'Magic Clams', comic strip from Arcade #3 (Fall 1975).
Sally Cruikshank is an American animator, most famous for her joyful, colorful, wacky, yet sometimes slightly disturbing animated cartoons, such as the cult classic 'Quasi at the Quackadero' (1975). A hit in the "midnight movie" circuit, the film led to commissions for more surreal cartoons in other media, including Jim Henson's children's TV show 'Sesame Street' and various big-budget Hollywood pictures, such as 'Twilight Zone: The Movie' (1983) and 'Top Secret!' (1984). Early in her career, Cruikshank also drew the gag comic 'Magic Clams' (1975), printed in the alternative magazine Arcade.
Early life
Sally Cruikshank was born in 1949 in Chatham, New Jersey, as the daughter of an accountant and a boarding school principal. Her maternal aunt, Bea Cruikshank, was a painter who once made an official portrait of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Her sister Carol also showed artistic talent but unfortunately passed away in 1992. Cruikshank studied art at Smith College, graduating with a B.A. in 1971, following it up with a film course at the San Francisco Art Institute. One of her teachers at the institute was underground comix artist Victor Moscoso.
Among Cruikshank's main influences in the field of comics were Carl Barks, Robert Crumb and Winsor McCay, while in animation she again singled out McCay, as well as Bob Clampett, The Fleischer Brothers, Otto Messmer & Pat Sullivan, Amedee Van Beuren and the Beatles animated film 'Yellow Submarine' by George Dunning, based on designs by Heinz Edelmann. Fascinated with amusement parks, she has collected hundreds of old postcards depicting such locations. Later she found out that Winsor McCay had actually based much of his own comic strip backgrounds on fairground architecture too.
In 1971, Cruikshank made living as a cocktail waitress in the Magic Cellar in San Francisco, where many oddballs gathered together. She had a relation with underground comic artist Kim Deitch until 1982. In 1984, she married film producer John Davison (known for his work on 'Airplane!' and various Hollywood films by Paul Verhoeven), with whom she has a daughter, Dinah.
Artwork by Sally Cruikshank (1971).
Early animation career
Cruikshank made her first animated shorts while still in university. Interviewed on pangolinblues.wordpress.com (28 October 2012), Cruikshank said that, at the time, she was purely interested in seeing her characters move. She was motivated by Preston Blair's animation guide, 'Animation', which read on the back cover: "You can draw, why not try!". Just like Winsor McCay, Cruikshank originally made all of her animated cartoons completely on her own. A lonely, labor-intensive process that only fellow animators Bob McKimson and Bill Plympton had the persistance to keep up. Learning by trial and error, Cruikshank developed her own personal style and animation techniques. Interviewed in Starlog Presents Comic Scene #7 (January 1982), she reflected: "One thing that bothers me about so many contemporary animators is that they’ve learned a language from other animators. You see the same hand movements, the same 'blink' 'blink' 'blink' when a character asks a question. Too many animators don’t try to picture the dynamics of movement, to use it creatively. I'm not that great an animator per se, but I do think I have a sense of motion that makes for an offbeat view of the world."
In her opinion, animation is fun because there are no boundaries to human creativity. Since her films are so surreal, many people incorrectly assume she made them while under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. In reality, she never took drugs in her life. In the pangolinblues interview, she addressed the matter, while referring to Winsor McCay's creativity: "In today's culture if someone came upon his remarkable work they'd probably think, "Whoa, that dude must have been onto some drugs" or however they say it. People neglect the possibilities of the imagination these days." Cruikshank made three psychedelic shorts, namely 'Ducky' (1971), 'Fun on Mars' (1971) and 'Chow Fun' (1971). She started using anthropomorphic duck characters, inspired by Carl Barks' 'Donald Duck' comics. The tall Anita and her nerdy boyfriend Quasi became her signature heroes.
Cruikshank edited 'Chow Fun' at Snazelle Films, a company specializing in TV commercials. Her boss liked her work well enough to promote her to head of their animation department. Funny enough, she was the only employee there, which motivated her to hire friends to help her with painting cells, just to meet the deadlines. During this period, she made animated advertisements for companies such as Levi's Jeans, The Gap and Connie Shoes. Much to Cruikshank's delight, her boss didn't claim creative ownership to her films. There wasn't even a contract. Interviewed by Lola Landekic for Art of the Title (20 May 2015), Cruikshank revealed that the footage of these commercials has unfortunately disintegrated.
