Warren Leonhardt

I was raised in a tiny town just west of the Canadian Rockies. Getting into this business was a bit tricky. The real turning point for me was after I dropped out of Alberta College of Art & Design in Calgary, Alberta out of sheer frustration. I was moping around campus as I was still living in the dorms there, working two jobs at the time. Must have been about 19 years old or so. Anyways, I stumbled across an alumni magazine of the nearby tech college. On the cover was an image from Disney’s “Aladdin”. This college was known for putting out mechanics, meat cutters, and architectural students and I couldn’t imagine why this was on it. I picked it up and read a feature article about this guy named Don Paul. He had gone through exactly the same thing I did – ran into a wall trying to learn animation in this part of Canada. Don created his own curriculum and made a few films before getting into Disney’s and he was head of special effects there at the time. I went to the tech college’s alumni office and asked to talk to the reporter, explaining my situation to the clerk there. He came back with Don’s contact info and just told me to come back and let him know what happened. I wrote Mr. Paul a three page letter, and three days later he called me! I couldn’t believe my luck. After talking with him, I applied to Sheridan College. I don’t know how I would have found out what to do without his phone call. The Internet barely existed then.  At the same time I was taking night courses at an artist run co-op in Calgary, Alberta. It’s called Quickdraw Animation Society and at the time there were classes taught on the basics of all types of animated movement. Kevin Kurytnik, the instructor at the time, is someone whom I still keep in touch with time to time.His course had prepared me so well for Sheridan that the first year there was a repeat of material I had already learned. To this day, Quickdraw has the largest collection of animation from around the world I’ve seen in one place, outside of the Internet, anyway. I saw a lot of rare  European, Asian, African and South American animation there. After graduating Sheridan, their recruiting drive wound up and I chose Disney Canada in Toronto over ILM. I wanted to draw and make stuff up, not animate CGI mudflaps on Star Wars revamps.

Reading or listening to people complain about working in it, and some of the animation snobbery that can abound online. There are worse things in life than doing this line of work. Expecting studio animation work to fulfill all of your creative urges is setting oneself up for disappointment. I just think it’s a really fun way to make a living.  I gave myself an antidote to all the bad mojo by starting to write for an animation website based in Canada called, oddly enough, Canadian Animation Resources. Mike Valiquette up in Ottawa is trying to do a solid for the home team, so I try to help him out from time to time. Anyone can do it, but few people bother. Mike is the real deal, I respect that and stepped up to help out when I could. It’s all about upping morale north of the border, as there’s a lot of heavy talent frankly wasted on poor budgets and production methods. And yet, new stuff pops up in Canada that’s worth talking about every week. So I’ve been trying out interviews and posts previewing festivals and such. I’m not very good at it, but it beats complaining.

What kind of technology do you work with on a daily basis?
Photoshop, Adobe Bridge on a Cintiq and a Mac. Lately I’ve been getting assignments with just an outline to work from, so I’ll just bang out some beats to the sequence with a Sharpie marker on some index cards and pitch those until the sequence has some shape I can work into digitally. Then I go home and built stuff out of mashed potatoes with my toddler or something.

Kids are a pretty awesome side project. Highly recommended hobby. I write a lot of stuff. Never judge it coming out, so sometimes it’s kids books, teen graphic novels, screenplays, children’s puppet shows and what have you.  I really like doing volunteer work with art classes for kids and such when I came carve out the time. You tend to forget that what we do is a bit of a magic trick to most people. Up in a small town called Collingwood in Ontario, Canada, I did some classes for kids for a couple of years. It was so awesome! Kids are just random associated imagination, kings and queens of the Jam Session.  I think it’s fantastic to work face to face, idea to idea, collaborate with them and make stuff. Adults are frickin boring, man. We don’t come up with stuff like a superpowered baby watermelon who shoots lasers from it’s eyes and get that idea accepted, built upon and improved, a whole world built around it in twenty minutes. Not without drugs or alcohol involved. But that jamming headspace is a natural state for most kids once they know that no one will make fun of them for trying it.

Stop treating it like a ‘business’! Sure you need some negotiating chops if you’re freelancing or trying to build a cartoon empire, but really you just need to get good. This whole ‘who you know’ mentality doesn’t count for anything if you can’t do the gig. Turn down the suck and turn up the good. And always ask questions. The good gigs will follow if you pay attention to your craft, first and foremost. Oh, and don’t be a jerk. Who wants to work with jerks?!

warrenleonhardt.com