Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538315
12 KEYFRAME T H E C L I M B A few years back, Rob LaDuca thought retirement was in the cards. A couple projects he was developing were put on pause. But in their place came a chance to breathe new life into an old show he'd once worked on—and the continuation of the career he was clearly destined for. LaDuca's mother said that as soon as he could hold a pencil, he started drawing, and his father brought home butcher paper from the family's Manhattan restaurant, hanging it on the wall for him to sketch on. "I even made a little setup in my basement [with a] magnifying glass and scratching on leader film," he says, describing the old process of drawing directly on film stock. Graduating from high school in 1974, LaDuca wanted to attend the prestigious RISD or NYU, but his parents' restaurant went out of business. "We were broke," he says. He'd heard about a trade school in the area. It specialized in accounting AT A TIME IN LIFE WHEN MOST PEOPLE WOULD RETIRE, ROB LADUCA WAS JUST GET TING STARTED—AGAIN! MY KIND OF PEOPLE and chiropractic training, but the man who founded it was a big movie buff, and the school was getting into film. LaDuca confesses that one of the reasons he chose Long Island's New York Institute of Technology was because it had brand-new equipment that included a 16-millimeter animation stand. At one point he asked the dean if he could borrow it to shoot a film. He then learned that the school also had a class in animation, but self-taught LaDuca didn't think he needed it. Persuaded to at least meet the instructor, he was surprised to find out they were making an animated movie right on campus. When the film's Animation Director saw LaDuca's portfolio and indie film, he asked: "Can you start Monday?" LaDuca replied: "Start what?" He didn't realize he was being offered a job as an In-Betweener on Tubby the Tuba—which would also get him membership in New York's now-defunct Local 841.