What is your name and your current occupation?
Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Johan (Jonathan) Anton Klingler and I am presently a FullTime Faculty Instructor with the Art Institute of Dallas. I also am a writer/illustrator in partnership with my wife, Norma Rivera-Klingler, for a series of 15 children’s books. We run our own very small freelance production business, Double Exposure Productions, from our home.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I was a factory worker working for a company that built vender machines and in that job I saw some things one would think are only seen in war times. We used machines called break press machines which are simply machines that bend very large sheets of metal or punch holes in them. You would know them if you saw the movie “Terminator”. The machine that crushes the Terminator is a machine like the ones I’m describing. When you stand in front of it, it is massive. When you walk by others using one, the first thing that strikes you is the “tethering” lines from the machine to the wrists of the workers. It looks like some futuristic and yet dark ages contraption for torture. The purpose of the tethers is to keep people from getting their arms crushed under a ton of metal as the machine lowers its die-cut block and hydraulics press even further to cut through the plate of metal placed under the press by human hands. No hand or arm stands a change if your to slow so these lines are attached to a pulley system so that when the block comes down, your arms and hands are pulled out. To Forman this means the job can only be done at one speed, the speed of the machine. Often Forman will tell workers to not use the tethers so as to work faster that way as the press starts to come down a worker can already be getting the next sheet of metal ready for loading. If a worker is too slow pulling his or her arm out or is distracted then they lose a limb as it will be crushed or severed depending on the type of die-cut. I saw this happen a few times. I even had to pack a couple of some individuals fingers in an ice chest for reattachment so that when the paramedics came we could give them the parts to the individual. That wasn’t the craziest area there though. There was a room called the stripping room were metal sheets were lowered into a solution of cyanide based liquid formula of some kind. I was told that if a single drop of water got into it then it would produce enough gas to kill a quarter of the building’s occupants. I was a janitor on the night shift and it was my job to clean that room with water based cleanser. Now that job was crazy.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
All the productions I was given the privilege of working on at Disney were incredible but I think working on (more…)