Tell us a little about who your are and how you got here?
My name is Sunil Pant and I’m originally from Mumbai, India. I finished my graduation in the field of Science, majoring in Quantum Physics in 2004. I later went on to get my second graduates degree from the Academy of Art University – San Francisco, in the year 2007 in 3D Modeling.

From when I can remember, I’ve always been interested in modeling and design. During my course of education at the Academy of Art University, I was hired by Industry veteran, George Hull (VFX Art Director – MATRIX Films) to help out with a few of his film projects where I started out as an apprentice.

I learned a lot about GOOD Design and what makes something look great during this period. It was the best Design education I could get. I’d spend hours practicing on my drawing table the rules of perspective since this was all new to me.

When did you begin creating and working in this industry?
I started as George Hull’s apprentice in 2005 working on movies like ‘Terminator Salvation’ and ‘Speed Racer’ where I helped with doing some 3D mock sets and props. I also began my internship in EA in the year 2006 working on ‘The Simpsons’ Game and later did my second Internship with Industry Veteran, Syd Mead on a Virtual World Game called, ‘Blue Mars’ based out of Marin County, California.

What job title best describes what you do? Senior Entertainment Designer

What city and country are you living in? Mumbai, India (currently)

Who do you feel has inspired you the most? ‘NATURE’ inspires me the most in coming up with and thinking about new designs.

What are you currently working on?
Currently I’m working on an IMAX Dome Project where I’m conceptualizing an animated short especially for the DOME and will be the first of its kind in India. I’m also scheduled to teach a Masterclass in Design for CGSociety using my workflow of 3D combined with 2D to create final designs for production starting 27th of May this year.

Do you have your own studio or a studio at home?
I have my own studio now in Mumbai called SUNIL PANT DESIGN where I currently freelance from.

What would you like to achieve in the next 5 years?

I’d like to continue exploring new design techniques by always staying up-to-date with the latest technology as that gives me the most satisfaction along side working on Film and Game projects. I’m also in talks to get funding going to setup a my own pre-production house here in India which would be the first of its kind for the Indian market and that might take some time to setup. Besides that I’d like to continue teaching and may be publish my own book which showcases some of my own personal designs and explains my workflow.

How did you first hear of The Creative Talent Network and what are your expectations, goals and feelings about being a member?
I’ve always known about CTN and I had a few colleagues from both, Dreamworks Animation Studios and Rainmaker Entertainment that are part of it. I think its a great community of really talented individuals and its my honor to be part of and hopefully collaborate with such a fantastic network of artists.

Tell us a little about who you are. When did you begin creating and working in the design and animation industry?
I’m Wanchana Intrasombat but it is easier if you call me “Vic”. I was born in Bangkok, Thailand in 1986 which is where I currently am living. I am a 2D and concept artist. My services include concepts for animation, game, illustration and character design. I graduated in 2008 in the category of Fine Art (traditional painting, oil color). From 2009 until now, I began teaching myself how to use the various digital painting tools and then received many opportunities to work on many design and animation projects.

What was the one key moment in your career that you feel really defined you?
I think that defining moment came for me when I received an award from the CG community at CG Society for “2D concept art and illustration”.  Before that I had done a lot of personal paintings to improve my portfolio without any job/project offered but after I received the award, there were so many projects and opportunities offered to me. And my first opportunity to work in the animation industry came through an animation commercial when EmberLab presented me with a very important opportunity for both my spirit and my career in animation to be an art director for a Coca-Cola and McDonald commercial “Crabs and Penguins”.

Where do you work now, what are you working on?
I’m still working as a freelance artist and live in Thailand. I am  looking forward to being a part of an animation studio in USA one day. I’m currently working as a visual development artist and character designer with so many studios such as EmberLab, Anya Animation and KiwiUp to name a few on projects such as an Animation-Feature film (un-public) , Fanta, KFC, and Pizza Hut animation and game commercials that I believe will be released soon.

