Tag Archives: Adobe Flash

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Tony Craig

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What is your name?
Tony Craig
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
“The animation project I’m most proud of is the DVD video Bobs Gannaway, Jess Winfield and I did to wrap up the Lilo and Stitch tv series.  I know that it is relatively unknown, and I won’t get into the reasons for why I think the release of it was handled inappropriately, but the name of it is “”Leroy and Stitch””.  The reason I am proudest of it has to do with how it all turned out.  Usually, as a director, you have in your head what you think it should look like, and then when your show comes back from being animated overseas, it is not even close.  Then you get used to what you do have, and start molding it into the final show.  This project was the closest to what I had in my head.  I know that it is not feature quality, but when you consider the time and the budget we were given to do it (1/4 the time the Disneytoons folks got for Stitch has a glitch, and probably 1/8 or less of what they spent), well, I’m proud of what we pulled off.
The storyline is good too.  Bobs and Jess did a great job with the script and the transitions of emotion from scene to scene, action sequence to quiet sequence, musical parts, score…all of it came together.
House of Mouse was another fun one, because we were able to utilize any character from the history of Disney animation.  We were pulling the most obscure characters from old Silly Symphony cartoons and sticking them in the show, just for fun.
A personal project that I enjoyed doing was photographing old country and general stores across the state of North Carolina and compiling them into a book, “”Country Stores in North Carolina”.
How did you become interested in animation?
“I remember an evening at my grandparents’ house with my parents. I was still in a high chair, and I know this memory wasn’t based on photos or anything like that.  We went to see Disney’s “Pinocchio” that evening.  I fell asleep through most of it, but what I saw must have made an impression, or clicked in at that developmental stage of my infant mind. There was a copy of Christopher Finch’s book, “The Art of Walt Disney” in the reference section of our library.  Every family trip to the library, I would be at the end of that row, poring over the artwork.  I worked in the yard, saved my nickels, dimes, and quarters, until I had the $35 to buy my very own copy of that book, and I copied the pictures out of it regularly.
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Career Spotlight: “What I Do as a 2D Animator”

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu5TE6xAnMg

Lifehacker has an interesting article by Andy Orin who interviews Sketch MacQuinor, lead animator behind Adult Swim’s Squidbillies.

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Sumit Kumar

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNavMz2OgWQ&feature=youtu.be
What is your name and your current occupation?
My Name is Sumit Kumar and i am the 2D Animator/Illustrator / Owner of SKG Animation India Team

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I have worked with Press as a cartoonist and i worked in print media before entering in animation field.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
My Superboy Animation because that is made by me only without any help or support. and i am making another animation with very high quality individually.

How did you become interested in animation?
I have interest in animation since when i was child and from my childhood my dream was to Continue reading

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Corey McDaniel

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Corey McDaniel – Lead Animator at Titmouse in Vancouver.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I used to work at a seafood restaurant on the weekends around my senior year in high school. Because of this, I do not eat seafood any more. I also interned at a training facility for a Honda manufacturing plant while taking some college classes. Because of this, I do not eat Hondas any more.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I got to work on an original series called Gundarr with my buddy Ted Wilson for a couple years, funded by Mondo Media. It was a total blast. We basically got paid to write, animate & voice whatever we wanted. I’m also super excited to be animating on Breadwinners for Titmouse. I love cartoons that aren’t ashamed of the fact that they’re cartoons, & Breadwinners definitely fits that mold. I’m currently working with two talented British chaps on a game I came up with called Cloudface. Together we form the unstoppable team FUTUREBEARD. Making a game is hard work, but it’s been very eye opening and super fun!

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
My dad was in the ARMY, so I grew up Texas, Colorado, Germany & Alabama. I went to JSU in Alabama for 4 years & got out of there with a BFA in Graphic Design, but I didn’t want to live in Alabama, so I started hunting around for animation schools. My first try was Cal-Arts, but Continue reading

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Ray Alma

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Ray Alma.  I currently work full time doing storyboards and animatics at Larry Schwartz and His Band (formally Animation Collective)  I also freelance as an illustrator for magazines and do freelance storyboarding for advertising.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I spent 2 weeks working as a staff artist at World Wrestling Entertainment in Stamford, CT. I had to draw wrestlers for comic books and lunchboxes, that kind of stuff. They let me go because they didn’t think I drew leg muscles well enough.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I was a fairly regular freelance artist contributor to Mad magazine from 1996 to about 2003. Mad magazine inspired me to become a cartoonist so being able to become one of the “Usual Gang of Idiots” was a life long dream.

