Bradley C. Rader

What is your name and current occupation?
Bradley C. Rader, Emmy© Award winning animation director, animation storyboard artist, character designer, comic book artist, gay erotic cartoonist.

What are some of the craziest job’s you had before getting in to animation?
I worked as a maid at the Hilton Hotel, in downtown Anchorage, Alaska for 2 summers in a row (1980, 1981), summer being tourist season in Alaska. It was my favorite non-artistic job. I was on the move all day, so I was in the best shape I’d been since High School. I was required to clean 17 rooms a day (plus “spring cleaning” a couple rooms a week), and I got it down to a science. I made it a form of moving meditation, domestic Tai Chi, executing my repetitive tasks with the fewest, most economical movements.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
TODD McFARLANE’S SPAWN.
I directed the final episode of the final season (season 3), for which I won a Continue reading

Juli Murphy

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Juli Murphy*, and I am a timer for “American Dad”, for Fox TV.*(For 14 years I also went by my married name, Juli Hashiguchi, or Juli Murphy Hashiguchi)

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I was an assistant to the oldest practicing Magician in the Magician’s guild. I think he was in his upper 70’s, and he had been on the Johnny Carson show previously. I answered an ad when I was in college, and I fit the red sequined assistant’s leotard he had. It was a sad, depressing show. He couldn’t remember how to do all his tricks, and he caught the dove’s wings in the disappearing cage. I only lasted one show with him, because he was a really bad driver (going the wrong way down a freeway on-ramp) and he wouldn’t let me drive the Magic Van.
I also worked for Federal Express for 6 years. Besides loading boxes onto planes and trucks I also de-iced aircraft from a bucket extension on a gigantic truck, gave tours through the sorting facility, and radioed pilots in the aircraft. That was a great job, because one of the side benefits was free flights on cargo planes, exactly like Tom Hanks in the movie “Castaway”, luckily without the crashing part. I have ridden in the cockpit of 727’s and DC-10’s enough times to be sick of it.
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I would have to say the best job I have had to date was at Cartoon Network on “The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy”. I was the Supervising Director for 5 years, and it was a really wonderful experience. I had the most challenging and Continue reading

Jun Falkenstein


What is your name and your current occupation?
Jun Falkenstein.  Sometimes animation director and writer, othertimes animation storyboard artist.
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I really haven’t had any crazier jobs than animation!  I pretty much jumped right from school into a job at Warner Brothers.   Although one summer I did teach art to kids.  Not very crazy.
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Rather say some of my favorite people that I am proud to have worked with (too many to list).  Animation projects can be great or terrible, but all of the ones created in large studio settings are not usually very personal, as there are a lot of people having their say with the project.  And when they aren’t personal works of art, pride becomes a two-edged feeling…you are proud that the thing was completed, but always thinking of how it could have been better had you gotten to do it differently.  So by this criteria, probably I’m proudest of my short film Kyle + Rosemary, done with Frederator and Nickelodeon, because it was the closest to a pure vision than any big budget feature I was ever a part of.

Frodo Kuipers

What is your name and your current occupation?
Frodo Kuipers. I’m an animation director (mainly independent films) at my homestudio Studio Mosquito!
Furthermore I’m an animationteacher at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam (the Netherlands).

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Quite a few: I worked as a musician and actor at a Dutch theatrepark called ‘Het Land van Ooit’. It sure was a lot of fun: making music whole day, and we had a few acts and small shows we played and acted out. A lot was on an improvisation-basis, so just interact spontaniously with the audience (mostly children).  I learned a lot over there, about performance, staging, focus, character, timing, in fact this job let me realize that animation is A LOT like theatre!  I also worked as a postman for a while, which gave me some inspiration for a possible future short on postmen and their heroic adventures 🙂  More jobs: selling icecream, serving in a restaurant, baking pancakes, paperboy, even made workingschedules for workers of a company…

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I’m quite fond of my latest short ‘Fata Morgana’ (http://vimeo.com/34165189). I worked with a screenwriter which really felt succesful. The film was being part of a program called KORT!, which is ‘short’ in Dutch. Usually only live-action films are being financed by the organising broadcastcompany, but my film got financed as well.  What I also find quite fancy is that I animated a few scenes for Paul Driessens latest film ‘Oedipus’. I have always admired Pauls films, so the chance of working together was really great!
And finally, one of my films (Shipwrecked) got included to Ron Diamond’s Animation Show of Shows a few years ago.

How did you become interested in animation?
When I finished high school, I didn’t have a clue of what I wanted to study. I definitelly knew that I did want to do something creative, since I always felt a passion for creating things. I simply love to create, doesn’t really matter what it is, I just need to…
I went to artschool and by coincidence I discoverd Continue reading

Martin Povey


What is your name and your current occupation? 
I’m Martin Povey and I’m a freelance Animation Director and 3D Generalist based in the UK.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation? 
I was lucky enough to get into animation a year after I graduated from university in 1992!  Although, I actually studied to be an engineer and worked for 6 months designing pressure valves in a chemical plant before sidestepping.  Seeing “XX days accident free” sign on the entry to the plant was a huge influence on my career choice!

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of? 
I used to run a medium sized animation company in Birmingham UK called PS Creative.  One of my favourite all time projects was our award winning TV and Cinema commercial for Drayton Manor Park (theme park).  It was a fairly stuffy brief initially, but we had almost total creative freedom and the idea grew into a really fun project.  The characters we designed and built were painted onto the walls of the ride and made into character suits.  It’s immensely cool when you see one of your animated creation wandering round in the real world – Disney had vision J.  I’d have to say overall, it’s far easier to point out the very few projects I HAVEN’T enjoyed working on rather than the many I have

 

 

How did you become interested in animation?
What an odd question!  I can’t remember a time when I haven’t been fascinated with animation.  I first wanted to be an animator when Continue reading

David Wachtenheim


What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is David Wachtenheim, and I am an animator/director/producer at W/M Animation which I own with my partner Robert Marianetti.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Crazy?  I don’t know about crazy.  I worked as a P.A. on some furniture commercials which was mainly like working for a moving company.  I also worked as a P.A for matte painters Bob Scifo and Ken Allen at the now defunct Dream Quest Images.  The craziest thing there was working with James Cameron on some preliminary work for The Abyss and watching so many people fawn all over him and tripping over themselves to do his bidding.  I got fed up when I was told to hold the slate for the shots and getting yelled at for not getting the slate out fast enough.  I also worked in a pharmacy for a Summer for my brother which was a little insane.  He can be pretty intense.  You should never work for your brother.  Actually, I can’t say that, I don’t know your brother.  What I meant was, you should never work for MY brother.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I’m glad you asked what am I ashamed to have worked on.  Most of the stuff we have done at our studio has been adult oriented for Saturday Night Live, Comedy Central and Adult Swim and I am pretty ashamed of all of it.  Well, not so much ashamed but I can’t show my kids much of it.  The stuff we have done for Sesame Street and Cartoon Network I am pretty proud of.  To be honest,

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