Magic Clams
In 1975, Cruikshank created her first and only comic strip, 'Magic Clams', which starred her signature cartoon characters Anita and Quasi. The gag comic appeared in the third issue of the alternative comics magazine Arcade: The Comics Review, founded by Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith and published by The Print Mint.
Ad for 'Quasi at the Quackadero' (original art).
Quasi at the Quackadero
Cruikshank's characters Anita and Quasi are also the stars of her best-known animated cartoon, 'Quasi at the Quackadero' (1975). Premiering on 9 November 1975, the short features the couple visiting a sideshow with all kinds of surreal attractions. Cruikshank voiced Anita, and her boyfriend Kim Deitch did the inking and voicing of Quasi. Cruikshank received an offer from underground comix artist Bob Armstrong to provide the soundtrack. At the time, Armstrong played with Al Dodge in The Cheap Suit Serenaders, a 1920s retro band with Robert Crumb as frontman. They played similar music for 'Quasi at the Quackadero'. While these instrumentals were recorded in a professional studio, the voice acting was simply done in a closet of Cruikshank's apartment.
Initially, 'Quasi at the Quackadero' met with polarizing reviews. But Cruikshank had the bright idea of bringing her film to a more suitable target audience. In the 1970s, some movie theaters deliberately screened unusual independent films around midnight, where they could pick up a cult following. As an companion cartoon to the main live-action feature of the night, 'Quasi at the Quackadero' soon became a cult movie too. Her film won awards, while libraries bought copies of her print.
Film poster for 'Quasi at the Quackadero'.
Later animated shorts
Cruikshank made several other animated shorts starring Anita and Quasi, including 'Make Me Psychic' (1978), in which Anita buys a strange device and activates it during a party, causing a lot of funny chaos. The film actually played in mainstream theaters, as an opening short to the Hollywood film 'The China Syndrome' (1978). Cruikshank decided to make an animated feature, 'Quasi's Cabaret' (1980), and created a trailer to get investers interested. She did the same for 'Love That Makes You Crawl' (1982), which would combine animation with live-action, while Danny Elfman, of the Mystic Knights of the Oingo-Bongo, would compose a soundtrack. However, none of these projects ever got off the ground. Yet Elfman's group did screen 'Quasi at the Quackadero' as a warm-up to their concerts. Since Cruikshank wasn't informed about this, they returned the favor by performing the soundtrack of her next animated short, 'Face Like A Frog' (1987), for free. The plot of the short revolves around a frog who is brought to a haunted house. The best-known segment in 'Face Like A Frog' is the catchy song 'Don't Go in the Basement!'. In 1991, 'Face Like A Frog' was also broadcast on 'Liquid Television' on MTV.
In 1987, Cruikshank animated a TV commercial for the candy brand Candillicious.
Cell from 'Twilight Zone - The Movie' (1982).
Animation for live-action films
In 1983, Cruikshank worked on the 'It's A Good Life' segment in John Landis' anthology horror film 'Twilight Zone: The Movie' (1983). Based on the 'Twilight Zone' episode 'It's A Good Life', the story features a young boy who terrorizes his family members with black magic. In one scene, his older sister (played by Nancy Cartwright, later famous as the voice of Bart Simpson in Matt Groening's 'The Simpsons') is teleported inside a TV cartoon. The gruesome monsters torment her until she is killed off. Cruikshank directed the segment and provided designs. The animation was done by Mark Kausler, with Mary Cain painting the cells.
Cruikshank also created a small segment in the Zucker Brothers & Abrams' comedy film 'Top Secret!' (1984), where the characters' voyage is animated on a map, evolving into a parody of the 'Pac-Man' video game. She also created the animated opening credits of another film by the trio: 'Ruthless People' (1986), accompanied by a title song by Mick Jagger. Interviewed by Lola Landekic for Art of the Title (20 May 2015), Cruikshank said that she once listened to a radio interview with Jagger on NPR, where the Rolling Stones frontman said that he "really hated" these opening credits. All she could think was: "Well, I hated your song, too!".