 

How did you become interested in animation?
I always loved animation, and when illustration work started to Continue reading

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Learning Animation 2016

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2000px-Animation_disc.svgWant to learn how to be an animator? In 2016 it’s not as hard as it once was. Years ago, you needed pencils, xerox machines, white out, pencil sharperers, X-Acto blades, tape, animation cels, animation paper, cel paint oh yes and an Oxberry camera! Never mind that there were not many animation school options to choose from. Fear not however, as the digital age is here to help you and thousands of tutorials are available allowing you to learn quite a bit about animation and the various techniques out there. there are also many digital options open to the animator in 2016 allowing you to cast away all those costly supplies once needed.

Schools
In the US there are many solid animations schools to choose from but in my opinion the best of them is Cal Arts here in Los Angeles mostly for the connections it has to the studios. Pixar, Disney and DreamWorks all harvest students from there yearly. There are many others around the country as well such as The School of Visual Arts in New York City and Full Sail in Florida. In Paris, Goeblins seems to produce some fantastic animators and I drool over the shorts their students make yearly. I personally went to a small school called the Joe Kubert School located in New Jersey which is also a good solid place to learn. A decent list of animation schools can be found on AWN and while it can be daunting because there’s so much, it’s a good place to start. I believe most of art school is what you choose to put into it and the plain old ‘pencil mileage’ that you put into your craft anyway so the school does’t matter as much to a focused student.

But what if you can’t relocate or don’t have money to go to a school? There are still options open to you to pursue. One is Animation Mentor.com which will allow you to learn remotely and is run by well respected animators and artists. If you can’t afford that, I would suggest simply studying animation frame by frame and copying what you see. While Youtube doesn’t do frame by frame you can easily download stuff and watch it with Quicktime. DVDs work as well.

Traditional Animation
Of course the old school way of tradition paper and pencil is still a viable way to learn but it’s getting harder and harder to finds supplies. Animation paper and peg bars can be purchased at Cartoon Color and other places around the web and you can film your scenes frame by frame but you’ll still need a computer to digitally put them together. An excellent free option is Monkey Jam which turns your webcam into a pencil test system. You could also use as digital camera and film your scene frame by frame but that’s not the best approach. Honestly most studios expect you to understand how to animate digitally so you’re going to have to learn this eventually.

Hardware
Most gaming PCs are powerful enough to produce animation both 2D and 3d, and even iMacs and Mac Books can do it. Most studios use Wacom Cintiqs to draw with but they’re mega expensive and not for everyone. There are also cheaper knockoffs of Cintiqs such as Yiyinova, Bosto Kingtee and X-Pen but you get what you pay for and they are not as good as Wacom’s flagship offering.Fortunately there are some cheap options out there to help you. Many studios use Pen tablets such as Wacom’s Intuos line which allow you to draw on a pad and look at your monitor. They’re not for everyone and I’ve never been able to effectively use one well but many people do amazing things with them. Another cheap option is purchasing a Motion Computing LE 1700 for a few hundred bucks and installing Sketchbook Pro which has a timeline that you can animate with.

Software
Software-wise, there are a number of free options out there such as Plastic Animation Paper and Pencil. If you have deep pockets, you can’t go wrong with Toon Boom Harmony which is used by Disney, Starburns Industries, Bentobox and many other studios to produce 2d animation. Toon Boom even offers a subscription so you can pay as you go. Finally you can also subscribe to Adobe Animate and while it’s not the greatest to draw with, there are many studios currently using the software to produce network TV such as Titmouse and Renegade Animation. Globally there is Mukpuddy, and Boulder Media.

If you’re into 3d animation it’s hard to go on the cheap but Autodesk now offers subscriptions for it’s Maya, and 3D Studio Max softwares so you can sign up with them and pay monthly. In contrast Blender is a solid 3d animation program and it’s free but most studios use the Autodesk software so you’re eventually going to have to learn their interfaces somehow.

All in all there are many options open to an artist seeking to learn animation in 2016 and so you have less and less excuses to not pursue your dreams, so stop reading this and get out there! (and don’t forget to come back and do an interview for us once you’re established!)