DALE MYERS
Owner/3D Computer Animator
Dale Myers Animation Studios
(Milford, MI)

He was a kid who always had something up his sleeve. Fascinated by Houdini, he loved the reaction he'd get from people when he performed a magic trick of his own.

He was also an 8-year-old with a wind up 8mm camera that made gangster movies with the neighborhood kids. When Gulf Oil introduced television commercials using stop-motion animation of people (instead of models or clay figures), he did his best to mimic the technique with help from his young actor friends. After all, he had discovered the ultimate illusion.

Fast-forward to an accomplished 15-year career in computer animation and a 29-year career in radio and television, and Dale Myers is still "wowing" people with his magic -- from breathing life into M&M'S® candies to recreating the JFK assassination in 3D.

However, as one of the first to tap into the possibility of creating broadcast-quality animation on a desktop computer, it is his foresight and ingenuity as a self-taught pioneer and one-man show that is perhaps most remarkable.

Prior to the introduction of the first Video Toaster in 1989, only the big production studios could afford the technology necessary to produce a "flying logo." While it took 16 hours to render a cube on Dale's $800 used Amiga®, he was thrilled with the opportunity to explore its potential and plunked down $8,000 a year later for a massive upgrade.

At the time, purchasing a 1GB hard-drive and 16MB of RAM was unheard of, although by today's standards a Pentium 4 is a 1000 times faster. Dale remembers even the sales guy had a laugh, asking him what he could possibly do with 16MB of RAM. But Dale saw the future.

Within six months of learning how to use the new Lightwave® 3D software (with little more than the manual it came with) he was in business. He sold his first "flying logo" for $500 and to the surprise of numerous detractors -- it was broadcast quality.

"All the naysayers are constantly getting run over by the people doing it," he says matter-of-factly.

"Everyone laughed when I first got in this business," he marvels, "but they didn't know what I knew. I was looking at the logo at the studio and comparing it with the logo I created at home, and I'm thinking my logo looks just as good."

He pauses for a moment and continues, "People just didn't get it."

The making of Dale's professional career is not unlike the making of a movie. Behind the finished product there is the real story that while dispelling some of the magic, provides a sense of accessibility and appreciation for all the hard work he put into it.

Dale graduated from Specs Howard's radio program in late 1974. By the following February, he had a job at WATT-AM in Cadillac, Michigan. "Some of the locals called it Cattle Tracks, Michigan," laughs Dale, "because while it was actually 1975, it seemed more like 1955. I felt like Michael J. Fox in that movie, Back to the Future. They still had No Cruising signs posted at the local drive-in burger joint."

Dale spent a year and a half at WATT before moving on to a half-dozen other stations over the next ten years. He enjoyed his time on-air, playing music, and learning about the artists who created it.

However, somewhere around his eighth year in radio, he began to feel itchy. He felt he'd done what he could as a jock and moving into management held no appeal. The camera beckoned.

Dale had never lost his enthusiasm for the visual medium and picked up where he'd left off, only this time peeking through the lens of a Super 8mm camera.

It was 1983, and while still working in radio, Dale and his brother produced Self-Portrait, an artsy film that won them an Honorable Mention at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

The magician was back.

A year later, Dale returned to Specs Howard School, this time as a video student. The first television studio at the school had been built in 1981 so the program was still quite new. While its focus on television news was of little interest to him, Dale needed a demo reel and six months later he had one.

His next step was to place a call to GTN, a high-end post-production facility in Detroit, with the hope of getting his foot in the door by offering to intern several hours a week. At the time, Dale was still working afternoons at WFDF in Flint, but the powers-that-be put him to work painting the walls.

"Not the most riveting work," laughs Dale, "it would be grey one day, blue the next..."

Meanwhile, Dale called CBS Fox Video in response to an ad for a position in the shipping department and asked if there might be a job available for a writer or producer. As luck would have it, there was and the person hiring was a fellow radio veteran that had already crossed over to video production.

"I think she felt sorry for me," he laughs.

Dale got the job and for the next two years spent most of his time putting business books by people like John Nesbitt on videotape. To provide interest to the programs, he'd use old movie clips from the Twentieth Century Fox library to illustrate a point rather than the traditional talking head. Even George Lucas was kind enough to provide footage from the Empire Strikes Back to warn against "strong-arm management techniques."

But while Dale's work provided enough interest to help make the various authors millionaires, he was out of a job when CBS decided to close its doors on production services. And that's when he began freelancing -- writing, producing, whatever he could do to pay the bills.

