What is your name and your current occupation?
KAUKAB BASHEER,Freelance artist: Character Designer, Character Layout Artist and Traditional Animator.
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Selling door-to-door magazines, distributing fliers, and labor work in garment construction factories.
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
“Tom & Jerry” shows for Warner Bros Animation in the US. And “Chhota Bheem” and four-part movie series “Krishna” for Green Gold Animation (GGA) back in India.
Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I’m originally from the city of Hyderabad in India. I grew up in Dubai (UAE) and went to high school in Canada. I got in to animation at the age of 22, without a college degree of any kind (some ten years ago), after randomly Continue reading
We posted a Storycorps short back on 9/11 and since they’re now on my radar, I’ve been going through them and I really like their style. Check this one out about Miss Devine, a stern woman who still had an influence on the children she taught Sunday School to.
Today’s model sheet comes from Warner Bros and he’s on TV Guide‘s 2013 list of The 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time.
For me as a kid, he was one of the most frustrating characters because he constantly did the stupidest things even though we clearly saw he was building that hut on the train tracks! It was in many ways like watching a Ben Stiller movie before they existed.
My two-year-old daughter summed it up for me best the first time she ever saw a series of Coyote and RoadRunner cartoons. She was watching the coyote set up some Rube Goldberg sort of trap which naturally fails, sending a boulder sky high and down towards poor ol’ Wile E. Coyote.
WHAM!!
She cringed.
The next trap involved a him trying to trick the RoadRunner to run off a cliff which of course backfires sending him off instead in the classic scene we all know and love.
SPLAT!
She covered her eyes.
The third time involved some sort of bungie and bird seed and it was pretty clear he wasn’t going to succeed. he jumped off an arch suspended over a pile of bird seed intending to grab the RoadRunner as he was chowing down only to be ricocheted back up to the arch and breaking it off. At this point my daughter riveted to the TV and again only 2 says “Oh no! Not again!”
Still makes me laugh! Anyway, This model sheet was beautifully drawn by, I believe, Shawn Keller.
Here’s some more interesting information about Wile E. Coyote on Wikipedia:
Wile E. Coyote was created by animation director Chuck Jones in 1948 for Warner Bros., while the template for their adventures was the work of writer Michael Maltese. The characters star in a long-running series of theatrical cartoon shorts (the first 16 of which were written by Maltese) and occasional made-for-television cartoons.
In each episode, instead of animal senses and cunning, Wile E. Coyote uses absurdly complex contraptions (sometimes in the manner of Rube Goldberg) and elaborate plans to pursue his quarry. It was originally meant to parody chase cartoons like Tom and Jerry, but became popular in its own right.
The Coyote appears separately as an occasional antagonist of Bugs Bunny in five shorts from 1952 to 1963: Operation: Rabbit, To Hare Is Human, Rabbit’s Feat, Compressed Hare, andHare-Breadth Hurry. While he is generally silent in the Coyote-Road Runner shorts, he speaks with a refined accent in these solo outings (except for Hare-Breadth Hurry), introducing himself as “Wile E. Coyote — super genius”, voiced with an upper-class accent by Mel Blanc.[1] The Road Runner vocalizes only with a signature sound, “Beep, Beep“, recorded by Paul Julian, and an occasional “popping-cork” tongue noise.[2]
To date, 48 cartoons have been made featuring these characters (including the three CGI shorts), the majority by Chuck Jones.
What are some of the craziest job’s you had before getting in to animation?
I worked as a maid at the Hilton Hotel, in downtown Anchorage, Alaska for 2 summers in a row (1980, 1981), summer being tourist season in Alaska. It was my favorite non-artistic job. I was on the move all day, so I was in the best shape I’d been since High School. I was required to clean 17 rooms a day (plus “spring cleaning†a couple rooms a week), and I got it down to a science. I made it a form of moving meditation, domestic Tai Chi, executing my repetitive tasks with the fewest, most economical movements.
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
TODD McFARLANE’S SPAWN.
I directed the final episode of the final season (season 3), for which I won a Continue reading
What is your name and your current occupation?
Tony Seruno and I’m a character designer at DreamWorks Animation.
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation? In college I worked as a maintenance worker at micro chip manufacturing plant, waiter at a Mongolian BBQ, a Valet at one of Minneapolis’ top night clubs, and also worked as a production assistant on a national cable TV show.
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of? I’ve worked on a lot of projects over the years. The ones that stand out are a few episodes of The Simpson’s from season 6 and 7. The Road to El Dorado will always be a sentimental favorite due to the fact it was my very first project as a character designer. Recent ones would have to be Kung Fu Panda, How to Train your Dragon, and Neighbor from Hell. How did you become interested in animation?Â
I always drew and painted as a kid and I did enjoy watching Disney animated films and such, Â but to be honest Continue reading
