Erica Pitt

 

What is your name and your current occupation?
Erica Pitt….2D Flash animator.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I haven’t had too many craaaazy jobs….my first job ever was working in a coffee shop bistro in my home town of Victoria, BC for 3 years. It was there that I saved up the money to go to animation school with. The summer of first year college I worked at a Dog kennel cleaning up dog s*** mostly, and the summer after did renovation work flipping houses. Between 3rd and 4th year though I got to co-direct a music video for a Canadian band called Elliott Brood which was a lot of fun. It turned out OK considering we had about a month and a half to do it in.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Every project I’ve worked on has a special little place in my heart for different reasons. George of the Jungle was the very first show I worked on, and it taught me soooo much not just about animation in flash, but animation in general. Pucca season 2 was really cute and action packed so that was always pretty crazy fun. Seeing how popular My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic got as soon as it started airing was a special treat. We were still working on the episodes as they were coming out, so it was amazing to see how many fans there were and how crazy (in a good way) they were for it. I’ve never worked on anything that popular before. I’ve gotten a couple of marriage proposals from some of the fans who have found my youtube channel so that was a new experience being a bit of a celebrity of sorts. “Roy” a show we animated for Ireland was loads of fun and got me interested in possibly working abroad…which I am currently doing so it was cool that THAT project inspired me to travel and see new places. I never expected that I would get to work on a feature film doing flash animation…but was able to on the Top Cat movie. It was a pretty cool feeling going to the cinema to watch it when it finally came out.

How did you become interested in animation?
I always liked drawing, but I remember discovering the X-Men Animated series on TV one Saturday morning and becoming really obsessed with it. When I found out it was a comic book I started buying every X-Men title there was and started trying to learn how to draw super heroes from them. My friend and I started making Continue reading

Margaux Zinsner

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Margaux Zinsner, i am a Concept artist and a 2D animator. I have just finished my work as a freelance Concept artist for Cabin Fever Animation LTD, UK. This Studio is a new super studio oppened by Scott PLeydel-pearce few months ago! i was working on a feature film project, and now i’m looking for new exciting ones.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
In the summer 2007, i came with my sister to London, meeting up my two brothers who live there. We found a job as event waitress. but what was funny is that we did that in the Zoo of London (Camden town)!! You know, in this zoo there is some places, reception room, where people could make reception, cocktails, weddings, barmitsva…in the same time they could enjoy gorilla, bears, varan… So our work was really cool, at the morning we said hello to the penguins, midday we serve dishes in front of bears, and evening we passed through people with champagne flute in the gorilla kingdom…that was surprising!!

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I’ve just graduated in June 2011, so i’m a beginner in this industry. It’s a little bit difficult to know what you could be proud of. I need some more experiences. Nevertheless i’m really proud of my last job. Making concept art to develop a feature film is what i always wanted to do. So i’m more than glad, and hope i’ll participate to a lot of projects like this. But you know i’m just at the beginning, so sure, there will be a lot more!! 🙂

How did you become interested in animation?
Not really original! when i was a kid, i used to see a lot of animation films, above all disney’s movies. But what surprises my parents was that i did that really oftenly. I mean i saw it again and again and again. In my room watching these films, i was the most happy child. I supposed that’s how i began to be addictive to animation. But you know, i wasn’t Continue reading

Mattias Gordon

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Mattias Gordon and I work as animator ( handdrawn, 2D & motion graphics ), illustrator, comic artist and writer as freelancer in my own little studio.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Crazyness is part of the job but I cant remember any crazy jobs.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
My first animationjob was when I 1986 – 88 worked on a Swedish feature called Voyage to Melonia.  It was fun to work on the two first CD-games with the Swedish famous characters Pettson and Findus ( same in english I think ) becuase so many have played these games.  In 2009 my shortfilm the Jaguar had premiere on the Cinemas. Don´t think it was a huge success but it was very nice.  My musicvideos for Kathryn Williams, Hazmat Modine and now lately Fanfare Ciocarlia.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I am from Sweden and have been living most of time here. I have been in the business for some years. I will be 50 this year. When I was small I was very interested in animation but Continue reading

