Happy New 2022 and to start the new year off right, here is a brand new interview with UK Stand Up comedian, Alasdair Beckett-King who is also into animation and visual effects. Enjoy!
I contacted Alasdair after discovering his YouTube channel and he was kind enough to talk about his short films and set me straight on who or what is Mr. Blobby.
Check out more of ABK's work on his YouTube channel... click image to learn more.
And so, You could go and Subscribe to the Animateducated channel, which would be even better.
I started working online for CG Spectrum as a Mentor in 2D animation and meeting several other mentors of the program. Sylvain is French and lives in London where he is an independent animator/director specializing the 2D animation.
I was introduced to him as Sykosan during an online meeting and was a bit confused by him name. I looked over his animation reel and was very impressed by animation work so far. He has a collection of very short action scenes demonstrating his animation style and only recently, he animated and directed a music video for Katy Perry called "Cry about it later". I will warn you that this song might get stuck in your head for a few days.
I was able to interview Sykosan to find out more about him and his animation. I discovered that he prefers to animate using Photoshop, although he has used TV Paint as well as Toon Boom Harmony.
He also spends off time, working on short 5 to 10 seconds projects which he can add to his portfolio reel later. Please enjoy this recent interview with Sykosan...
I have always told my students that nobody animates in Photoshop, which is true most animation studios. But now, I have been proven wrong and I can show them someone who is quite good at it.
If you enjoyed this interview, please subscribe to the Animateducated YouTube channel to show your support! Thanks for Watching!
If you know anything about animation, you should know all about Winsor McCay. He was a very talented illustrator and cartoonist who experimented with animation by creating one of the first character animation characters known as "Gertie the Dinosaur".
I recently contacted Winsor McCay using the new Ouija Zoom app where I got to ask him a few questions about his work.
Well, that should be worth a few ad clicks to add to the blog's tip jar. If you enjoyed this at all, please click on the ads and it will let me know that you did.
Its Halloween again and below is this year's Animateducated Halloween episode with a few treats including an interview with Cartoonist and Animator, Winsor McCay (1869-1934) and only one card trick.
Thank you to all the subscribers and viewers of the Animateducated channel and have a happy and safe Halloween!
Interviewing a well known director or animator is always a treat, but recently I got a chance to interview a very famous deceased photographer.
Zoom Video Communications development team claims they have created Zoouija, a new app similar to an Ouija board which allows users to contact the dead or recently departed.
Still in the Beta testing phase, I got an opportunity to try Zoouija and made contact with Eadweard Muybridge (1830 - 1904). Muybridge is known for his pioneering work with motion and motion-picture projection.
He currently resides in the Limbo region of eternity for killing his wife's lover. He hopes people will remember the good things he has done and he is constantly searching for a small tin of Snuff.
Below is a Zoouija recording of our conversation...
I really don't know what I can possibly say to leave a comment below or subscribe to the Animateducated YouTube channel to show your support after watching this interview. I mean, this guy's been dead for 116 years and I was able to talk with him. Zoouija worked great and I never lost the connection, which usually happens during my other Zoom meetings with living people.
Well, I really hope you enjoyed this interview. It was quite an experience which I would love to get some feedback from anyone, living or dead.
Creating a film is no easy task and Jim Capobianco should know this after working on his first 2d animation short, Leonardo. The film follows a cartoon version of Leonard Da Vinci and uses music from the era which Da Vinci may have heard during his life.
A Kickstarter campaign has begun to help fund a new feature film called "The Inventor" about Leonardo traveling to and living out the rest of his life in France. If you are interested about learning more about this project, please watch this recent interview which Jim Capobianco.
As a young kid, Ron Husband loved to draw and his High School art teacher got him to start drawing quick sketches from life in a sketchbook. He did and started filling up every sketchbook he owned. He majored in art and won the Scholastic Arts national competition as well as played varsity football for Monrovia High.
While taking a class at Art Center in Los Angeles, Ron met Disney Imagineering and teacher, Sam McKim who got him an interview with Eric Larson at Walt Disney Studios. Larson was in charge of recruiting for the Walt Disney animation training program.
Ron had a portfolio which wasn't acceptable, but he was able to deliver 3 of his sketchbooks from High School filled with quick sketches. In 1975, Ron was accepted into the program and would eventually become the first African American animator working at Disney.
From 1975 to 2008, Ron animated on 19 Disney animated films and still keeps a sketchbook to this day. To find out more about him, check out the Animateducated interview on YouTube.
To learn more about Ron Husband's work, here's a link to his current blog and how to get his book, Quick Sketching.
If you enjoyed this post and would like to show your support, please leave a comment below or subscribe to the Animateducated Youtube channel!
Back in the 90's, Kirby Atkins was a High School teacher who applied to Will Vinton Studios in Portland and was hired into the world of animation. Soon he was getting paid to learn more about CG animation while working as a CG Animator on various M&M commercials the studio was producing at the time.
