The View From The Mountain

I was watching a video on YouTube about the "wacky" animated fantasy films of the 80s, and it made me realize that this year marks the fortieth anniversary of Fire And Ice . Unlike the other fantasy films (both animated and live-action) that were released in the 1980s, Fire And Ice was notable because it was a collaboration between animated film director Ralph Bakshi ( Fritz the Cat , Wizards ) and noted fantasy illustrator Frank Frazetta. Fire And Ice takes its inspiration more from the Conan the Barbarian stories (which Frazetta became first known for, having drawn the covers for them) rather than the Lord of the Rings . Bakshi was no stranger to J.R.R. Tolken’s works, having produced his own animated version of LOTR a few years prior. Bakshi re-used his favorite form of animation, called rotoscoping, where actors are filmed onstage, and their actions on film are then hand-drawn, frame by frame, by an animator onto cells. This provides a far more reali