Three years later he sold his first "flying logo." It was a victory, albeit a small one. The naysayers didn't go away that easily. Dale realized in order to establish himself in the animation business; he'd need to create some publicity for himself.

So on Christmas Eve in 1993, Dale's 6-1/2 minute lark about a runaway robot made its debut on WDIV-TV and took on a life of its own. While only a handful of viewers are likely to have witnessed Robo Jr.'s holiday debut, the airing of the short meant it was eligible to win an EMMY® Award.

Robo Jr. actually took home four and the awards put Dale on the map locally just as he'd hoped.

Of course, getting the short on TV in the first place took some work as well as luck. It's not every day a relatively unknown producer can call up Detroit's WDIV-TV and get an executive like Henry Maldonado on the phone. But Dale did. He calls it being at the right place at the right time -- Maldonado needed to make quota on children's programming for the year and Dale suddenly appeared with the solution.

To Dale's credit, once he had Maldonado's attention it was down to his experience as a writer, producer and on-air talent that got him the job. His willingness to do all the above and more to create a half-hour program around the creation of Robo Jr. on a zero budget sealed the deal.

"Dale represents something that's always been true and that's the importance of just getting into the business," says Specs VP Dick Kernen. "I think that it is important to know that the experience he gained working in radio was extremely important to his latter career as an animator. Both are creative processes and you acquire that creativity by being in the business whether you're in radio or video."

The awards helped too. When Will Vinton Studios called NewTek, Inc., - the makers of the Amiga Video Toaster® and Lightwave 3D® - to find someone to animate the next phase of computer-generated M&Ms, Dale's name came up and he was off to Portland, Oregon, on a 4-month tour.

Dale had made it but his inventive nature didn't stop there. When asked to join the staff at Will Vinton, which would've required a move to the West Coast, Dale graciously turned down the offer and proposed telecommuting by Internet instead.

"I was asked how they'd know whether or not I was working," laughs Dale, "and I said, it's simple -- when I stop sending you animations, you stop paying me money."

Today, Dale Myers Animation Studios is a one-man organization. Dale answers his own phone, designs his own web site, drums up his own sales, and of course, gets lost in his own computer-generated world.

"I love it because it's my show from start to finish; one man, one vision. Working from client scripts and storyboards, I create the characters, the set, the lighting and the acting."

The workday extends far beyond the requisite 8 hours as Dale Myers casts another spell. What comes next is anyone's best guess.

The magic continues...

Above: Dale Myers poses with EMMY and ABC's Peter Jennings

DALE MYERS WINS NATIONAL EMMY FOR SOLVING KENNEDY MYSTERY THROUGH 3D ANIMATION

Dale brought his EMMY® statue to the school to share his victory with friends and mentor Dick Kernen.

In September, 2004, Myers was honored in New York City with an EMMY® award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his stunning computer animated recreation of the Kennedy assassination featured in ABC-TV's 40th anniversary special, Peter Jennings Reporting: The Kennedy Assassination - Beyond Conspiracy.

Not only does the computer reconstruction allow viewers to become eyewitnesses to the crime of the century and see it from all angles, but it also acts as an investigative forensic tool, refuting the various conspiracy theories that have thrived for 40 years.

Myers concluded that Kennedy was killed by a single sniper who fired three shots, scoring two hits, from his perch in the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. The ABC special also garnered the network the celebrated CINE Golden Eagle Award for excellence in historical programming and the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for Best News Documentary.

Myers is no stranger to high honors. Ten years earlier, in 1994, Myers was awarded 3 EMMY's ® from the Michigan Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his computer creation, Robo Jr. The six-minute short subject - produced, directed and animated by Myers - was one of the first entirely computer generated 3D cartoons and was featured at SIGGRAPH's annual computer festival. Additional honors include the Gold Camera Award from the 27th annual U.S. International Film and Video Festival.

KELLY BROWN
Air Talent
WIOT 104.7 FM
(Toledo, OH)

SHELLEY IRWIN
Host/Producer
WGVU-1480 AM
(Grand Rapids, MI)

SCREAMIN' SCOTT RANDALL
Air Personality
WRIF 101 FM
(Detroit, MI)

Mike Staff
DJ/Owner
Mike Staff Production(Madison Heights, MI)

CAROLYN STONE
Assistant Program Director/Air Personality
106.5 The Zone
(Toledo, OH)

GARY WANN
Promotion Writer/ Producer
Fox 2 Detroit
(Detroit, MI)