Boris Hiestand

What is your name and your current occupation? 
My name is Boris Hiestand, and I’m an animator/storyboard artist/character designer/voice over guy.
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation? 
I worked as a waiter in a hotel and on a construction site shoveling bricks as a teen, so nothing that crazy really. I knew I wanted to be an animator when I was 14, so focused on that from an early age. I got fired from most of those other jobs as I wasn’t committed to them at all, probably because I was constantly day dreaming about animation!
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of? 
Working at Aardman on “The Pirates; In An Adventure With Scientists” was incredible, because I had never worked on a stop motion project before, and it made me feel like a student again, or a kid in a sweet shop. Being able to walk around those mind blowing sets every day was amazing. Everything you see on the screen is really there physically; the talent and craftsmanship there is truly humbling. “Hotel Transylvania” was very rewarding creatively for me because the style of movement required was very cartoony which is right up my alley. The old Warner’s and MGM Tex Avery shorts were a big inspiration, and I hadn’t seen that done well in CG before. Also, Genndy(Tartakovsky, the director) knew exactly what he wanted and trusted the animators to get on with it, rare qualities in directors of big CG productions unfortunately. It’s easier to change things in CG than it is in hand drawn or stop motion animation, so on CG productions with big budgets they tend to tell you to change shots again and again and again, which is quite draining creatively and rarely improves the quality of a scene. You become a “motion editor” rather than an animator. Genndy however pitched you the shot, you’d go and animate it, show it to him, he’d approve it, done. All the animation I did in that film is really mine, and that felt good.
Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands but grew up in a small town called Vught in the south of the country. I always loved drawing and was a big Disney fan, trying to master their drawing style by Continue reading

Chuck Grieb

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Chuck Grieb; currently I am a tenured Associate Professor and head of the Entertainment Art/Animation concentration at California State University, Fullerton.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
As a young college student I worked a slew of unusual and sometimes interesting jobs. One summer I spent as an Asbestos Remover. Another summer I spent working two jobs at once(75 hours a week), one as a Peer Tutor helping Learning Disabled students in a College Prep program, the other as an “Egg Cook” in a Perkins Diner. I spent a day working in a trash sorting facility and 4 weeks on an assembly line waterproofing nuts and bolts for the Navy. I also painted houses, delivered pizzas, waited tables, worked as an Assistant Theater Manager, as a Sound Mixer for live shows, photo tech, and various others.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of? 
Hmmm, tough question. I am particularly proud of the work on Genie’s Great Minds, a project I worked on when I was a part of the Special Projects Department at Walt Disney TV Animation under the direction of Gary Katona. The Larry Boy show I worked on at Cornerstone Animation had a very challenging schedule, but was a very fun, if intense, work experience. My wife and I storyboarded an episode of Continue reading

Sergio Paez

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Sergio Paez, and I’m a director and Story Supervisor working on film and television projects. I cofounded www.StoryboardArt.org, which is an online community for visual storytellers and storyboard artists. In addition to my professional work, I also do many lectures and workshops to help younger artists get into the business.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
When I was in high school, I used to make fake IDs back when California driver’s licenses didn’t have a hologram. I made a lot of money under the table, and I was such a good student that no one ever suspected that I was making forgeries. One day I was at my friend’s house and we were all watching TV when a commercial for a local art school came on the television. It flashed titles on screen that went something like, “You are the yearbook photographer extraordinaire” or “Drawing caricatures is easy for you”. Finally a title flashed on the screen that said,”You’ve mastered the art of making fake IDs.” All my friends turned me and started calling me out.  The commercial was for the Academy of Art University art school, and ironically I ended up going to that school. The fake ID part had nothing to do with it, but it’s a true story nonetheless.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Strangely enough, one of my first animation jobs is the one I remember the fondest. I worked on a Spanish /French co-production called The Three Wise Men in Spain. It was the first time I really sunk my teeth into doing animation and storyboards on a big production. It was a small team but the talent level was really high and I had to hustle to keep up. I loved every minute of it. It was the first time I Continue reading