Johan Anton Klingler

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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 Continue reading

Rosanna Lyons

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Rosanna Lyons visual effects animator on the Simpsons.
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Before I got into animation I was a student in art college in Ireland so I hadn’t had any serious work before then other than summer jobs picking potatoes or selling shoes… but in between projects and companies I have waited tables and  bar tended ..not too crazy really! 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I loved working on The Prince Of Egypt for Dreamworks SKG. I also was lucky to have worked on The Simpsons Movie which was crazy hard work but had fun effects to animate.
How did you become interested in animation?
It just happened really…my first love is Continue reading

Aaron Sowd

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Aaron Sowd. I’m currently the president and art director at Aaron Sowd Productions, Inc. We specialize in storyboards and animatics for feature films. We also do some 3-D and previs work. Right now, we work exclusively for Will Smith and Overbrook Entertainment, doing development work. It’s a dream job, and they keep us very busy.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I’ve worked as a professional artist more or less full time since I was 18. I spent about six years in comics before working on the Anastasia and Titan A.E. style guides for Fox. I was the art director at Stan Lee Media. I’ve been freelancing in just about every media since: film, TV, advertising and video games.

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What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
After Earth comes out this summer, and that was a blast to work on. I got to storyboard some of the additional scenes and meet M. Night. My favorite project is the one I’m working on right now — which is top secret, of course. Working on the first Transformers film, Solaris, the Transformers and The Simpsons rides at Universal, and the God of War and Rage video games were all career highlights for me.

How did you become interested in animation?
As a kid I grew up with no TV, so I got interested in comic books first, then animation. Our local library used to carry the Tintin and Asterix collections, and later I got into Marvel and DC. The first animation I can remember seeing was Continue reading

James Wood

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is James Wood.  I am currently employed as a freelance animator under contract with a major Canadian animation studio creating character animation for a tv show.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
One summer I got a job working in a hospital as a photographer’s assistant.  One of the duties required me to take photos in the operating room during surgeries – usually done on Fridays.  On the day when I was “indoctrinated” into that task, I was assured the surgeon was doing “just a little operation on someone’s hand.  It shouldn’t be very extensive” he said.  Little did I know, they were doing an elbow reconstruction.  When I walked in, I thought the patient was lying on their stomach with their elbow bent out behind them.  Then I realized the patient was lying on his back, and their elbow was opened up and bent (urp) the wrong way.  I didn’t hurl, but I was mighty shaky – not a good state for taking pictures.  Every Friday for the rest of the summer… I hid out in the darkroom!

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I was fortunate enough to work with the highly-skilled, very clever, fun, very hard-working people at Weta Workshop animating Dragon and other animals on the tv show “Jane and the Dragon”.  It meant I got to spend a year in New Zealand which was pretty interesting.  The work was quite demanding, but I think the end product was pretty darn good.  Also, in the summer of 2012 I did a  short for an animation contest.  We were given sound tracks and six weeks to animate whatever we wanted.  Just a few weeks before the contest I’d finished programming an autorigger, so I whipped up a character model, rigged it, modeled and rigged props and created a location, animated like crazy, added sound effects to the audio and posted the thing about two and a half weeks after starting it.  Sure the model is crude, and the animation is far from wonderful, and even though I didn’t win the contest (no comment) I feel very proud of my work.  The autorigger worked great (it took about an hour to fully rig the character), the animation is serviceable, and the whole thing tells more story than what was conveyed by the audio.  I realized how do-able it was to create a reasonably good short and it was great to hear how well it was received.  I’m eager to do more.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business? 
I’m from London, Ontario in Canada.  When I was a kid, I was always drawing and making 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

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