Tag Archives: Adobe After Effects

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Stefano Marrone

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What is your name and your current occupation?
I’m Stefano Marrone, freelance visual developer, animator and motion graphic artist. Currently I am heading to London, after working in Italy and Canada for a while.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I’ve been an event photographer in clubs for 2 years in Milan, while studying for my Bachelor of Arts. Three to four times a week I used to start shooting picture of happy drunk people around 1am and keep going for another three hours. It was kind of fun, I met a lot of interesting, weird people, but the day after at university I always looked like a zombie.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
My last short Flash film, “The Collector”, was a lot of fun during the design stage and I am really happy about how it looks. I love how the idea for the film itself developed from a quick sketch until I found the right design to be animated in Flash. I am also happy to have worked on a short film for amazing director Roy Hayter, “Alice in Wastland – The Flowers”, I was the director and designer for the opening titles sequence. The two people on my little crew where amazing professionals, a pleasure to work with them.

 

How did you become interested in animation?
I’ve been interested in storytelling since I was 7 or 8, I guess. The mechanics of how a story works, and what are the tools to tell it, had been always more fascinating to me that Continue reading

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Ron Doucet

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Ron Doucet, Animation Director.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I harvested fish eggs for a couple summers when I was a teenager. Thousands of fish come in on a water-fed conveyor belt, you grab the females, slice open their bellies, remove the sack of eggs, slap them in a box, and repeat a million times. Not so much crazy… but incredibly boring.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
So far I have a few.  The very frist production I ever directed holds a special place in my heart because we had so much creative freedom, the series was Olliver’s Adventures, a little cartoon that aired on Canadian and Australian television from 2002-2006.  It was a lot of fun to produce, the crew turned out to be a well-oiled machine by the 3rd season, and we were creating our own stories and scenarios and having a blast doing it.  I made an independant short film back in 2005. Me and a few others got together for a few weeks to create it, it was fun and spontaneous, and even though it was brief and made with no budget, it was pure fun.  Another cool one was the MSTRKRFT music video for the track ‘Work On You’ I sort of played the roll of Producer and FX Supervisor for it. Again, the enjoyment came from plenty of creative freedom, from developing a story, designing characters, to animating the whole thing. We were pressed for time (as always), but had lots of laughs creating it. The only direction the client gave us was “Make it feel like Astroboy, transformers and Akira.” — we were in heaven.

How did you become interested in animation? 
My parents say I was drawing since the age of 2. But as far back as I can remember I was always drawing the cartoons that I’d see on TV. I had a chalkboard when I was 8 years old, and I’d draw scenes as Continue reading

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Erica Pitt

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Erica Pitt….2D Flash animator.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I haven’t had too many craaaazy jobs….my first job ever was working in a coffee shop bistro in my home town of Victoria, BC for 3 years. It was there that I saved up the money to go to animation school with. The summer of first year college I worked at a Dog kennel cleaning up dog s*** mostly, and the summer after did renovation work flipping houses. Between 3rd and 4th year though I got to co-direct a music video for a Canadian band called Elliott Brood which was a lot of fun. It turned out OK considering we had about a month and a half to do it in.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Every project I’ve worked on has a special little place in my heart for different reasons. George of the Jungle was the very first show I worked on, and it taught me soooo much not just about animation in flash, but animation in general. Pucca season 2 was really cute and action packed so that was always pretty crazy fun. Seeing how popular My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic got as soon as it started airing was a special treat. We were still working on the episodes as they were coming out, so it was amazing to see how many fans there were and how crazy (in a good way) they were for it. I’ve never worked on anything that popular before. I’ve gotten a couple of marriage proposals from some of the fans who have found my youtube channel so that was a new experience being a bit of a celebrity of sorts. “Roy” a show we animated for Ireland was loads of fun and got me interested in possibly working abroad…which I am currently doing so it was cool that THAT project inspired me to travel and see new places. I never expected that I would get to work on a feature film doing flash animation…but was able to on the Top Cat movie. It was a pretty cool feeling going to the cinema to watch it when it finally came out.

