RIP Jane Aaron, Sesame Street Animator

Filmmaker and animator Jane Aaron, whose work appeared on Sesame Street, died last week at the age of 67.

From The New York Times:

Jane Aaron, a filmmaker and children’s book illustrator who brought young viewers the letter “X,” the numbers 1 through 20 and other lessons in dozens of instructive animated shorts on “Sesame Street,” died on June 27 in Manhattan. She was 67.

The cause was cancer, her husband, Skip Blumberg, said.

Ms. Aaron’s animated films have been shown in museums around the world, but her work found its widest audience on “Sesame Street,” the groundbreaking and popular children’s education program that has been broadcast on PBS stations since 1969.

Ms. Aaron’s animated films have been shown in museums around the world, but her work found its widest audience on “Sesame Street,” the groundbreaking and popular children’s education program that has been broadcast on PBS stations since 1969.

Mixing live-action footage with animated images, Ms. Aaron’s signature letters and numbers sprouted from streets, park benches, playgrounds and rooftops in almost 200 animated shorts for “Sesame Street,” including many “Elmo’s World” segments.

“Jane dreamed up many innovative techniques — before the age of computers — to bring inanimate objects to life,” said Christopher Cerf, her collaborator on “Sesame Street” and on another PBS program, “Between the Lions.” Ms. Aaron used identical fiberboard numbers sawed off in different places and stop-action photography to show numbers growing up out of the sidewalk. To illustrate the concepts of front and back, she and the stop-motion animator Joe Laudati presented cutouts of three yaks dancing as ballerinas on a three-dimensional stage. To demonstrate the concepts of jam-packed and empty, she sent chirping chickens charging into a room through a door and a window, only to retreat just as swiftly.

In another segment, she made a series of letters out of leaves, blew them apart with a leaf blower and, when the film was shown backward, whisked them back together to form the letters being taught.

“I would always know we were on the right track with a film when she would laugh while pitching an idea,” said Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street.”

Ms. Aaron’s work was also featured on MTV, Nick at Nite and the Learning Channel. She and Mr. Cerf, a songwriter and author, collaborated on childhood learning programs for the Success for All Foundation and co-produced “The Animal Alphabet Singers” for Think Smart Games. In 1986, a number of her whimsical short films were shown as part of a New American Animation program at Film Forum in Manhattan.

You can read more about Jane Aaron in The New York Times.