Hollywood animator teaches his craft at COD

The art Tony Venezia creates often goes unappreciated - stuff like animated titles, graphics and trailers that you see in movies and on television.

In the movie "Total Recall," for example, Venezia helped make the actor's names, including Arnold Schwarzenegger's, leave red skid marks on a black screen in the opening credits.

After 20 years of technical production work in Hollywood, the Villa Park native is back home teaching animation full time at the College of DuPage.

He also freelances on the side and spent four years doing graphics for "The Oprah Winfrey Show," such as dreamy re-enactments, an animation of a mining accident and word graphics for various episodes.

"Oprah never complimented us, but she always supported us," Venezia said. "It was an interesting place to work, because I was used to working with all men. Almost everyone (at Harpo) was female."

Venezia draws from his showbiz experience to teach his students and promote their work, like he'll do at the college's Animation Night May 14. He's also headlining an open-to-the-public presentation about the Hollywood animation business at 7 p.m. May 20 at the Geneva Public Library.

"I miss L.A. sometimes," Venezia confessed while sitting among film memorabilia in his COD office. "L.A. is more cutting-edge on what you can do."

Venezia did work on some pretty cool scenes in L.A. One of his favorite was the chase scene he helped create for the 1999 Disney movie "My Favorite Martian," where Jeff Daniels and Christopher Lloyd drive a shrunken car through the sewer and it comes up out of a toilet, just as someone's about to sit down.

"We shot a few things but did it all on a computer," he said.

That's how most of his work was done - on a computer, with a team of other technical people, and only occasional visits to the actual set.

Venezia's love of film surfaced when he was a kid watching John Wayne in "The Alamo." He found further inspiration in Ralph Amelio's cinema studies class at Willowbrook High School. Venezia says he wasn't a great student but had a knack for animation.

"It was something I could see that I could do that other people couldn't," he said.

After earning degrees from College of DuPage and Illinois State University, Venezia landed different production assistant jobs in Chicago film studios - a job he described as "basically running errands." But in his downtime, Venezia talked with the gaffers and cameramen, and they'd show him how things worked.

"I used to guess how to set up a shot and then see how close I was to what the director chose to do," he said.

Venezia moved to California to enroll in UCLA's animation program. He earned a master of fine arts degree, and one of his films was a national finalist for the Student Academy Awards.

Soon, he was running his own company, Electric Filmworks, and working as a technical director for TV commercials, networks and movies. He closed the business in 1998 to refocus on his creative side, as well as on his family. Venezia and his wife moved back home in 2000 and now live in Wheaton.

"We felt it was a better place to raise our kids (than Los Angeles)," he said.

Shortly after Venezia started teaching at College of DuPage in 2005, his father, Gene, enrolled in a few of his classes. His father, who has since died, didn't know the first thing about computers and animation, having spent his career in the lumber business. But he learned.

"He got an 'A' in animation, but he didn't get an 'A' in editing, because he didn't do one of the assignments," Venezia said.

Venezia encourages his students to take chances, and he'll give good grades to projects with a creative concept, even if they turn out badly. That's how you learn in the film animation business, he said.

"I tell students, 'It's not always easy, and it can be difficult to start. But you can do it.'"

- Jamie Sotonoff

• Dann Gire and Jamie Sotonoff are always looking for people from the suburbs who are now working in showbiz. If you know of someone who would make an interesting profile, email them at dgire@dailyherald.com and jsotonoff@dailyherald.com.