What is your name and your current occupation?
John Kenn Mortensen,artist,writer,director.
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I worked in a boat repair-shop when I was 14.
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
not to sound like a dick, but my own projects has been the most interesting projects and the ones im most proud of
How did you become interested in animation?
from being a kid… Continue reading
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
The most crazy job I ever had was purifying onions in a snack bar near my College. I got there accidentally and it was only a 4-days job . After that, I promised myself to work solely in Art, no more experiments). Â I also worked as a Scenery Artist just after my graduation. Actually, my major is “Theatrical Scenery painting”, so I worked in the specialty. It was a very interesting job, but I understood that I need something else.
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
It was the first time when I meet with Traditional Animation. I took part in the feature movie “Dobrynya Nikitich i Zmey Gorynychâ€. This is a story about characters of Traditional Russian folklore. It was a great job and a wonderful time! I made cel-Animation, met great people. I remember that moment when I saw my name in the movie’s titles, I was so excited and proud of myself.
How did you become interested in animation?
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be an Artist, and I always Continue reading
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Any work I have done since college has been related to my art, I have put my art on some crazy products though – Toliet seats, 3d Tshirts, door knobs, Cows (Cow Parade). You can see a little history of my work on my blog http://www.carladaly.blogspot.ie/
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I have illustrated some great kids books and one of my favorite was by a BAFTA winning author, Roy Apps called THe Twitches. It was featured on the BBC in Jackanory. Another great project I am proud to be part of is my online business selling my own designs for decorating kids rooms and nurseries http://www.carladaly.com, I started it on a very low budget and now I sell to countries all over the world.
How did you become interested in animation?
When I was growing up watching great animation, my favorites were Dastardly and Muttley, Top Cat, Pink Panter, Danger Mouse and many more. I loved children’s artists such as Richard Scarry, Maurice Sendak, Dr Zeus, I just love art for kids! So when I started creating my own art I had ideas for Continue reading
I don’t know about you but I’m always interested to see other artist’s work spaces. Well Kokatu has compiled a whole slew of Japanese artist’s workspaces> Most seem to be manga setups but there’s a few animators in there as well.
For well over a year, professional and amateur artists alike have been uploading photos of their workstations under the tag #çµµæãã•ã‚“ã®ä½œæ¥ç’°å¢ƒãŒè¦‹ãŸã„ (“I want to see artists’ work environments.â€) Amateurs and professionals alike have been uploading images, offering a fascinating peek at the different spaces in which people draw. Some work in an analog way, while others work digitally. The workspaces ran from chic to comfy, and from clean to dirty.
Anyway, check it out via the link below.
http://kotaku.com/japanese-artists-show-off-their-workspaces-1762345155
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Head of engineering and Mechanics at Tenpin Bowling (not quite crazy but a far stretch from animating).
What are some of your favourite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I’m from a fine art background, so some of my favourite work is actually children’s illustration, although one of my favourite projects so far was working on a music video for the band OBEY: it was just complete artistic license. The more creative the project the better; it doesn’t have to be big, just interesting.
Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I’m originally from Staffordshire (the creative county) in the UK, though I now Continue reading
So let’s say you’ve decided to become an artist, or you came up old school and have yet to traverse across the digital bridge to the 21st Century. Of course there are devices that work well such as the Wacom Cintiq, The Surface Pro, The Wacom Companion and the Lenovo Helix, but all of these are expensive as hell, and you might wonder what you can do to keep the hard earned cash in your pocket. Fear not animators and artists, Animation Insider’s got your back for cheap alternatives! One look at the items necessary to be a professional digital artist these days can make you think twice about continuing in your endeavor. In order to buy all the essentials like a Wacom Cintiq, Storyboard Pro, Adobe Suite, Autodesk Maya you’d almost have to sell a kidney to have the cash to shell out for these fine items.
Or do you?