What has been the most rewarding aspect or project you’ve worked on to date?
The most rewarding aspect for me is the experience that I gain when working as a team that has joined together with so many talented artists on the same project. I think both opportunities and experience are very important in this industry and I always practice to improve my skills so as to be prepared and ready for every opportunity that may or may not come.

Who or what do you feel has inspired you the most?
It is probably true to say that every person who works in the animation industry and produces animated films has inspired me because the films are are a huge inspiration for me. The most inspirational films are the animated films from Disney, Pixar, Dreamwork and Blue Sky. In regards to the artists who have inspired me, I so much love the works of Glen Keane, Hayao Miyazaki, Dice Tsutsumi, Robert Kondo, Bobby Chiu and Christophe Lautrette.

What kind of advice can you say to someone who is also striving to succeed in this industry?
The first thing I would say is that it is required that you have a dream, this will be the power for you to be motivated. Ask yourself if you are ready to give 100% of your life for this dream and then keep doing what is needed and practice all towards what you love even if at times, it makes you feel sad or disappointed as this is part of the creative process.

What would you like to achieve in the next 5 years?  I would like to be a part of animation feature film.

How did you first hear of The Creative Talent Network and what are your expectations and goals from being a member?
I have known about CTN and the CTN animation expo since 2012. After checking into it more deeply I definitely found this organization very inspiring to me. The Expo is the only event that interests me to attend because it is full of the most inspiring people that are accessible there. What expect from being a member is the opportunity to open myself, share my work and to get to know and make connections with the people who are working in this animation industry.

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Jean Gillmore began her animation career in the traditional 2-D world, working on network animated television shows (Hanna-Barbera, Marvel Productions) as a show model designer and/or supervisor for several seasons.  She made the jump to theatrical animated features in 1989, where she worked 10 years as a staff visual development artist for Walt Disney Feature Animation. Her contributions to the Disney Renaissance era of feature animated films is huge and her credits list is long.  If you look behind the animation you will find that most of the characters from that era were designed by Jean Gillmore.

More recent work has seen Jean illustrating books, creating orthographics of characters and costumes for CG direct-to-video projects and even designing a set for a (critically-acclaimed) one-woman theater piece, “The Dance of the Lemons”.  Most recently in animation, however, she has worked as a CG COSTUMER for an animated feature development project at Blue Sky Studios on the east coast.

Over her long career, she has also worked in the development of various puppet show costumes and sets, toy design, and with the merchandise/ publishing concerns of retail venues (Walt Disney Consumer Products). Jean works in a variety of media with numerous applications, and is always open to breaking new creative ground.

Enjoy a rare interview with this ecclectic, bright and extremely talented lady.

To see more work by Jean Gillmore please visit her website at: http://www.jeangillmore.com

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Phil Nibbelink has been drawing his whole life. He studied art at Western Washington State University and film in Rome Italy’s Il Instituto di Stato per la Cinematografia. After attending the Disney Animation Program at California Institute of the Arts, Phil joined Disney Studios to animate on The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron and Basil the Great Mouse Detective, Oliver and Company and Roger Rabbit. In 1989 he teamed up with Steven Spielberg to direct American Tail, We’re Back and Casper. Phil went on to start his own company where he wrote, directed and animated 3 features, Puss in Boots, Leif Ericson, and his third feature Romeo & Juliet: Sealed With A Kiss, won him a 1st place and ‘Best-in-Show’ award at the Best-in-the-SouthWest film festival. Phil had too much fun teaming up with his old college roommate David Greenblatt to create the graphic novel Ultima Thula.

Enjoy listening to this great talent discussing about a time when we were Drawn2gether and you can meet him at the CTN Animation Expo (CTN-X) on Nov 20-22, 2009

You can see more of Phil Nibbelink’s  work and contact him directly at:

Creative Talent Network and   www.philnibbelink.com

I have this far reaching, overly academic theory that goes something like this: the European influence on animation is growing increasingly absent in America and as a result, we’re getting less and less visually exciting.

