The Adventure of Sud Sakorn is Thailand's first (and only) cel-animated feature film.

Payut Ngaokrachang (Thai ปยุต เงากระจ่าง, born April 1, 1929) is a Thai cartoonist and animator. April 1 is the 91st day of the year (92nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 274 days remaining. ... 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... A cartoonist at work. ... An animator is one who is involved in the process of animation. ...

Biography

Early life

Payut was born at Klong Warl village, Warkoe, Prachuap Khiri Khan Province. As a child, Payut was interested in talung shadow-puppet plays and Felix the Cat. Prachuap Khiri Khan (Thai ประจวบคีรีขันธ์) is one of the central provinces (changwat) of Thailand. ... Shadow play Wayang-figure in Bali, Indonesia A shadow play is an ancient form of story-telling and entertainment using opaque, often articulated figures in front of an illuminated backdrop to create the illusion of moving images. ... The famous Felix pace as seen in Oceantics (1930) Felix the Cat is a cartoon character from the silent-film era. ...

At age 17, Payut took his first job, painting backgrounds for play sets as he traveled around Thailand with theater groups. In 1944, he enrolled in classes to become an art teacher. This was followed by work as a block printer, making etchings. He also worked at an advertising agency. Block printing is a special form of printing first developed in China. ... Etching is an intaglio method of printmaking in which the image is incised into the surface of a metal plate using an acid. ...

Inspiration as animator

Around 1941, Payut met artist Sanae Klaikluen who was interested in animation and wanted Payut to join him in a project. Sanae was commissioned in 1945 to make a one-minute animated film for the Thai government, which was campaigning to get citizens to wear hats and farmers to wear boots. Sanae died a year later, and it was then that Payut decided he wanted to be an animator. 1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1945 calendar). ...

In 1955, while he was recovering from an illness, Payut set about animating a cartoon he had been drawing for a newspaper. In the cartoon, Haed Mahasajan, a policeman directs traffic, swaying to the tune of music in the manner of Thai classical dancers. A woman starts crossing the street when the zipper on her dress splits, diverting the policeman's attention with the result that cars pile up all around him. Thai dance is the main dramatic art form of Thailand. ... Closeup of the zipper on a pair of jeans Zippers are commonly used as a fastener for the front of a pair of pants. ...

The 12-minute short premiered on July 5, 1955 at Sala Chalermthai Theater. July 5 is the 186th day of the year (187th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 179 days remaining. ... 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Work for USIS

The acclaim that accompanied Payut's "Hollywood-like" animated short caught the attention of the US embassy in Bangkok, which led to his eventual hiring by the United States Information Service, were he worked for nearly 33 years as an artist. ... Bangkok from the Chao Phraya River at sunset, July 2004 The Wat Phra Kaew temple Bangkok, known in Thai as Krung Thep ( (help· info)), or Krung Thep Maha Nakhon ( (help· info), IPA: ), is the capital and largest city of Thailand, with an official 1990 census population of 8,538,610. ... The United States Information Agency (USIA), which existed from 1953 to 1999, was a United States agency devoted to what it called public diplomacy. ...

For training, the USIS gave Payut a choice of spending six to eight months with Disney or going to Japan. He chose Japan, where he has said he "just looked around, as animation did not exist there at the time." (See History of anime). Walt Disney Feature Animation (WDFA) is the animation studio that makes up a key element of The Walt Disney Company. ... Astro Boy, star of the long-running science fiction series Astro Boy. ...

Payut only made one animated film for the USIS, a 20-minute recounting of the story of Hanuman, the white monkey in the classic Ramayana. Made in 1957, it was called Hanuman Pachon Pai Krang Mai (The Adventure of Hanuman. It was a propaganda work, with a red monkey representing communism. Lord Hanuman In Hinduism, Hanuman (Sanskrit: हनुमत् hanumat; nominative singular हनुमान् hanumān) is a vanara who aided Rama (an avatar of Vishnu) in rescuing his wife, Sita, from the Rakshasa king Ravana. ... The Rāmāyana (Sanskrit: रामायण, march or journey (Āyana) of Rāma) is part of the Hindu smriti, written by Valmiki. ... 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... U.S. propaganda poster, depicting a Nazi stabbing a Bible. ... This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. ...

In 1960, he created a short cartoon called Dek Kab Mee (A Boy and A Bear) for the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, which called for unity in order to combat communism. SEATO nations leaders group portrait in front of the Congress of the Philippines building in Manila, hosted by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos on October 24, 1966. ...

He also worked part-time jobs making animated commercials.

Work on feature film

While keeping his day job at USIS, Payut began work in 1976 on The Adventure of Sud Sakorn, featuring a character from one of Thailand's most famous literary works, Pra Apai Manee by the poet Sunthorn Phu. Sud Sakorn, the boy hero, is the son of a mermaid and a musician, and his adventures include fights with an elephant, a shark and a dragon horse, as well as encounters with a king, a hermit, a yogi, a magic wand and ghosts. Sunthorn Phu (or Sunthon Phu, 1786–1855) is Thailands best-known poet. ... A hermit (from the Greek erÄ“mos, signifying desert, uninhabited, hence desert-dweller) is a person who lives to some greater or lesser degree in seclusion and/or isolation from society. ... This page is Yogi as advanced practitioners of Yoga. ... A wand consists of a thin, straight, hand-held stick of wood, ivory or metal, approximately a foot long and up to an inch in circumference. ... This article is about the paranormal. ...

