Tag Archives: Sketchbook Pro

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Michael Jantze

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Michael Jantze, owner of Jantze Studios and professor at SCAD. Prior jobs include: Newspaper journalist. Syndicated cartoonist. Visual Effects Art Director at ILM.
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Co-directed Joe Murray’s “Frog in a Suit” and directed the animation for a dream sequence in Lawrence Kasdan’s 2012 feature “Darling Companion”.

How did you become interested in animation?
I was born. I was interested in animation.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
Born in New York, grew up in Illinois, I’ve been in California on and off since 1981 (film school at Cal State Northridge). I got out of college, applied to Disney the week “Black Cauldron” came out. So I went into documentary filmmaking the following week. That lead to art directing, that led to Continue reading

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Jerry Fuchs

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What is your name and your current occupation? 
My name is Jerry Fuchs, and I am a cartoonist who animates. I am self employed at Fooksie, LLC. I create cartoons, comics,illustrations, and animations,(both Flash and Traditional).
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Well, I am 48, so I have had the opportunity to:  Worked in high school as a janitor, and in the school’s kitchen, in the summers I drove a dump truck and laid cement, fixed pot holes, pulled dead sheep out of settling ponds, (don’t ask), and did a lot of painting.  While attending the Joe Kubert School I worked in a bodega in Dover, being part grocer, part deli-man, and part bouncer.  I have worked in the optical field, selling eyeglasses and doing contact lens trainings. I have also taught karate classes.

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What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of? 
While working at Stone Mountain Productions as the Art Director I was very proud of the laser modules we created that were shown in Dorney Park, Cedar Point, and the State Fair of Texas, as well as Stone Mountain Park in Georgia.  In 2009, my first foray into the Independent Film Festival circuit, “Loser Pays, Winner Stays “, came in second in its division in the DRAGON*CON Independent Film Festival.

 

How did you become interested in animation? 
I have always loved cartoons and comics. Growing up there was an unwritten rule in the house, if there was anything animated during primetime, I had control of the set. My Saturday mornings were filled with Continue reading

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Ivan Pinzon

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Ivan Pinzon, Principal Engineer, SketchBook Dev Lead.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I worked for Imaginova Corp, developing an Astronomy App called “Starry Night”.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
My current project, SketchBook for iOS and for desktop and Starry Night
Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I was born in Bogota, Colombia and 14 years ago I moved to Canada. I got involved with the digital artist world when I joined Autodesk to work in SketchBook.

 

What’s a typical day like for you with regards to your job?
It’s a combination of different things: code, debug, investigate and learn, plan and schedule future releases and a bit of customer support.
What part of your job do you like best? Why?
I really like to investigate and play with new concepts and ideas, try to find something that is going to be useful for our users.I also enjoy optimizing code. Faster is better.

What part of your job do you like least? Why?
Finding / reproducing bugs that caused our users to lose work. It’s frustrating to get these complains and more frustrating sometimes to not be able to reproduce these issues.

What kind of technology do you work with on a daily basis, how has technology changed in the last few years in your field and how has that impacted you in your job?
My main development machine is a Mac and developing for iOS requires to have some iPads, iPhones and iPods. It’s incredible how technology has evolved. The latest iPhone/iPad are more powerful than the computer I had a few years ago. This has allowed us to push for unbelievable features for a mobile device. Something that a few years ago was just crazy to even imagine. The current trend were mobile is getting closer to desktop is very interesting. Seems that these 2 will eventually merge.

What is the most difficult part for you about being in the business?
Keeping up-to-date with all the technology changes and being able to take advantage of them in a short period of time. It’s both challenging but at the same time motivating.

If you could change the way the business works and is run how would you do it?
I would like to spend more time investigating to find new innovative tools. But, work has to be done so finding a good balance is never easy.
In your travels, have you had any brushes with animation greatness?
I’ve had the chance to watch and listen to a few amazing guys, from sketching artists to animation professionals from studios like Pixar and Marvel. Different techniques and tools.  This has given me a chance to understand what artists need and with this I try to find a fun, simple and effective way to expose this in our software.

Describe a tough situation you had in life.
Leaving my family and my past in my home country and starting from scratch again in Canada while keeping my wife and kids afloat
Any side projects you’re working on that you’d like to share details of?
All I can say is that I’m working in some interesting technologies/features that I hope eventually are going to see the light of day.
Any unusual talents or hobbies like tying a cherry stem with your tongue or metallurgy?
I love airplanes. I have a private pilot license although I haven’t flown in a few years and I like to build and fly aerobatics model airplanes.  I’m lucky to have my son Nicolas as my partner and we compete in Canada and the US.  I also like to play the piano.