Disney in the late 1930’s and pre-war 1940’s was undeniably under the influence of artists and illustrators like Gustave Tenggren and Kay Nielsen and Ferdinand Horvath, who had a powerful and visible impact on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio and Fantasia.  And, yes, there is a similar influence on live action with the work of directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Josef Von Sternberg and James Whale, but I’d argue that no other single studio product exhibited that influence in the same way as Disney’s films from this period.

So it is, or was, that a great wealth of European talent flowed into the industry in the United States after the production of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and studios like Disney and DreamWorks benefited from the gifts of artists like Darek Gogol, Hans Bacher, Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi, Carlos Grangel and that German guy who worked on Tarzan..oh, come on…you know his name.   Hans…no, Heinrich…oh shoot, hang on…HARALD!  That’s it.  Harald Siepermann!

Okay, I’m having fun at Harald’s expense, but to his credit, Harald Siepermann is still surprised and delighted by his increased recognition in the industry.   (How friggin’ refreshing is that?)  His influence on Character Design in the 1990’s and early part of this decade is undeniable, and he has become more and more recognizable in the past few years thanks in part to a terrific on-line blog that examines everything from character design to the satirizing of popular culture www.haraldsiepermann.blogspot.com.    Happily, Harald will be a featured speaker and exhibitor at the upcoming Creative Talent Network Animation Expo (CTN-X), November 20-22 in Burbank.

So what better place to test my platitudes on the influence of Europeans in animation than with Harald Siepermann.   I spoke with Harald from his home and studio in Hamburg, where he graciously and cleverly did exactly what a good German artist does best – supported my theory while simultaneously blowing holes through it like Swiss Cheese.  (…once again, how friggin’ refreshing!)

RHETT WICKHAM
Thanks for taking the time.  I want to dive right in and talk about something I know is near and dear to you – that is “the fundamentals”.   I was looking over some gesture drawing material and was thinking how so many of the fundamentals appear to be falling to the wayside in animation.  How well do you think that animation is paying attention to some of those basic principals?  Have we slipped away from them?

HARALD SIEPERMANN
Yeah, what can I say?  I’m afraid that a lot of today’s animation relies on standard gestures.  You know, the old guys, like the Nine Old Men and the early Disney animators ..they..um, I’m sorry for my English.  It’s kind of rusty.

RW
That’s alright.  My German is non-existent.

HS
They sort of extracted that from real life.  They observed real life and boiled it down to a hand full of rules and principles.  Sometimes, I’m afraid, those rules are the only things that today’s animators know, and they’ve forgotten about the real thing – real life.  And so some of those things become standard gestures, like ‘this is what you look like when you’re sad, this is what you look like when you’re happy, this is what you look like when you pick up something heavy.’  You know?   Not on the Pixar films, but some of the others, they sometimes, especially T.V. animation, they sometimes fall into that trap.

RW
TV animation has always had the disadvantage of…well, all television is just talking radio, so I’ve always thought television animation is just talking comic strips, where everything has to be boiled down to over-simplified gestures and expressions.   But, then again, you look at the work of great strip artists like Bill Waterson, you get more specifics.   I guess the devil’s in the details.

The very first thing in the most frequently referenced gesture drawing notes floating around is called “Go For the Truth” with a sub-header “Observe, observe, observe.”

HS
Very true.

RW
I don’t think young artists today have as much time, or take as much time, to do that.  To observe.  They simply don’t interact with other people as frequently because so many of them – well, not just young artists, everybody is spending more and more time isolated, on-line, interacting virtually through FaceBook and not getting up and doing something as simple as getting out and running errands.   Our person-to-person communication, and being able to observe people is limited to Skype.

HS
Exactly, or on the tube, or whatever.   For example, I didn’t grow up with a lot of comic strips and I didn’t watch a lot of cartoons on T.V. because there wasn’t any.  I didn’t grow up on that diet of cartoons.  I had a handful, really, four or five Carl Barks Donald Ducks, and when I was ten years old Astrix came out, and there was one a year!  Much later Tin-Tin came to Germany.  That was all I had, and the Flintstones on television.

