Bruno Chekerdimian Barreto

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Bruno Chekerdimian Barreto, I’m working at Mariana Caltabiano Criações .

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
During the high school I used to help my father on his work carrying furniture and other little services. He is a woodworker.  I don’t know why he asked me to help him if I was, and still I am, so thin and weak.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I’m very proud to have worked on the first season of “As aventuras de Gui e Estopa” (in english “The adventures of Gui and Estopa”). I had a great opportunity to do a lot of things on it. I wrote some episodes, did some storyboards, helped to develop the digital clean up, worked composing the scenes and other many things. On the second season I added to my “to do list” the digital paintings for that scenes where shows something very detailed or should use a different visual language. But my big challenge happened during the production of our first animated feature. I did all the 3D stereoscopic composition of all animated scenes and I did all the digital paintings of “Brasil Animado”, the first Brazillian movie in 3D (stereoscopic).

 

How did you become interested in animation?
My mom is a fine artist, she always inspired me to Continue reading

Bernie Petterson

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Bernie Petterson. Which is the condensed version of the name on my driver’s license: Stephen Bernard Petterson. I work as a storyboard artist on a children’s TV show called Phineas and Ferb. My employer is The Walt Disney Company.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?

It was all minimum wage scut work. I worked in a hotel as a “Houseboy”. I learned that hotels are very creepy places. Places that are inhabited by people who, now that they’ve found themselves in a new town where nobody knows them, will allow the meanest and most debauched parts of their personality come out. If you ever get a chance to work in a hotel, don’t.

How did you become interested in animation?
I saw a really ugly brochure in the College Resource Room at my high school. It was green with avant garde purple-ish scribbles on it, and it was the marketing material for a place called California Institute of the Arts.The brochure claimed that you could major in

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Paul Coulthard

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Paul Coulthard and I am currently a professional storyboard artist, working in the UK animation industry.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Not had too many crazy jobs (yet), so the most unique one would probably have been draining a reservoir in the pouring rain. This was in the break between studio and freelance, where I was temping regular jobs. I had to clamber up and down this muddy woodland banking, checking the drainage pipes were all connected, slipping and sliding about in the rain and mud. I just found it really amusingly futile – trying to drain a reservoir, in torrential rain. It was great fun and good exercise.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I love collaboration projects. I think it’s the best way to make progress on anything, bouncing ideas back and forth with other creative people. I worked on a project with a group of artists and students and that was a really nice collaborative effort. I also co-created and developed a pitch for an action-adventure show with my good friend James Tiley. It included creating, designing, writing the whole series in outline form and a pilot episode script. I loved working out the arcs and story structure the most.

How did you become interested in animation?
My mother tells me that when I was about three years old, there was a brief period where I wouldn‘t answer to any other name than “Dogtanian!” I grew up in the 80‘s, and shows like ‘The Mysterious Cities of Gold’, that had big long story arcs, really gripped me. The sense of journey and adventure sunk in. So it’s safe to see I always loved animation. Then, when I was eleven, I saw Continue reading

Dermot O Connor

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Dermot O Connor. Currently I work as a freelance/independent animator/artist.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I went almost straight from school into animation, aged 18. Apart from working briefly for a graphic design company, I have no career history stranger than animation itself! The strangest animation jobs? One was a French TV show about the souls of babies in heaven (they drove tiny cars around on clouds). I still have no idea what that was about, or how people find the money for such awful projects. Another “educational” project that I worked on was owned by a man who revealed himself to be a quasi-James Bond supervillain. Actual quote: “If you control the children, you control the world”. I handed in my notice the next week. There are some very strange people out there.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
None of my paid animation jobs (which were on movies, TV, interactive and internet projects) would be anything to remember – which I’m sad to say is a common problem – many will know the frustration. There are a great many projects of low to middling quality – and it’s incredibly rare to work on something memorable. That said, the one professional job that I’m really pleased with is my current training series for Lynda.com. I’ve done three titles with them so far, and it’s tremendously rewarding. One of the recent emails I received complimented me on my voice, saying that I sound like the snake in Jungle Book. That made my day!

 

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I’m Irish; left school in the mid 1980s, a time when there was very little chance of work, and emigration levels were soaring. If you want to make an Irish person over the age of 40 wince, just say Continue reading

Massimiliano Lucania

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Massimiliano Lucania and I’m a storyboard artist, at the moment I’m working for the Irish animation studio Brown Bag Films on season two of the Disney show “Doc McStuffins” .

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Actually, to be honest, I never had “crazy” jobs before getting into animation; I’ve always been lucky enough to work in fields where I get to draw: my very first job was as a comic book artist for Disney Co. Italy, then I’ve been working as a concept designer for video games, I did some illustration, and finally, six years ago, I started doing storyboards for animation, for several animation studios, both in my country, Italy, and abroad. So, every job I did, it was about drawing. Beside storyboarding, sometimes I also do a bit of character design.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I can say that storyboarding last year on season two of “Octonauts” was fun and challenging at the same time; it’s a preschool type of show, but it still has really a lot of action sequences. It was fun but sometimes it required a lot of thoughts in keeping everything under control in terms of composition and action. I think it’s a very nice show and I’m proud of it.

 

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I’m from the Milan area in Italy. Like almost everyone working in animation, I always loved watching cartoons since I was very little; it was the late 70s and early 80s and like a lot of people of my generation here in Italy, I grew up with a lot of Japanese anime and American cartoons ( stuff like Tom and Jerry and Hanna and Barbera).  Actually, Continue reading

Aidan McAteer

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What is your name and your current occupation? 
My name is Aidan McAteer and I’m Episodic Director at Kavaleer Productions in Dublin.
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
It wasn’t crazy (kind of the opposite), but I did a brief stint in a financial firm which I thought was supposed to be animation.  I turned up on the first day and they said – hello, design our new mobile website.  I should have known something was up when they said I had to wear a suit!
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of? 
I’ve been lucky to work on lots of great stuff – I did a show in UK called “The Secret Show” for the BBC, it was really fun, but never found a huge audience, which is a shame.  I also worked on Peppa Pig (which is massively popular in the UK) with a host of very talented people.    I  had a great time working in Vancouver – it’s an amazing city and I really have landed on my feet back in Dublin working for Kavaleer on a new show called “Wildernuts”.
Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I’m from Dublin (Ireland). When I left animation college, there wasn’t much work there, so I moved to London. I got my first job in a traditional animation studio owned by a great guy,  Philip Vallentin, called Espresso Animation.  I  was a Continue reading