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Mary J. Sheridan

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Mary J. Sheridan and I am a 2D Effects Animator, I have been in the business for 25 years.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Cleaning an office space for a truck hauling company .

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
My first feature was “All Dogs go to Heaven” at Sullivan Bluth Studios in Dublin, Ireland. It was my first job in animation and I was a trainee inker. My mentor was trained by Disney inkers and I got to see original cels from Sleeping Beauty which was all hand inked and learn the techniques of the old inking masters. My first job as an effects animator was with Steven Spielbergs animation studio Amblimation on the production “Balto”. It was a great experience and one which opened the door to working with DreamWorks SKG in Los Angeles.

How did you become interested in animation?
My uncle was a great fan of all cartoons, from Wile E Coyote & Roadrunner to Tom and Jerry to the great classics. He loved watching them all. Myself and my cousins would gather around him and laugh together. I remember Saturday morning cartoons with a bowl of cereal, doesn’t get much better than that! Its a tradition I kept with my own son.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I am from Dublin, Ireland. When I graduated from art college I couldn’t find work so I left for London. Unknown to me, my mum submitted my college portfolio to Sullivan Bluth Studios and before I knew it I was offered my first job in animation!

What’s a typical day like for you with regards to your job?
Well I work freelance at the moment so it has to be very structured, I work from home. I like to work an eight hour day or more depending on production needs and deadlines. 1. cup of coffee 2. sharpen pencil 3. draw.

What part of your job do you like best? Why?
I get to draw and get paid for doing what I love. I am grateful for the opportunity to work with very talented artists and visionaries who to this day still keep the art of classical animation alive.

What part of your job do you like least? Why?
The last day of a production is the toughest. I meet great people and its always sad to have to say goodbye, being part of a team and creating magic is a bonding experience. Meeting those same people again and sharing memories is always what keeps you going.

What kind of technology do you work with on a daily basis?
Well I am a traditional artist, my studio consists of an animation desk, a line tester, a 27inch imac with the latest software and from which I upload my work to remote servers, for approvals etc.

What is the most difficult part for you about being in the business?
I would say its the down time, being a freelance 2D artist in a 3D world is very challenging. You have to have the drive and faith in your talent to keep going and keep your passion alive. I have been blessed to be able to continue to make a living as an effects animator and to share that experience with other great artists.

In your travels, have you had any brushes with animation greatness?
Everyone I work with is an animation great! I have been very fortunate to work with some of the greatest names in animation to this day.

 

Describe a tough situation you had in life.
I have realised in life that tough situations are learning experiences which guide us to new opportunities and remind us to always stay positive and believe in yourself.

 

Any side projects you’re working on that you’d like to share details of?
I am an oil painter and a photographer, I have a website where you can check out my latest work and my animation
portfolio www.maryjsheridan.com.

Any unusual talents or hobbies like tying a cherry stem with your tongue or metallurgy?
I love browsing through thrift stores and collecting old things, I have been known to collect toys shhhhh

 

Is there any advice you can give for an aspiring animation student or artist trying to break into the business?
If you are planning on working in the animation biz , most commonly now the 3D world always have traditional work in your portfolio, draw and paint learn how light and textures work through painting and life-drawing. Take traditional classes in sculpting etc, look for intern opportunities.  Go to conventions and meet with people in the business, make connections and keep up with changing trends. Stay ahead of the game and always respect who you work with and what you work on, its a small business and your reputation is what will make the difference if it comes down to hiring choices. Have fun and keep passionate!

 

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Allan Neuwirth

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Allan Neuwirth.  Right now I’m writing and producing several different projects for film and TV… both animated and live action.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?

Wow. I got into the animation biz at the age of 23, so didn’t have too many jobs beforehand…  but one of them was designing and re-scaling newspaper print ads for United Artists feature films, in a crazy bullpen art company called Carluth Studios.  One wall of their 3rd story office was a huge window from floor to ceiling, overlooking Times Square — an amazing view of all the hubbub — and I was the youngest artist working there (everyone else was well into their fifties and sixties and beyond).  Before that I was a salesman at the store Hammacher Schlemmer, selling very expensive toys and gadgets to the very wealthy and very famous.  Also an insane job.  And as a teen I worked as an usher in movie theaters, where I would memorize literally every line of dialogue from every film…. from the opening frame to the closing credits.  To this day I can recite some of them.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Quite a few, actually.  Early on I designed and directed lots of animated motion graphics and flying logos for ABC News and Sports, HBO, NBC, and other networks.  Worked on the original show openings for “ABC Nightline,” “This Week with David Brinkley,” “20/20,” the “World Series,” and many more.  Got to design the scoreboard animation for the New York Yankees (for their DiamondVision screen, so I created them on film), working for George Steinbrenner for two seasons, during the height of his bombastic, bullying days.  (He was pretty nice to me, actually, but I watched him berate people like mad in the front offices!)  Was co-developer and animation head writer of Cartoon Network’s first pre-school series, “Big Bag,” with Jim Henson Productions and Sesame Workshop.  The network gave us an awful time slot, so the series only lasted a few years… but we broke some new ground and it came out great.  Animated and directed a bunch of award-winning TV commercials, all character animation.  Lots of fun!  Many other projects that I’m proud to have been a part of over the years, but a few that come to mind right now are “Arthur,” “Courage the Cowardly Dog,” “The Octonauts,” and two recent Hallmark Christmas specials that I’ve written, “Jingle All the Way” and “Jingle & Bell.”  Also an amazing new feature film that I’m producing right now, called “Drawing Home.”  I’ve also written some books I’m quite proud of, including “Makin’ Toons” (all about the toon boom of the 1990s and 2000s), and co-created a widely syndicated comic strip called “Chelsea Boys” that ran for nearly nine years.  Now that I think about it, it would take me a long time to list ALL the projects I’m proud to have worked on…
How did you become interested in animation?
I’ve always been a rabid animation fan, from when I first started watching “The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show,” “Beany and Cecil” and Warner Bros. cartoons on TV while I was Continue reading
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Micah McNeely