RW
Those are pretty great influence, actually; they’re pretty well observed comic sources.  I feel like the European influence, at least on Western animation, has shifted a great deal since the break-up of the company of animators that re-built Disney and other studios in the 80’s and 90’s.     As they did in the 30’s and 40’s, Disney had a great deal of European influence during the 80’s and 90’s, but now it seems to have dissipated.    What is the climate like now in Europe, now that so much of that talent has returned to Europe?  Is it having any effect on production there?

HS
You’re right.  But to tell you the truth, the average German doesn’t think of classic animation as being influenced by Europe.  You have to point it out to them.   We think of it as being very American, or the average European does at least.

RW
Well it’s certainly distilled through an American sensibility.  But the most powerful visual influence of the visual language of animation has come from outside the U.S. and I miss that in the films produced in the U.S. recently.  But maybe I’m romanticizing, who knows.

HS
What you have to understand is that interest in animation isn’t that big in Germany.  They mostly consider it kids stuff.  They don’t understand that it’s a grown-up form of story telling which is equal to let’s say The Wrestler or normal cinema.  They keep looking at it as kids stuff.   Or you have the low-brow artists who take influence from China or Japan or India, so we don’t really take it seriously.   I mean the average German, they don’t look at it that closely.      Except, maybe the French, because comics and such are a part of their cultural heritage.  But especially in Germany it was killed with the Third Reich.

We had a lot of great illustrators, great comic strip artists, artists of every kind, and we lost them all.   A whole generation of artists and people that could tell stories.

RW
You’re right.  Germany has always had a great tradition in the last two centuries on the printed word, and I think people forget how decimated it  was during the Second World War.

Elephants Courting by Heinrich Kley.

HS
But when it came back after the Second World War in the shape of Mickey Mouse, or Superman, or whatever, it was regarded as kids stuff and not very sophisticated, cheap, and dangerous for kids.  And it’s only now that my generation has grown up – we grew up with Mickey Mouse and whatever – that we appreciate it again.

RW
Do you think there’s a new and unique German voice that’s coming from your  generation and the generation after ours that has an opportunity to influence and make something unique and its own?

HS
Not that’s particularly German.  It’s more global now.  It’s not as German like Heinrich Kley, or Wilhelm Busch.  That was very, very German.

(Editor’s Note:   It’s easy to see the influence of these two German artists on early Disney.  Particularly Kley’s playful series on Elephants, which were enormously influential on the Dance of the Hours sequence of Fantasia)

An unidentified illustration by Wilhelm Busch

HS
We Germans have a very special kind of humor, which is a very clever kind of humor. It’s not translatable in any other language, so other people think we don’t have a sense of humor. It’s very special, and very intellectual.

RW
There’s something wonderful about the globalization of our sensibilities, but something just as sad about losing the uniqueness and individuality.

So, where are you in your work now? What’s next for you?

HS
What I’m realizing now, thanks to what I’ve done so far, and thanks to the Internet, I’ve kind of created a name for myself. All of a sudden people know who I am, and they seem to like what I’m doing. What I realize is that I’ve gotten somewhere, that I’ve made myself a name. Up to now it was more a matter of finding the right place to work, and doing what I would like to do. I wasn’t so much concentrating on my career as I was concentrating on what I’d like to do and what I would like to be. All of a sudden I started to realize that people know me and they start to say hello when I go to Annecy or something, and they know what I look like and what I’m doing. That’s very strange. Up until now it was like “Hi, I’m the new guy.”

RW
How did you come to Disney?

HS
I always loved Disney, since I saw the Jungle Book, when I was six. But I never saw it as a career opportunity. I knew it was done somewhere in America and it was done by a handful of people and I knew that it was a lot of work, so I really learned it but I never thought that I would go to work there. I copied their stuff, and I drew my own sequels of Jungle Book, and I used the characters to draw the characters in invented, new adventures. I thought that I would become an illustrator or something, because there was no German animation industry. I never started to animate, I only drew the characters.