Hardware
For digital drawing hardware there are many cheaper alternatives out there to the industry standard; the Wacom Cintiq and while honestly none of them are as high quality as a Cintiq, if you’ve never used one to begin with you’re unlikely to notice a difference.
The Yiyinova MVP22UÂ is a capable Cintiq replacement and about half the price but for now that’s the only alternative to a desktop Cintiq alternative I can recommend and even that has the caveat of shipping from China. To be fair though if a Cintiq breaks you’ll have to ship it to Germany so it’s a fair enough tradeoff.
Luckily there are other smaller devices you can buy as well that work decently enough.
The Asus EP121 tablet PC is a decent tablet that even has a touchscreen. No it’s NOT an iPad but honestly I’ve found those to be crappy at best while trying to produce professional art, and they won’t run professional programs like Storyboard Pro, or the Adobe Suite. Besides I find it hard to support a company that will not listen to the artists out there by purposely excluding a stylus option for the iPad despite a clear market for it.
For the record a much better alternative for artists is the Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2, which while it will not run the above mentioned applications either it DOES come with a stylus and that alone makes me think it’s worth it. We reviewed it last year if you want to take a look.
The Asus EP 121 will run all the standard applications artists use today in a professional environment and do it well. Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, and Premiere all run handily on the Ep121. It will even handle Maya, 3D Studio Max, Mudbox and Motion Builder and sometimes you can even find it for less than $300 bucks. Right now the cheapest I’ve found the 64 gb configuration for is $550 (which you’ll need to install all that software) but still with a Cintiq costing $2000 you’re getting a good deal. It will even support an external monitor too boot.  It comes with a wireless bluetooth keyboard as well.
I happen to be selling one of these right now if you’re in the market so give me a shout if you’re interested.
The old standby though has to be the Motion Computing’s Motion series, in the form of the LE1600 and the LE1700 both of which run Sketchbook Pro like champ and if the studio is asking you to use Photoshop, it natively handles .psd files perfectly. The LE1600 is the cheaper of the two and for that you’ll sacrifice a bit of computing power but it still will run decently for the price. You can get a Motion Computing LE1600 at Gainsaver for $107 bucks! Not bad huh? It will even do light Maya chores, which for $100 is pretty damn spiffy in my book!
The more powerful device is the LE1700 though and for the extra price you can get a much more powerful processor. Granted it will NOT run Storyboard Pro, but it WILL run Flash, Photoshop and Sketchbook Pro. You can get a LE1700 cheaply at Gainsaver for about $125 bucks but if you do, I would suggest you change the processor configuration to the Intel 1.5 ghz Core 2 Duo and have them install Windows 7 on there for you. I would also bump up the hard drive to 80gb. This will only set you back $374 bucks but you can ‘probably’ get away with the default configuration if you just use Sketchbook Pro. Also this handy lil’ device WILL run Maya which is pretty cool but you won’t be able to have dozens of characters and huge backgrounds in one scene. It’s great for modeling. animating and rigging though. It’s not going to run any serious games or anything processor heavy but you can easily draw and animate with it.
Also, with Sketchbook Pro’s latest addition of the Flipbook 2d animation timeline, you can now animate in 2D for a VERY low startup price using both of these devices.
Software
For software, of course you can always buy used software on eBay as well, but quite often that’s just pirated software packaged to look legit and when you get your disks delivered sometime programs won’t register so I’d stay away from that.
There are alternatives as well and so you don’t really have to go to your friendly neighborhood software pirate to get decent software. Most don’t know this, but there are many academic sites that offer the ability to buy cheaper software legally. All you need is a scan of a student’s report card (and if you’re taking classes ANYwhere you qualify) which you’ll upload and they’ll create an account for you which will allow you buy all SORTS of discounted software.
The best I’ve found is called http://www.journeyed.com/ but there are others and they all offer around the same discounts.
Watch for our Artist’s Guide to Tablets 2014 to get advice on everything you could want for an artist coming next month.
