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Paul Thompson

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Paul Thompson and I’m a motion graphics artist.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Can’t say I had any jobs you would term as crazy, I was programming before motion graphics and that got a bit boring.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I quite enjoy doing assembly instruction videos and as far as I can find on the web it seems I have done more than anyone in the world. I’m quite proud of the fact that this is obviously the future and I was one of the first to be involved in this kind of thing.

 

How did you become interested in animation?
Since I was a child watching cartoons, especially Spiderman! I got a present for Christmas when I was a child which was a Disney projector that you held to your eye. You turned a handle and it Continue reading
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Luis María Benítez

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What is your name and your current occupation? 
My name is Luis María Benítez and currently I work as a background artist and as a freelance illustrator.
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I had the misfortune of working at a call center. I had moved to another city and I didn’t know how to get started. A real nightmare.
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of? 
I’m relatively new in the business so I wouldn’t be able to say that yet.
Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business? 
I was born in Lobos, Argentina. I got into the animation business after I moved to Buenos Aires, the capital where after a while I recovered my dream of studying animation so I Continue reading
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Chris Cookson

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What is your name and your current occupation?
I’m Chris Cookson and I am currently a freelance animator, I work in Flash mostly but sometimes I get some AfterEffects and Photoshop work.  I’ve been lucky enough where everything I’ve done before animation has been some kind of visual based work. The first job I did out of high school was making animated assets for the LED sign demo room at Trans-Lux (yes, that Trans-Lux of the 1959 Felix the Cat cartoon). It was a uniquely fun experience, they had this old LaserDisc system that would trigger all kinds of signs to light up in cue to music and audio, the audio was very much a product of the ’80s but they wanted me to modernize the visuals and make some colorful stuff for their new centerpiece display.  Apart from that, I’ve done a good amount of web design work in my formative years. One of my clients was a Cuban percussionist who was really into anime and kung-fu movies. He even offered to pay me for making his site with a samurai sword, which to 15-year-old me, was the coolest thing ever. Though, if I were to ever come home with a samurai sword, my parents would probably kill me, likely with that very same samurai sword.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
In terms of cool projects, a psychedelic TV ad for Linda McCartney’s line of frozen vegan foods has been really satisfying. What I loved was the ad had a different style than the usual aesthetic I get but had a lot of understated weirdness and quite a few distinct shots to work on. I got to meet Paul McCartney’s son-in-law and Rick Astley’s wife while on the project too which made me geek out pretty hard. A couple of months after I finished work on the spot, I started to see posts about it show up on sites like Motionographer, The Huffington Post and was linked by a lot of the sites I follow on Twitter, which made me feel real warm and fuzzy on the inside.  I’m also really proud of a lot of the smaller commercial projects I have worked on at Shoulderhill Creative. For those, it’s great to work with a couple of my classmates from art school and since it’s not a part of a giant team, I feel a lot more creative ownership over what I’m making. It’s absolutely wonderful to have a chance to work more within my own style and have more room to experiment with the colors and see what kind of little visual jokes I can put in to the advertisement.  Other projects like William Caballero’s documentary short film “How You Doin’ Boy? Voicemails from Gran’pa” were really great to be a part of. For that, he wanted me to make a squiggly text treatment based off of his grandfather’s handwriting to go up on screen in sync with actual answering machine messages left from his grandfather. Having the freedom to design the word treatment, as well as play around with text sizes was really fulfilling, the tone of some of the messages allowed me to really go crazy in some spots too, pushing the graphic element of it, trying to get it to match his grandfather’s own personal tone.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I’m from Stamford, CT and I’ve always wanted to either be a cartoonist or animator for pretty much my entire life. I taught myself how to use Flash when I was 12-years-old and would constantly look for an excuse to use it any chance I had, whether it be for making buttons or logos on the aforementioned web design projects I got or making short films whenever the opportunity arose. After making more and more stuff, over the years, my skills started to Continue reading

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Zeke Ares

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What is your name and your current occupation?
I am Zeke Ares stop motion animator/director and T/A of Black Box Building animation studio here in Stoke on Trent UK.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation? 
Well I was a chef for 9 years of my career, which was pretty crazy. I know your thinking “what?” but Chefs are crazy! I have ended up in knife fights working in kitchens before, drunk lock-ins till silly o’clock and even naked frolicking. Like I said chefs are crazy, but that’s what working stupid amount of hours for bad pay in very hot circumstances does to you, Fun times but definitely crazy.

What are some of your favourite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I believe this is one question I love to answer and the answer is always the same, War of the Worlds SURGE. A trailer based animation, a short adaption of the novel by great British author H.G Wells.  I have always been a little bit obsessed when it comes to War of the Worlds. It’s something I have always dreamed of doing. So when my chance came along to do a film at university I jumped at the opportunity to create a stop motion version just like the late and great Ray Harryhausen in 1949.
So with an amazing team behind me (now known as the SURGE crew) we set out to create this intense animation, it became more of a tripod obsession in the end. Just animating tripods for weeks. One very intense interesting shot we did was after a few weeks of animating on the church set we had to destroy it But I had so much fun on this film I even had the symbol of the animation tattooed on my arm now everyday can I smile when I look at it.

 

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I am from the very green city of Milton Keynes in the UK, I have always wanted to be an animator and after 9 years of being a chef I decided to chase my dreams and re-join education for 5 years to gain my BA HONS in stop motion animation & puppet making. From here I Continue reading

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Justin Hall

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Justin Hall / Animator
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
It was actually between animation jobs, but I spent a while as a bike courier (that’s on a bicycle, not a motorbike!). It’s an awesome job – outdoors, keeps you fit, get to fight with buses – just not really a career.
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
With only a few exceptions, all my projects have been great and well received by the final audiences. Tiny Planets (Sesame Workshops) and OOglies (BBC) were great fun to work on and were loved by the kids (and college students) that saw them. Obviously getting the Oscar nomination for The Illusionist this year was nice. But the best project I have ever been involved with Continue reading

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Tony White

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What is your name and your current occupation?

My name is Tony White and I wear many hats.  My principal full-time job is as animation instructor at the new “AIE-Seattle” school.  At the same time, I and a number of top-drawer animation colleagues are developing several traditional hand-drawn movie projects through my virtual studio – “Drawassic Age”. Our most current project is “BAD PENGUIN”, an animated teaser for a full-length independent movie for adults. I also write. My latest book (and I believe my best book) is being published in September 2011… “Animator’s Notebook”.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I came straight into animation from art school in London. I worked for Fords once as an office paper-pusher, so I could support myself through college. It wasn’t crazy but it was sooooooo boring!

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Many. I did the opening title sequence for “The Pink Panther Strikes Again” movie for director Blake Edwards and the Richard Williams studio towards the beginning of my career. I won a British Academy Award for my short biopic, “HOKUSAI ~ An Animated Sketchbook”. I’m proud of many of the 200+ TV commercials I have made too.

 

How did you become interested in animation?
I stumbled into it by accident as I couldn’t get a job in the area I most wanted to work – illustration. However, Continue reading