Author Archives: Laura

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Ryan Kramer

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Ryan Kramer, and I’m a storyboard artist/writer currently at Cartoon Network.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I’ve sold diet pills over the phone, I worked at a car wash, I worked in the costuming dept. at Disneyland, and I worked at movie theatre.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
The current show I’m on, “Uncle Grandpa” is my favorite so far. It’s written and drawn by cartoonists!! Also, I really enjoyed my time storyboarding on Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
Born in Glendora, CA and currently residing in Glendora, CA. I wanted to work in animation so I spent a lot of time drawing and making my own cartoons. As the coaches on my high school football team would say, Continue reading

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Ken Turner

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Ken Turner and I’m a filmmaker/illustrator.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Can’t say anything prior was at all that crazy.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I think any of the films/books I’ve personally been able to make during school and after graduating and that I’ve put my own stamp on were always the projects I’m most proud of. I found personal film projects to be the most rewarding as I can hire all my talented friends and collaborate to make something that would otherwise not exist.

 

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I’m from Mississauga, Ontario and currently residing in Toronto, Ontario. I’ve been drawing as long as I can remember and was Continue reading

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Andy Sykes

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Andy Sykes. I go by the name ‘Hexjibber’ onlline. I work as a part time lecturer at The University of Leeds, where I teach Animation and Digital Storytelling. I also work as a freelance commercial illustrator and animator.
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I’ve worked as a visiting artist in schools. Working with kids is rewarding, but very frenetic and tiring. I’m lucky that most of my jobs have been related to art in one way or another.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I created 3 animated films with funding from Screen Yorkshire, called ‘Special Glue and Other Stories’. One of the films, ‘Stupid Table’ won the award for Best Short at Bradford Animation Festival in 2009. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbkLwF8O7Jw, I have self-published 3 illustrated books. The first ‘The Hexjibber Colouring and Activity Book’, is a subversive activity book for adults. I created some bizarre adverts for it here: http://www.hexjibber.com/colouring-book/.’The Hexjibber Anti Revision Book’ is a creative procrastination book. ‘Hexjibber Hobbies Vol.1’, is a compilation of the first year of my illustrated blog http://hexjibberhobbies.blogspot.co.uk. I am currently working on Vol.2, which is a complete story, centring around my recent battle with insomnia. I enjoyed creating large scale interactive art projects for Light Night in Leeds. It is an art festival that takes place on the first Friday of October, involving installations, performance and projections. It is great get so many people involved in creating illustration and animation. You can see some video of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL2xAmTbg34, I created the ident for the Bradford Animation Festival in 2010, with illustrations from Tom Wooley. It is Jekyll and Hyde meets 90s anime. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wd0NIOuvbc

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I am from Leeds, which is in the north of England, in the UK. Think Winterfell in Game of Thrones. It’s a bit like that:) I studied Interactive Arts in Manchester (which is also in England), where I worked mainly in animation. I taught myself Flash and started creating short animated films. It took me a long time after graduating before I started to make a living from it. I did some work for free for experience anywhere that I could find it. I created a lot of visuals for nightclubs and gradually started getting bits of paid work. Shortly after graduating, circa 2004, I applied for some production funding from NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) to make some ‘Pocket Shorts’. These were short films designed for mobile phones. These films started to get shown at festivals, which helped raise my profile a bit. Then I got some production funding from Screen Yorkshire to make ‘Special Glue and Other Stories’ in 2008. This did quite well at festivals and won an award. It has been a long drawn out process.

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Alen Esmaelian

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Alen Esmaelian and I work as a Background, Prop, and Character designer at Rough Draft Studios.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve been working in this industry for 6 years and prior to that, I used work for Pizza Hut as a customer service representative (fancy way of saying that I used to take customer orders over the phone).

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Without a doubt, my proudest moment was working on Futurama alongside the very talented crew at Rough Draft Studios. I was particularly proud to see my finished designs for Bender’s robot monastery on episode nine of this current season.

 

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I was born in Tehran, Iran but I’ve lived in the Los Angeles area (San Fernando Valley) since I was two. I started to exhibit a love for animation and design at the tender age of 5, when I used to Continue reading

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Christian De Vita

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Christian De Vita and currently I work for TeamTo in Paris as storyboard supervisor of an 11 minuteX52 episode 3D animation comedy series.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Not many crazy jobs before animation to be honest. I went straight from college into animation. As a student I worked as a waiter back in Italy for a while to save a little money for when I moved to the UK. But it wasn’t a crazy restaurant and I definitely wasn’t a crazy waiter.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
The two main films I worked on in the past 4 years: Fantastic Mr Fox, where I was Lead Story Artist, and recently Frankenweenie, as I had always been a fan of Tim’s work.

How did you become interested in animation?
I originally wanted to be a comic book artist. I studied animation in Rome at the Roberto Rossellini institute for Film and Television as I’d read that Continue reading

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Keiko Murayama

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What is your name and your current occupation? 
My name is Keiko Murayama, my current occupation is a BG painter at Nickelodeon Animation Studios.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation? 
I used to work at a Motion Studio as a vis dev artist for TV commercials. One fun project I had there was for a sugar company where I had to design a set and props made only of sweet stuff, and then they actually had to build that.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of? 
I got to work on a couple pages for the Big Golden Book for Wreck-It-Ralph. A lot of my friends from school also worked on it I’d never seen my work as a published book form, so when I saw the actual product, I was very proud.

How did you become interested in animation? 
I grew up watching anime stuff, which I love, but it’s not my passion. Then, I came to the U.S after high school and saw Continue reading