When the studio had downtime in between commercials, Kirby developed his own animated short called "Mutt", about a Dog comedian telling dog jokes to other dogs, in which he wrote the dialogue, animated, modeled, lit and even did the main character's voice. The film went on to win several awards at film festivals, including the Hollywood Film Festival.
Atkins also began a very personal short film called "Beast of Burden" about an intelligent creature which was used to pull a plow even though he could talk and tried to reason with his owner. It was a very dark and epic like idea which Kirby kept working on and developing after he left Vinton and began working for other animation studios.
Kirby develop the story into an animatic and recorded himself performing the voice of Mosley and his 7 year old daughter playing Mosley's small daughter Rue.
20 years in the making, "Mosley" was released in New Zealand in 2019 and is only now finally making its way around the world to US. Recently the film was shown at the Annecy animation festival in France in July and is on its way to the Ottawa animation film festival and the Burbank International Film Festival in September.
Take a look and listen to this very informative interview!
Back in the early 1980s, Women were just beginning to enter the animation industry and Lee Crowe was one of them. She graduated with a BA in Art from a college near her home in Georgia, before moving to Canada to be enrolled into the Sheridan College Animation program.
After graduating, moved to Los Angeles, where she job her first job in animation at a smaller animation studio called Carter Mendez. She met Floyd Norman and worked there on several animation projects before it was discovered that the studio was a front for a money laundering scheme.
Take a look at the interview below and learn about more animation stories that Lee Crowe experienced during the early part of her career in animation.
This Summer, I've been working on a lot of new interviews for my YouTube channel, Animateducated. I always enjoy the process of finding guests to interview, recording the interview and then editing everything together.
My hope is that Animateducated will help and inspire students to learn more about the people who have worked in animation and in other creative ways.
Please help the Animateducated YouTube channel by subscribing or sharing it with a friend or two and enjoy this recent interview with Disney producer, writer, artist and educator, Don Hahn.
My first interview with Sergio Pablos was back in 2016, just before Klaus was pitched to Netflix. You can see the posted interview by clicking here.
Klaus was nominated for an Academy Award in 2020 and during the Covid-19 situation, I was able to set up a Zoom interview with Sergio from his SPA Studios in Madrid, Spain. Enjoy the interview below and please share it with a friend!
If you enjoyed this interview, please leave a comment below or subscribe to see past and future interviews on YouTube channel Animateducated!
And one more thing!
Do you have any questions for the next interview with Don Hahn? Leave your questions in the comment section below!
Its
been an interesting year for animation with the return of a more
traditional hand drawn look with films like Klaus and shorts films as
well. Two animated shorts, which are in competition for this year's Oscars Short Film(animated) catagory are "Hair Love" and "Kitbull". Both
are in color and are traditionally animated. Both films are sponsored
by movie studios; "Hair Love" with Sony Picture Animation and "Kitbull"
with Pixar SparkShorts program.
I had seen Hair Love and was sure it would win, however after seeing Kitbull, Hair Love has found its competition.
I'm
going out on a limb here to make a prediction that "Hair Love" will
win the Oscar! Hair Love is a human story about love, hair and the black community, but its more of a
universal story with appeal. Its has a lot of strong storytelling inside
it, as well as a message of hope.
If it does, please take a look/listen to this recent interview with the directors of the film. https://youtu.be/7CPvoVOooPk
Now,
don't get me wrong, I like Kitbull too. The story is about a small
abandoned kitten who meets an abandoned Pitbull. We learn that the
Pitbull just wants to play, but is chained up and used in a bad way by his
owner. The
animation of the kitten is great and like Hair Love its colorful,
traditionally animated and told with music. Kitbull also is a story of
hope, where the two different animals become friends and help each other. I
know there is not much time before the Oscars begin on this wet and
rainy Sunday, but please leave a comment below. Which film did you like
like the most?
During an interview with The 3 Tooners, they talked about their friend Iwao Takamoto who worked at Disney and Hanna Barbera. I think you will find this podcast interesting to listen to.
If you liked this, please subscribe to our YouTube channel Animateducated or share this post with another animation friend.
Most people have never heard of David Dodd Hand who became Walt Disney's right hand man. He began his career as the 4th animator hired at Walt Disney's Hyperion studio and later became the supervising director on Snow White. He worked on 14 different feature films and even met the Queen "Mum" after he established an animation industry in English after working for Disney.
In the new book, Animation Pioneer, David Dodd Hand, his son helps tell the story of his father's animated career and life. Its a fascinating autobiography, full of animation history and is a must for anyone interested in learning animation history.
If you tune into WU Radio link at 10pm PDT from Tuesday 10/16 to Monday 10/22, you will hear a few of those stories from an interview with David Hale Hand about the book. You can also listen and subscribe to the Animateducated YouTube channel.