Still from Sally Cruikshank's favorite 'Sesame Street' cartoon.
Sesame Street
Between 1989 and 2000, Cruikshank made animated intermezzos for Jim Henson's children's TV show 'Sesame Street'. Earlier in her career, she had tried to get involved with the show, but to no avail, making her eventual collaboration a dream come true. Among her memorable contributions are an animated frog singing along with Jimmy Buffet and Kermit during their rendition of 'Caribbean Amphibian' in the TV special 'Elmopalooza' (1998). Her personal favorite is her animated sequence to Betty Carter's song 'From Your Head' (1995), not coincidentally about the concept of imagination. Ironically, she had to really ponder on how to think up images for such an abstract concept like "songs coming from your head".
Recognition
In 1986, Cruikshank received the Maya Deren Award for "Independent Film and Video", handed out by the American Film Institute. Her work has also been screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2014, 'Quasi at the Quackadero' was added to the National Film Registry for its "historical, cultural and aesthetic value."
Production art for 'Sesame Street'.
Later years
In the 1990s, Cruikshank was already experimenting with web animation, GIFs, Flash and chatbot. She made weekly little animated shorts (in some articles incorrectly described as "comics") starring Anita and a new character, Whimsey the horse. Between 2005 and 2015, Cruikshank had her own blog, 'Fun on Mars'. In 2006, Cruikshank launched her own YouTube channel, where her films can be watched, bringing revenue into her own pocket. Although she was originally delighted that the Internet could present her work globally, she later became more critical and disillusioned. As digital technology progressed, many projects she made with certain early formats turned completely obsolete. Many of her web cartoons are no longer accessible. In the same field, she saw traditional cell animation gradually faze out and being replaced with CGI animation. Interviewed on pangolinblues.wordpress.com (28 October 2012), Cruikshank scorned: "Those bulgy balloon computer films remind me of hallucinations I had as a child after dental surgery."
In the same interview, she observed: "Now that there’s software to make the animation process easier, particularly Flash, you'd think there would be so much great new work, and maybe there is but I haven’t seen it. Working with Flash, I found that I would often accept something as good enough, not go back and refine it (and the Flash drawing line is very hard to work with for me) but if it had been traditional animation, with all the stages of pencil drawing/clean up/inking/painting/photography of cels I would want each drawing to be the best it could be, particularly once I got into cel animation. Sometimes making things easier doesn't mean making it better. I don’t know. So many examples of this in all aspects of design. I feel badly that animation is such a popular college major, like marine biology about ten years ago. I can see why they like it but is there anything to be done with it? The free content aspect of the internet has been very tough on creative people." In May 2025, Cruikshank made a statement against A.I. and the Donald Trump administration. She let A.I. create an ugly, monstrous, lizard-skinned portrait of Trump, devouring tacos amidst monsters. Afterwards, she gave permission for general reproduction.
In 2017, Cruikshank provided storyboards and designed characters and props for an episode of Stephen Hillenburg's 'SpongeBob Squarepants', namely 'The Legend of Boo-Kini Bottom'. Cruikshank is nowadays mostly active making watercolor and gouache paintings. She sells old animation cells and her paintings on Etsy. Cruikshank has also compiled all her animated shorts on one DVD.
Legacy and influence
A short clip from 'Quasi at the Quackadero' is briefly seen in the opening scene of the film 'Bender's Game' (2008), of Matt Groening's animated TV series 'Futurama', though afterwards turns into a parody of 'Yellow Submarine'. Interviewed by Lola Landekic for Art of the Title (20 May 2015), Cruikshank said that she was happy to be paid for its inclusion, but otherwise never saw 'Futurama', other than the one scene her clip was used in.
Sally Cruikshank was an influence on comic artist Patrick Keck, particularly for his graphic novel 'Peepers'. In 2023, he created a special homage to her work, 'The Many Frog Faces of Sally Cruikshank', for the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Sally Cruikshank, 1978.