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Micah McNeely and I am a freelance 3D modeler and Texture Artist.
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Before Animation I was a Production Supervisor at Kinko’s Copies and the Chappell Episode “Pop Copy”was a day in the life of my job LOL! My experience there gave me the interest in computers and design so, it wasn’t too bad of an experience 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Oh Man one of the coolest things for me to work on were game cinematics. I worked on cinematic trailers for Colonization/Civilization Revolution and a yet announced game. That being said, I am now working on environments for the PC title FORGE and that has been a great experience for me because although most of my experience in the VFX studio category I have always wanted to work on a video game.
How did you become interested in animation?
Ever since I was a kid I loved comics and games! I grew up in the Marvel Comics and NINETENDO era and when my mother put my first console on layaway at our local Kmart I was hooked! I would say that I also had Continue reading

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Gerry Mooney

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My current name is Gerry Mooney, and my occupation is Director of Motion Graphics for a litigation graphics firm in Westchester, New York.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I designed slot machines for a tiny outfit in Charlotte, NC, for a year. It was moderately interesting, in that there is some amazingly sophisticated graphic and animation work being done for slots and their related displays these days, but the downside is that the gambling industry is not that interesting. So it was fun to do the work, but what you were selling was not very challenging.
In between my magazine illustrating days and animation, I did web design for a few years. One temp job I got was with a pretty major NY ad agency where the entire web staff had walked out the day before, so they were desperate for freelancers to jump in and take up the slack. I worked there for a month and the odd thing was that since everyone had walked out, I never knew for that whole month who exactly I was supposed to report to. I handed in my work to a guy across the hall, but he wasn’t my superior or manager, he was just a guy who was still there.  I’ve always managed to make my living as an artist though. I worked in a framing shop after college, assisted Joe Simon in his home studio back years ago, and did layout and pasteup for a physics journal, “The Physical Review” at Brookhaven National Laboratory.  I spent most of my professional career as a magazine illustrator for pubs like Forbes, Parents, The New Republic, Cruising World, Medical Economics, The NY Daily News, a Consumer Reports magazine for kids called Zillions, and American Express, clients like that. One of my favorites was doing a regular humor feature for Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, called “Mooney’s Modules”. That ran for three years and was the first place the Gravity Poster was seen by a large audience.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Certainly that Asimov’s gig would be at the top of the list. I would submit a bunch of sketches, and I’d be surprised at some of the ideas they signed off on. I wondered sometimes if they actually got the jokes or if they just didn’t want to appear that they didn’t.
I completed an animated music video last year where I was given complete creative control. It was for Shawn Letts, an American musician who lives and works in Singapore. It was a dream job! I was just told, “Call us when it’s done”. I really felt free to explore imagery and effects that I could just play around with, without having to “sell” a client on the concepts. And then of course there’s my graphic novel, “Sister Mary Dracula”, which is currently being shopped around to publishers. It originated as a Flash animation that I did in 2001 and put online. It got accepted as an entry in the San Diego Comicon’s Independent Film Festival in 2004, which motivated me to expand it into a graphic novel that took me four years to complete.  These are all one-man projects, not strictly speaking things that I was “a part of”; I WAS the projects!

How did you become interested in animation?
I’ve always been interested in animation and dabbled as a kid with both clay and cel animation, but Continue reading

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Einar Baldvin

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Einar Baldvin, independent animator. I do both my own projects as well as freelance.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
My father counts ducks and I would assist him when I was younger. It’s all operated from a reportedly haunted research station far up north in Iceland. A very fun place for a child.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?My film ‘Baboon’ it was my first 2-d film (I did cut-outs before) it was fun to make and the the first festival to accept it was Annecy. I met my wife, Jeanette Bonds there. The film went on to play at Ottawa as well which was another amazing experience.  Last year I was fortunate enough to animate on a project executive produced by James Franco ‘The Labyrinth’. He was teaching a class at USC along with John Watson (who produced Backdraft among other things) where they selected some of the brightest students at USC to make eight shorts based on the loose theme of “the unexplained and the unimaginable”. The shorts were to be cut into a feature and I was contacted close to the end to make animation in order to tie it all together. It was a bit crazy since the animation is essentially 2 minutes of hand drawn POV shots because the idea was really to let the audience get lost in a labyrinth. I don’t do any 3-d and I making it in After Effects seemed more trouble than it was worth so I just went ahead and drew everything, it was more than worth it in the end. It was a great project to work on, everyone involved was a pleasure to work with and I even got to record James for the voiceover.
Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I’m from Iceland. I always enjoyed drawing, monsters and animals in particular when I was a kid. I would make illustrated stories and comics so when the time came to go to Continue reading

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JOHN HARDMAN

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What is your name and your current occupation?
JOHN HARDMAN, Director of Development and Production, Saban Brands LLC.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I was a maintenance man for a function hall.  I spent every afternoon cleaning cigarette butts out of urinals and mopping up wedding guests’ vomit.  I worked in a car wash for one summer and had numerous close calls whenever I had to park a car with a stick shift.  I also have the typical Hollywood story of working for a producer who threw the telephone across the room at me when she got mad.  Worst of all, she got mad a lot.
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
So many…. Rugrats, Rocket Power, Jackie Chan Adventures, Xiaolin Showdown, Mr. Men, Power Rangers.
How did you become interested in animation? 

I’ve been a huge fan of animation since I was a kid (no surprise!).  What I found most exciting was Continue reading