When I came to art school I met Hans Bacher, who was teaching there. He had an animation course. He saw my stuff and said “you should be doing animation!” Andreas Deja had just left the school, so there was a kind of an open eye at the school – the teachers had an open eye to animation because of Andreas; before then it was ridiculed “this is Mickey Mouse and why would you want to do that.”

Hans already had a name in advertising agencies, and he had already met Richard Williams, so he kept giving me jobs. “You know, there’s that job at the agency, and I haven’t got time to do it because I’m busy, would you like to?” So I got into advertising and through that I got to meet Richard Williams. Hans and I would go to London, maybe once or twice a year, to look for books or tapes, and that was maybe the early 80’s, and we regularly visited Dick Williams. By a strange coincidence, we visited him at the same time that Zemeckis was there and Spielberg was there to talk about Roger Rabbit. Dick had just made up his mind to direct it the animation part, so he said “If I’m going to do it I really have to get a bigger studio, and hire everyone I know! Would you like to be part of this, you two? What are your plans? Would you like to Join in!”

I was still a student, from nothing I was first at Richard Williams place in London, and then they send me and Hans to L.A. to work on the Toon Town sequence which was done at Speilberg’s place. So I was working for Speilberg and Disney at the same time! And I met Don Hahn, and Joe Ranft, and all of them in a really short time, in a matter of weeks. Then all of a sudden Glen Keane was there, and Andreas, and Phil Nibling. It was like being in a dream! Even then I never thought of “this is where I’m going to stay” because at the same time I had my comic strip in Germany – I was doing a comic strip at that time, also with Hans – and I always thought that I would go back after Roger Rabbit and continue with the comic strip. We were talking about a TV series at that time based on the comic strip.

It was only to make money, after that, that I would maybe go to work for Amblimation maybe once a year. Only slowly it dawned on me that animation was where I wanted to be. I kept getting hired, and my work was appreciated more and more, and it got more and more fun.

RW
What was the first assignment that you had where you were singled out for design work? Do you remember the first thing that got pointed out or pulled off of the board as “we need to go more in this direction”?

HS
Absolutely. I was working on Mulan, but I came in very late. Production was well under way and all they needed were a couple of more sketches of Mushu. So I was there for three months or so, and I was doing a lot of sketches of Mushu and incidental characters, miscellaneous characters. And I also did some warriors, the bad guys. Those were seen by the directors of Tarzan, Kevin Lima and Chris Buck. Tarzan was very young at that time, it was a very fresh project, and nobody knew where it was going to go – whether it was going to be a comedy or an action adventure. They saw those warriors and they called me into their office, and they said “We’ve seen your warriors, and there’s something in those warriors that we are looking for in the gorillas. So what we would like you to do is read the book and do as many gorillas as you can think of.” That’s what I did. I took the book home, and week by week I sent them sketches of the gorillas – sometimes a bit funnier, sometimes a bit more serious, and I was exploring. When those three months or something were over, they asked me “Would you like to do the whole cast ? We think there is something in your drawings that is very European, and we want it to look European because it’s a European story, and it’s something fresh. Would you like to do that?”

That really was the first time that I felt that there was something going on, and I was a bit scared even.

RW
What a wonderful way to be scared. If you have to be frightened, that’s the right kind of fear to face.

HS
I remember thinking that no matter how bad your work is, there’s always a Disney villain to look at, and you know that you’re looking at something of quality. Now, all of a sudden I found myself in charge to create that character, and there was nothing to look up to at that moment because I had to do it now! I still remember where I was sitting when I had that thought “that’s quite a responsibility now!”

RW
When you have that kind of influence, when your design will become something iconic, if not ubiquitous thanks to merchandising, you realize that you will have a lasting impact on culture for years and years to come. That is an amazing thing to think about.

HS
It’s even scarier nowadays when students come up to me and say “I grew up with your stuff.” When we did the TV series in the 1990’s, those kids are now at the University and they’re studying art, and that’s the generation who – for them, the first movie they saw was Beauty and the Beast, and for me that’s like yesterday!

