Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
TB - A friend of mine, Lance Soltys, is a cinematographer and shoots most of my projects. In '90, we
conceived of a stop motion short called No Exit? , about a living skeleton's ill-fated attempt at escaping
from a dungeon. We were both students (I a grad student in music and Lance an undergrad in cinema).
We fi nished the fi lm before we graduated college, but the animation was hurried, so it wasn't good.
Right after college, around '92, we both moved to Chicago. That year I met and later married my late
wife, Lily Klinger, and Lance and I resurrected No Exit? and made it again. It turned out rather well, and
has screened at a number of fi lm festivals in the US. The fi lm was scripted and storyboarded rather
extensively. I use storyboards as often as I can, in planning out the scenario visually. Lance and I work
well together, bouncing ideas off each other, managing to do it in a way that neither ego is seriously
bruised. One has to look at ideas objectively, which is diffi cult, especially if it's your own idea and you
don't want to give it up, even if it isn't serving the best interest of the story.
RC - When I was hired at The Animators, I didn't have a lot to say about how things were done. What
eighteen-year-old kid would? (Well, maybe Jim Danforth did.) After fi ve years, I became a partner and
also took over the animation for the studio. After fourteen years, I started my own studio in 1979. Finally
I had the ability to control the decisions and have a major infl uence on the entire production. In my small
studio, I generally do most, if not all of the animation, and often quite a bit of in-betweening. I did have
staff or freelancers who also did in-betweening, inking and cel painting. For stop motion jobs, I machined
the armatures, sculpted the puppets and animated them. I designed the effects work as well. For CG jobs,
I again did all the animation myself, and did the modelling of the characters, with some help on props
from assistants.
DC - Work experience - Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave , 1995.
SB - My fi rst fi lm was meant to be forty-fi ve seconds long. It was actually quite good to think of a simple
idea that would tell a story in such a short space of time. I knew character would be important and that
the end would probably be more important than the beginning or the middle (it had to lead to a punch
line, not just fade out). I started by thinking of sketches or jokes, but they felt a bit empty. I felt it would
have more impact if I had something to say, or was trying to explore an idea of some sort. I thought
about how I was feeling and why I wanted to make a fi lm. I remember I was feeling that working on
series was like a factory line, all getting monotonous and that I wanted a fi lm to reignite my passion for
animation. That's how the fi lm about two robot arms, bored with their job packing Christmas crackers,
started.
JC - My fi rst fi lm was based on a true story I came across when researching a project on memories. One
interviewee had met the Beatles on the set of Help and had dinner with them. She told me that she had
changed her life because of something Barry Manilow had said in a concert. What initially seemed like
an absurd story turned out to be an inspirational tale … far more interesting than my original idea.
DS - We've been lucky in that so much of our early professional work was headed by experienced
producers who could give advice and make suggestions - Conversation Pieces with Colin Thomas and Bill
Mather, for example, and even the early Channel 4 work had input from Paul Madden. And of course
there were the early commercials (although they didn't arrive on the scene until we had done a few
shorts for C4) where there was constant input from the agency creatives. We learnt a lot from those guys
over the years.
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