How did you become interested in animation?
I always liked drawing, but I remember discovering the X-Men Animated series on TV one Saturday morning and becoming really obsessed with it. When I found out it was a comic book I started buying every X-Men title there was and started trying to learn how to draw super heroes from them. My friend and I started making Continue reading
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Maor Lavi

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Maor Lavi, I am a freelance animation all-arounder (Anim, 2D, 3D, After Effects compositor, designer)

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Soldier, Agriculture, Construction, Bartending, Pumping fuel, Pizza delivering, Factory worker
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Gruduation short, TV show packaging, self-project in progress

How did you become interested in animation?
Admiring work of the “golden age” of animation, Disney classics, Warner’s Looney Toons, when I was a kid around 7 years old, my mom took me to the movies to see “Who framed Roger Rabbit” and I was fascinated by it;later Continue reading

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Mike Blum

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Mike Blum and I am a director, producer, writer and owner of two boutique production companies, Pipsqueak Films and Blumayan Films. Pipsqueak Films works on animated content of all sorts and Blumayan Films produces live action features.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I waited tables while being a ski bum after college. I couldn’t ski more than 5 feet without falling at the start of the season but was cruising black diamonds by the end. Never did learn to wait tables all that well…And when I was in junior high and high school I worked at this crazy nut, candy, coffee store called The Head Nut. Come to think of it, slinging nuts and candy is a lot like turning the crank in production — head down and scoop away!

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
My favorite projects are the ones I’ve had the biggest hand in seeing through creatively. So, even though I worked on nearly a dozen features with world class artists and technical people while at Disney Feature Animation, none gave me the same satisfaction as working on my first shorts, Oil & Vinegar and The Zit.  And while a lot of my colleagues gave me funny looks when I told them I was leaving Disney to direct a series about a pair of talking testicles, The Adventures of Baxter & McGuire (for Comedy Central), got me nominated for an Emmy and took me to great festivals like Sundance and Annecy. And I worked with the amazing showrunners Michael Weithorn and Nick Bakay.  But my favorite project so far is the one I just completed, Samurai! Daycare. It’s a 10 part, Flash animated web series I did for the new YouTube channel, Shut Up! Cartoons. It’s the first property I sold that made it all the way to series and it was great fun to showrun my own creation.

 

How did you become interested in animation?
Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I’ll answer these 2 questions together…. I was a huge fan of Bugs Bunny growing up. I know, I know I have such unusual tastes. But I really never had any classic artistic skills and grew up so far removed from “the industry” in the Philadelphia ‘burbs, it never occurred to me in at least a conscious way that it could be a career. I did, however, Continue reading

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Lori Hammond

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Hello my name is Lori Hammond and until recently I was the Program Director for Animation at a local Film school. Currently I am an Artist/ an Instructor/ a Consultant/and an Events coordinator for a couple of companies related to Animation & VFX industry.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Before getting into the animation industry I suppose Barista of alcohol, could be “crazy” on certain nights with certain customers. (Laughing) especially since at the time I did not drink.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
My favorite projects are perhaps “Princess and the Frog” working as a Training Specialist on that movie.  At Disney I was able to work with some amazing artists, as a trainer I got to work with Layout, Animation, EFX, Color stylist, etc. it was an amazing time teaching classes for the Disney Academy. I actually got to teach some of the greats such as Glenn Keane on some of the software for the production.  I also enjoyed a small short animation project that was started at Disney and is currently finishing up production called “Mila” by Cinzia Angelini, helping this production connect with some upcoming talent and watching that project develop has been amazing.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
Originally, I am from Illinois and I received my BFA at Northern Illinois University, where my major was Painting. I moved to New York after my undergrad days and attended Pratt Institute where I majored in Digital Arts with a focus on 3D Animation. I loved the fact that as an artist, not only could I develop more work from my original painted vision, but Continue reading