What is your name and your current occupation?
Jason Fittipaldi – Animator
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Putting letters on those signs that fly behind planes. You would have to construct the sign banners (kind of like putting letters on a movie theater marquee) in this hot, buggy field. Then, you would set it up on this goal post construct with a tight rope across the top. The plane would fly low with a big hook hanging from the bottom and (most times) snag the tight rope at the top and take off with the new sign. You would have to break down the one it just dropped and set up another for the next round. We had an ongoing wager with the company next to us in this makeshift airfield that any signs that went up backwards, upside down, or wrong and you had to buy the other team a case of beer.  Right before going into animation full time, I wore every hat possible at a small construction company that sold prefabricated buildings worldwide. Everything from Marketing and Sales to IT and Conceptual AutoCad project drawings.  What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?  I really enjoyed the creature work we did on Underworld: Awakening. We got to work very closely with the directors on that project and had a lot of creative freedom for some of the sequences (which is not always the case).  Thor was one of my first professional projects, so that definitely sits pretty high on the memories list as well. Animating some of the Destroyer shots on that show was a blast.  Right after that, we moved onto X-Men: First Class, but we didn’t get to do any character or creature work on it (other than digital doubles for vfx). We did animate a lot of the super power fx for Havok, Banshee, and  Darwin. X-Men was one of my favorite comics growing up so the younger version of myself was hitting me with all kinds of high-fives from the past.
Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I grew up mostly in Southern New Jersey and have spent a lot of time in Florida as well. When I was younger (about ages 4-5), my grandmother had a couple of flipbooks of things like ballroom dancers that I found. They were incredibly fascinating to me and I started to make my own flipbooks on sticky note pads. Every single one of Continue reading
