Tony Mines – A Remembrance and Celebration

**Fig. 1 – Through boredom, Tony flipped the script in Hitchcock’s classic, something Arthur Matthews later did with a *Big Train* sketch.**

I first met Tony when we were drawn together in the same class at middle school.

He was always different, rubbing against the tyranny of ‘normality’. Yet, he never accepted being a square peg forced into a round hole. He was always full of energy, creativity and passion. It was clear that he had an extraordinary talent.

Comprehensive school could be cruel, especially back in the day, and this could sometimes manifest in forms of bullying. Yet Tony remained stoic. It was as if he could see a future for himself whereby none of this nonsense would matter. He was right.

I remember a class exercise – bringing in something that is important to you to show to the rest of the class, when we were about nine or ten. He bought in a book on the history of animation (it may well have been Charles Solomon’s History of Animation) that was clearly his pride and joy. When we were about twelve, he lent me a videocassette of Akira, extolling its virtues – he’d clearly gotten into anime at an early age (this was the pre-internet era). It was a little lost on me at the time, and mainly succeeded in giving me a migraine, but it was another example of Tony’s early self-education in animation. We bonded more easily on the surreally silly universe of Monty Python, later to have great significance for Tony.

**Fig. 2 - Avian revenge is reimagined by Tony.**

Tony was someone whose life was steeped in animation – everything seemed to revolve around this and film. And he was always drawing, a talent for which the school system did at least recognise, even if they didn’t know what to do with it (he was admonished once for some math’s homework in which he’d used an image from Sailor Moon - it was too ‘suggestive’ for the teacher’). I can recall him discussing an attempt, in vain, to pause the videotape of the opening of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (as it was known in the UK) to try to properly draw the animated logo. He went to similar lengths for anything which inspired him.

Several years later we studied Film Studies together in Sixth Form College (which was also the Upper School we attended) – the first occasion anything so artistically adventurous had been attempted in the sixth form outside of traditional art and literature. A great memory occurred towards the end when we were tasked with studying a sequence from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds in repetitive and, ultimately, tedious detail. Somewhere deep into this ordeal, I looked over and saw Tony’s satirical scribbles (Fig. 1) which he graciously allowed me to keep and have kept all these years. It was a classic example of Tony’s ‘pythonesque’ humour. The same sheet contained some other great doodles (Figs. 2, 3, and 4).

I only saw Tony one more time after that, and it was unplanned. I was travelling through Cardiff Train station for a concert, and he came running up brandishing an SLR camera, like a paparazzo or Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now. I didn’t recognise him at first as he was dressed in a far more individual manner – all leather jacket and vintage threads. He insisted on taking a snap.

This individualism was no coincidence – Tony had enrolled at college followed by Newport University (now part of the University of Wales) and could dedicate himself to his two passions – film and animation. Here, away from other restrictions, pressure and distractions, he clearly thrived. It was here also that he evidently found his niche in brick animations. This is also his legacy and major contribution to animation. The same year, he founded his animation company, Spite Your Face Productions with Tim Drage.

Tony’s brick animation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Nowadays, Lego or brick animations are ubiquitous and immensely popular, especially homages to famous films, but this was not always so. Tony’s brick animation of the Camelot sequence from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (see below) was one of the first to gain widespread recognition and was commissioned by Lego and Python Pictures (conceived by Terry Gilliam and the film’s producer John Goldstone), for the Special Edition DVD. It is as clearly so very in the spirit of the original. According to writer David Freedman, “Bottom line, no Tony Mines, no Ninjago, no Lego Batman, no Lego movies… no kids animating Lego on their iPhones…he pretty much single-handedly created a subgenre of Lego animation.”

Tony may well have influenced and help popularise the Lego brickfilm, but his creation is still unique. Asides from a fluidity of movement that still makes animators step back in admiration, it stands out because it is so clearly the work of someone equally in love with his craft and the original film it lovingly homages. If I hadn’t known it was the work of Tony Mines I could well have guessed it was the same individual spirit I had known in school.

Spider-Man: The Peril of Doc Ock (2004).

So influential was he that the Lego company knew that it was Spite Your Face they should turn to, to commission work in the early 2000s. He also produced similarly revered versions of 2001: A Space Odyssey – One: A Space Odyssey in 2001 (see above) as well as the Star Wars themed Star Wars Episode V 1/2 : The Han Solo Affair the following year, while the Marvel world was spoofed in 2004’s Spider-Man: The Peril of Doc Ock. They all contain Tony’s unique brand of humour.

Spite Your Face handled commercial contracts too, like so many British Animation companies before them (Halas and Batchelor, Aardman Animation) creating content for Kellogg’s Coco-Pops and Anchor Butter (which spoofs The Great Escape) among others. The commitment to traditional techniques was outlined on his company website: ‘Our versatile catalogue emphasises a practice of classical techniques, including traditional drawn animation, and stop-motion, implemented through new digital technologies’.

Tony discussing his technique in a ‘behind the scenes’ video.

Tony would occasionally discuss the techniques he used, such as the eminently useful ‘behind the scenes’ videos he crafted (see right), or this article on creating stop-motion he published a few years ago, in which he reiterates the importance of sequential imagery in creating fluid motion.

It was rather a shock to me, when I was looking up Tony’s work last year, to hear that he had passed away, at the age of only 44. The eulogies from everyone in the industry show how he was admired and missed, both personally and professionally, as well as recognition for his passion, individuality and, of course, sense of humour (the comments on Tony’s videos on YouTube say everything about what they mean to the world).

It was sad for me, on a personal level, to hear this, and that I’d never have the chance to invite him as a guest speaker on one of my courses (I was keen to hear what he thought that I was now teaching and writing on animation myself). I have these wonderful memories though, that I’m sharing with you because there are important lessons that Tony’s life and career exemplify. Do what you love, don’t give up, and more importantly, don’t conform when the rest of the world seems to want you to – it is exactly these qualities, feared by some, that others love and for which you will be remembered for.

**Article published: July 14, 2023**

Biography

Dr Mark Fryers is a Lecturer in Film and Media at The Open University whose lifelong passion for animation was instigated by a childhood love of The Pink Panther cartoons and Jim Davis's Garfield books, and augmented no end by a fortuitous, shared upbringing with Tony Mines. He has taught on animation courses at The University of East Anglia, curated by Professor Rayna Denison, and published on the intersection of environmentalism, folklore and the maritime sphere in global animation cultures. He is currently working on an article focusing on The Real Ghostbusters (another childhood obsession) and its significance as a series which exemplifies both the economic logic of 1980s childhood culture and its attendant, subversive fascination with horror and the gothic.