The 82-minute feature was released on Songkran Day, April 13, 1979. It is the only Thai-produced, cel-animated cartoon feature ever made. The Thai New Year (สงกรานต์ = Songkran in Thai language) is celebrated every year on April 13 to April 15. ... 13 April is the 103rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (104th in leap years). ... This page refers to the year 1979. ... An animated cartoon is a moving picture generated by photographing drawings frame-by-frame, as opposed to a normal movie, which is produced by shooting 24 frames a second of actual moving persons or objects. ...

The production was plagued with shortages of capital, personnel and equipment. For the first six months, the crew had 100 workers, but by the second year their numbers were reduced to nine.

"I made a lot of my equipment from pieces I got from junk of World War II military surplus," Payut told writer John A. Lent. "I'd find a screw here, a crank there, etc. I used a combat camera and adapted it. I pulled together pieces of wood, aluminum, whatever I could find." Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... Military surplus are goods, usually materiel, that are sold at public auction when no longer needed by the military. ...

The intense, detailed work on Sud Sakorn impaired his eyesight. "I did all the key drawings myself, even the layout and design ... I was almost blind from doing that film and now I wear contacts. My right eye is long, my left is short, crooked because of all that detailed work."

Later work

Attempts to make more animated features were rebuffed because of the expense involved in making them. It was cheaper for Thai movie studios to make live-action films.

His next animated feature wasn't made until 1992, when he was subsidized by Film of Japan to make a film for educating girls under the title My Way.

He's also been a guest lecturer on animation at many universities.

Payut's The Adventure of Sud Sakorn is occasionally screened at film and animation festivals around the world.

Legacy

Although no Thai animated feature films were made after The Adventure of Sud Sakorn, animation is widely used in Thai television series and in commercials. A 3D animated Sud Sakorn series is one such show. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

In 2006, a computer-animated feature film called Khan Khluay, about King Naresuan the Great's war elephant will be released. It is directed by Kompin Kemgunerd, who's worked on such Disney features as Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Tarzan, and Blue Sky Studios' Ice Age. Although the work is being done on computers, Kompin has faced many of the same difficulties in funding and human resources that Payut faced. This is a list of film-related events in 2006. ... Computer animation is the art of creating moving images via the use of computers. ... King Naresuan the Great (1555 - April 25, 1605, also sometimes called Naret or the Black Prince, Thai สมเด็จพระนเรศวรมหาราช) was king of Siam (today Thailand) from 1590 until his death in 1605. ... Walt Disney Feature Animation (WDFA) is the animation studio that makes up a key element of The Walt Disney Company. ... Milo trying to convince scholars of Atlantis existence. ... Tarzan is the thirty-seventh animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. ... Blue Sky Studios is an Academy Award winning computer animation studio which specializes in photo-realistic, high-resolution, computer-generated character animation. ... This article is about a film. ...

Additionally, Thai animators have worked on Hollywood films. Juck Somnsaman is a computer graphics designer for Rhythm & Hues, and did work on Garfield, Scooby Doo, Babe and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Virat Bunnag was on the visual-effects team for The Day After Tomorrow. And Artaya Boonsung was in charge of visual effects for Underworld: Evolution and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. All three worked on The Lord of the Rings. ... Garfield is a 2004 live-action movie based on the Jim Davis comic strip Garfield. ... Scooby-Doo is a 2002 live-action movie, based upon the popular Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon Scooby-Doo. ... Babe (also known as Babe, the Gallant Pig) is a 1995 Australian film that tells the story of a pig who wants to be a herding dog, and which speaks to the arbitrary and unfair nature of class systems. ... The Day After Tomorrow is a 2004 apocalyptic science-fiction film that dramatically depicts catastrophic effects of global warming and boasts high-end special effects as a strong point, although the science the story is based on has little mainstream credibility. ... Dust jacket of the 1968 UK edition The Lord of the Rings is an epic fantasy story by J. R. R. Tolkien, a sequel to his earlier work, The Hobbit. ...

References

• Lent, John A. (April 1997). "A Screw Here, a Crank There". Animation World Magazine, Issue 2.1.
• Danutra, Pattara and Himes, Robert (January 1, 2004). "Payut Ngaokrachang: The Master of Thai Animations", Thai Film Foundation.
• Phataranawanik, Phatarawadee (January 13, 2006). "Moving marvels", The Nation, Weekend section, pages 12-13, print edition.
• Sukin, Kamol (March 12, 2006) "Thai animators out to conquer the world", The Nation.

External Links: MangoDaily. ... External Links: MangoDaily. ...

External links

• Payut Ngaokrachang at the Thai Film Database