Is there any advice you can give for an aspiring animation student or artist trying to break into the business?Although I’m not an artist, I’ve had contact with many that have started from zero and have been persistent enough to develop a clear style and technique that differentiates them from the rest, finally becoming successful and recognized. Take advantage from the social networks: Deviant Art, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, …

 

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Big Jim Miller

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Big Jim Miller – Storyboard Supervisor on ‘My Little Pony’ currently airing on the Hub network in the US, and Treehouse in Canada.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I haven’t had any real ‘crazy’ jobs, but I worked in retail, made signs and awnings, and one summer, painting gas meters.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I haven’t worked on too many different projects, but I am proud of the board work I did on ‘Ed, Edd n’ Eddy.’ I learned so much more on the job than I did in film school, and it really helped to define me as an artist.

How did you become interested in animation?
I was a big fan of all the Warner Bros and MGM shorts that were repackaged for Saturday mornings when I was a kid. The humour and style of storytelling definitely had an influence on me. Those cartoons led to all the toy brand series of the 80’s which led to buying the comics of those series, then buying all sorts of comics! It was my love of comic books that Continue reading

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Tad Stones

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Tad Stones and what I do pretty much depends on the hour of the day. Currently I’m a storyboard artist at Bento Box Entertainment. I just finished an episode of the new Fox series, ALLEN GREGORY, and will soon be returning to board on the second season of the wonderful BOB’S BURGERS.
However, I’m also in written development on a new series for Disney Junior. I’m past the written pitch and am waiting for word on which of my premises will move into outline so you can call me a writer. The series is based on a Disney property and if it makes it into production I’ll be the Executive Producer.
But catch me between drafts and I’m finishing the board on my own pilot for Cartoon Network. Hope to move it into animatic soon. That will give me the triple crown of EP, Story Editor and Creator.
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I started three days after college graduation so I hadn’t had many jobs. I was a scooper then an unofficial assistant manager at a Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors. I was there during the moon landing (with instructions to pull Lunar Cheesecake if anything went wrong at Tranquility Base). For two summers in college I was a camp counselor for WoodCraft Rangers at Lake Arrowhead. Then, for the summer of my Junior year, the last year before “real life”, I worked eight hours a day trying to sell gag cartoons to magazines. The closest I got was that the Saturday Evening Post held one for further consideration. The brainstorming I did that summer paid off in spades when I moved into story at Disney Feature Animation.
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I’ll say that my favorites were DARKWING DUCK and HELLBOY ANIMATED for completely different reasons. With Darkwing I was able to chase the funny more and play with all the comic book tropes I loved. With Hellboy I was trying to create true suspense. Mike Mignola and I wrote a third picture which would easily be the best of what we did. That’s definitely a project I’d like to return to.

How did you become interested in animation?
I always loved it. I remember an animation exhibit at Disneyland and bought Bob Thomas’s book, THE ART OF ANIMATION. My dad had wanted to be a cartoonist but didn’t pursue it after graduating. He did, however, Continue reading

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Alisa Harris

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Alisa Harris and I’m a freelance character designer and traditional Flash animator in New York City.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
One summer during college, I painted carousel horses in Canarsie, Brooklyn. It was pretty awesome.  Some of the carousels I worked on are at the Willow Grove Mall in PA, Bryant Park in NYC and overseas.  When I first graduated from art school, the animation industry had tanked.  I ended up doing data entry for two years at an insurance company specializing in mental health and substance abuse.  I like to joke that it prepared me for working in the animation industry.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
One of my favorite projects was my first lead design position at Flickerlab in NYC.  It was a web series for Ritz/Nabisco on how to have cheap family fun in the summer.  It was the first commercial project that I designed characters and props in my own style.  There was a lot of freedom in designing the families and I enjoyed creating a more diverse cast.  Because it was a small studio, I also boarded half of the episodes and did some of the Flash puppet setup.  It was really cool to see my own designs and staging come through to the final episodes.

How did you become interested in animation?
As a kid, I loved Looney Tunes, classic Disney films, The Muppet Show and Rankin Bass Christmas Specials.  In the ’80s, my family would watch The Disney Sunday Night Movie and I was riveted to the Continue reading