Mike interned at and was hired by New Genesis Animation Productions in 1980. They helped him to make his first demo reel, which featured a scene from
Enter the Dragon. After showing his flipbooks and demo reel to Animation Director,
Bob Godfrey, Kelly was hired in 1983 as an apprentice animator on a Bruce Lee animated film produced out of Hong Kong. Additionally, he was the live-action actor used for the rotoscoped animation of Bruce Lee in the film. In 1983, Mike interviewed at Ruby-Spears. After showing his Green Hornet and Kato reel, he was rejected and told he couldn't draw by a gentleman who proceded to pull out work being done for
Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos (
Video |
Show Info).
Kelly decided to attend the Motion Screen Cartoonist Union in 1985 (now
The Animation Guild), but didn't feel that his style of animation fit in. This prompted a slight career detour, allowing him to pursue his fantasy of becoming a martial arts movie icon. Mike has worked in live-action as an actor in
Heroes Three (a.k.a.
Hunted in Hong Kong),
Sakura Killers (1987) and
The Dying Game (
IMDB Credits). The trivia section of his IMDB says, "He had such an adoration for Bruce Lee that he would seem to be 'embodied' by Lee's essence when he was shooting movies."
In 2000, Mike sat down and animated the
Red Dragon fight sequence in the flipbook format. He then enlarged the art using a Xerox machine, scanned it, imported it into Avid Media Composer and then added sound and music. The sound effects were borrowed from
Enter the Dragon, with some additional yells being supplied by Mike himself.
He has since invested in Toon Boom 3.0 software and a Wacom tablet and is currently working on a recreation of the "Saw in the Head" sequence from
The Big Boss. If you'd like to learn more about Mike Kelly and his process, check out this
User Story on the Toon Boom Animation software site and his
YouTube channel.
