Character Designing by Torsten Schrank

 

Torsten Schrank was learning to be an animator while in University, but eventually got more into character designing. Below is a recent interview of him explaining how he designs characters.

Here are some of his concept art and character designs.

Here are a collection of model sheets of caharacter designs from "Klaus".

 

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Animation Assistant, Lucie Julliat

At a young age, Lucie Julliat enjoyed drawing and playing percussion. She attended Emile Cohl School in Lyon, France where she made an animated film called "Percussions" about a Chef who wants to dance, but is stuck working in the kitchen.

Her big break came when she was hired as an assistant animator on "Klaus" and she has been working ever since. I sat down with Lucie to find out what an Assistant Animator does and how 2D animation production is being done now.

The Animator still creates the Key Poses and makes timing charts which the Assistant Animator or Inbetweener will complete, however on some productions, the Animation Assistant could do the in-between drawings as well as the final clean up drawings and on other productions each task would be done by more than one person.

Learn more in this interview below...

Here are some recent samples of Lucie's work including Space Jam: A New Legacy...

SJ2_LucieJulliat-AssistantAnimatorReel.mp4 from Lucie Julliat on Vimeo.

From Klaus...

Klaus-CleanUpReel-LJulliat from Lucie Julliat on Vimeo.

Its nice to know that 2D animation is still being done. 

Thanks for Watching!

Upcoming Interviews

Working on several new interviews on the Animateducated YouTube channel and wanted to let you know they are up and running.

The first is an interview with Alfredo Cassano, who animated Jesper in Klaus. Alfredo and I teach online at CG Spectrum and I reached out to interview him and find out more about his animation background.

The next upcoming interview is with David Steinberg aka D. J. Steinberg who has become a Children's book author with 25 books written and still going. David came from Animation production where he worked for Don Bluth, at Disney Animation and recent at Nickelodeon.

In this interview, he explains what its like to write Children's books, work with illustrators and reads some of his published works. Now if I can just get his dog Oscar back to him, everything will be fine.  

Thank you to all the new people who have subscribed to Animateducated on YouTube; we just hit 578 subscribers! More interviews and animated things to come! Thanks again for watching and helping this blog/channel grow.

Don Hahn Interview

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.

Enjoy...

Sergio Pablos 2020 Interview

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!

Two Acting cousins

If you want to be an Animator, you got to have some acting skills. Think about it, if you are animating a character either in Maya or in Harmony, you need to be able to create a performance and understand how your character will act or react in different situations.

I interviewed my two cousins, who are not animators, but one is a well known Shakespearean actor in the Bay area named James Carpenter.

James was recently in an online play using Zoom. Check out the link below to this new form of online theater.
https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/1_MtILep_GBLS6PsuETRULQ5Hb_Vaaa82nRN_vNYmRxhfMk7Psmf2o3_6ChLShKs?startTime=1589050830000

And then there's Jeremy Foley, who began his acting character in a SeaWorld video with Samu which lead to him escaping from Dante's Peak. He made the transition from child actor to adult filmmaker and talks more about some of the films he and his wife Sara have made together.

If you enjoyed these interviews, please leave a comment below or subscribe to the Animateducated YouTube channel. 

The next interview will be with Sergio Pablos, the writer and director of Klaus, which was nominated for an Academy Award this year and is bringing back traditional 2d animation!

Klaus, a return to 2D?

When you think of a 2D animated movie about the beginning of Santa Claus, you might think of this...

 

This weekend, I went to a "making of" event for Klaus, the first animated production from Netflix and SPA Studios. The first started back in 2014 or so, when animation director, Sergio Pablos started working out an origin story of Santa Claus. 

Pablos created a pitch presentation and animated a preview showcasing his 2d animation using a new look which gave more details to lighting and effects animation. This new look development allowed Pablos and his team to create an animated short which combined the best 2D animation with the 3D rendering look of CG animation. Here's an interesting article about that process.

All the research and work paid off and is now become a 2D feature hybrid of animation film called "Klaus".

The animation is superb in quality, the storytelling is fun, the character designs and acting is very appealing to watch. All of this film was well worth the wait and should be a nice Holiday movie to watch this November and every November after that.

Will this be a film that returns us to 2D animation production?

If you would like to know more about Sergio Pablos, check out this 2016 interview. 

Is this film on your holiday list? Let us know below or follow us if you like what you see.