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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

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Jobs: Character Designer- Mrs Wordsmith and Animal Students

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Mrs Wordsmith

Title: Character Designer- Mrs Wordsmith and Animal Students
Candidate Search:Location: London, UK or anywhere – remote work acceptable
Candidate Ideally has… Prior experience with Pixar or BlueSky or similar helpful

 

Description
We are creating imaginative and original educational products that are disruptive – as seen through the eyes of a child – from paper to robotics.

These products are woven into the narrative of Mrs Wordsmith who is an eccentric and wild English teacher who runs a dilapidated boarding school for animals who are desperate to learn how to speak English, somewhere in England.

Responsibilities:

§      Work with the founders to develop Mrs. Wordsmith and 10 animal students on our brief. A tight narrative with names and descriptions will be provided.

§  Create covers for the core product and a few settings

§  Illustrate 200 words in a variety of comical poses – also part of the brief.

§  Complete work on schedule.  Timing of 1 month.

§  Check in every second day with the founders and discuss designs.

§      Designs need to be fully rendered in a painterly or almost 3d look and feel.  We can provide examples.

§   There will be the opportunity to join the team to create full 3d animations and the partipate on the development of the full range of products and content.

Basic Qualifications:

§      Must demonstrate proficiency in creating characters in style of films like Madagascar and Rio.

§      Strong character design and construction/mechanical skills

§      Must be proficient with Photoshop, & Illustrator.

§      Strong time-management skills

§      Flexible and likes working as part of an energetic team.

§    Interesting in possibly joining a dynamic start-up down the road and building a team to create world class products

 

Desired Qualifications:

§      BA in Fine Arts or Animation or equivalent work experience highly desired

 

HOW TO APPLY
You MUST submit a portfolio or link in order to be considered for artistic positions to sofia@wonderpl.com
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Adobe’s New App Turns 2-D Selfies Into 3-D Magic

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FastCodesign.com has an article up about a fascinating new tech from Adobe that turns 2d pictures into 3d. It’s cool, but clearly has it’s limits. I can’t imagine the practicality of it above and beyond, “Hey check out how cool this is.

From the site:

To be presented tonight at Adobe MAX Sneaks, the Photoshop maker’s annual peek inside their development labs, 3-D Portraits smartly recognizes faces, eyes, mouths, and hair, and then efficiently turns them into a usable 3-D model. This is actually already possible in Photoshop, but it requires a number of tedious manual steps, and the results can range in quality. Thanks to research by Menglei Chai, a PhD student from Zhejiang University, and a team of Adobe Research scientists, though, they’ve now figured out how to largely automate the process.

You can read the whole article here.

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Joaquin Baldwin

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Sebastian’s Voodoo: 
What is your name and your current occupation? 
I’m Joaquin Baldwin, I work at the Walt Disney Animation Studios as a CG Layout Artist, I’m currently working on the film Wreck-It Ralph that should come out in November of 2012. Here’s some more info on Wreck-It Ralph:
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I cleaned a ceramics lab and worked in the admissions office at my old college (CCAD). I was also a webdesigner for about 6 years, which is not a crazy job, but sometimes you gotta make porn sites 🙂
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of? 
I made 3 short films recently while finishing my studies at UCLA: Sebastian’s Voodoo, Papiroflexia and The Windmill Farmer. They were incredibly fun to make, and getting a chance at going out to film festivals all over the place with them was a unique experience all filmmakers should experience at least once.
How did you become interested in animation?
I was a computer nerd and used to experiment with computer graphics while in high-school. I liked blowing shit up (in the computer, but also in real life making explosives but that’s another story). I learned a lot of technical things this way, but not much on the artistic side. I came to the US to study art and webdesign and decided that I kind of hated it, and doing animation was more fun. It wasn’t until that point that I embraced animation as a way to Continue reading
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Rocky Solotoff

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Rocky Solotoff-Producer.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation? 
Tour Road Manager for a Laser company for Rock Shows. Charter Flight Manager for Celebrities, Flight Attendent for Delta Airlines. Donut Maker.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
American Tail, Land Before Time and Mickey’s Prince and the Pauper and my Daughter.

 

How did you become interested in animation? 
Helped a friend shooting camera for Disney and said “that looks pretty simple”. The Camera Manager said if I could Continue reading