, but my first chance to see him set up at a con was at
SacAnime this month. I sent a message via Facebook to confirm his appearance and made the two-hour drive to Sacramento. On Friday morning, I acquired a Hades from
Hercules and a Lumiere from
Beauty and the Beast. The only other collector I saw got two as well. I'm happy when they charge and you get the chance to get another. After lunch, I passed by and only a couple people had sought Nik out for autographs and sketches. I bought two small sketches on behalf of friends and asked Nik about a couple different subjects. My first was a Bugs Bunny since I had been listening to an interview by Clay Kaytis on
The Animation Podcast. Nik had grown up loving the Warner cartoons and quoted "pronoun trouble" from the Bugs-Daffy-Elmer hunting trilogy by Chuck Jones. As a young man moving up from doing commercials in small Canadian studios, he joined the Richard Williams studio working on
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and hoped to work on the Warner characters. He was not assigned to do them, but I love Bugs Bunny so I asked him to give it a try. Nik didn't like his initial effort and this pencil piece was his second try. I love it, but hope I wasn't too much of a pest.
Grayson Ponti on Nik Ranieri