RW
Man, it’s amazing to think about. Is there a particular character design that you’ve done, outside of your wonderful comic strip characters, a character for film that you have a fondness for? (sic)

HS
Oh yeah, sure. Mushu. It was my first main character that I designed – not just me, but I was a part of that. And of course the whole cast of Tarzan. Particularly Clayton and Kerchak. I love those characters. Not because they’re done well, but because they’re so close to me that they’re like kids.

RW
What was it like for you, as a character designer, to pass your work on to an animator who refines it, and brings it to life?

HS
It’s amazing. Provided that it’s done well (laughs) It’s such a great feeling. What Randy Haycock did with Clayton was amazing, because I couldn’t do it. I never learned to animate. I know the theory, but I never really animated and I never would be a great animator. Then all of a sudden you see this thing move and you see that he understood what you were thinking and what you were aiming at. And the same thing is true, in fact the very first time that gave me goose-bumps was when Ken Milton had done the sculpture of Clayton, which is a wonderful maquette. I had the feeling that he saw things in my drawing that I was meaning to put there, and I didn’t quite catch it, and he saw them and got them into his sculpture. That was a great feeling.

RW
Yeah, his ability to work in three dimensions is astounding. He’s so gifted, so amazingly gifted.

HS
Absolutely! It’s an honor to hand something over and have it animated by those great guys – Sergio Pablos, all the great names.

RW
Was there a point in that production, or just after, where you began to think differently, or something new entered into your thinking that changed the way you go about character design?

HS
I don’t know if it changed. I think it’s always been like that. When I was in art school, and still studying Disney really seriously studying it, for the first time – because that’s the first time that video cassettes became available and before that I had to look at Little Golden Books - the first thing that I could get my hands on was The Illusion of Life, and then I felt that my stuff is a little different but not in a good way. Being at Disney – because you know it’s not really Disney what I’m doing, it’s not really Disney, it’s still Harald somewhere, you know? – so being at Disney that was the first time that they came to me and said, “that’s what we’re looking for! Disney we can do ourselves, but we’re looking for your stuff, which is a little bit different and a little bit more European.” So that was the first time that I realized that it was a good thing that I’m not copying Frank and Ollie a hundred percent!

RW
What are you doing now?

HS
I was working on Gnomeo and Juliet last year, it used to be a Disney project and now it’s at Mirimax. The pre-production was done in London, and now they’ve moved to Canada. I was on that team last year. I’m looking forward to being on Chuck Williams and Aaron Blaise’s next project later this year.

RW
King of the Elves, right? Based on the Philip K. Dick short story.

HS
Yup, the Brother Bear team.

RW
You did extensive work on Brother Bear, too. Particularly on the Inuit characters.

HS
Exactly. Again, we started at the very beginning. I was approached for Brother Bear because I had done all the gorillas in Tarzan and there were a lot of different bears on Brother Bear, and at that time people thought that what I could do was get a lot of characters into characters that look almost the same. Like I had done with the gorillas. There’s not a lot to work with on gorillas, they almost all look the same, but still they had a lot of different characters and they were looking for me to do the same thing with the bears.

I remember Chuck Williams talking to me and he said, “We would like you to do some of the Indians as well. Just a couple of them.” Then it took us over a year or something because there were so many changes in story, they kept re-writing the story. It was the elder brother and then the older brother, and then the father, then the father became the third brother. It kept changing and changing, and I had to redo and redo and redo the Indians, which was great fun, actually.

RW
Those are some beautiful designs.

HS
Thank you.

RW
That’s a film that got lost in the bigger story of Disney layoffs and the presumed end of traditional animation. It’s a beautiful film. I’m particularly fond of Rune Bennicke’s work on that film. So, what else are you up to?

HS
Right now I’m putting the finishing touches on a cookbook with illustrations of the Duck, you know my Duck, the cartoon character?

RW
Yes

HS
It started out in the late 70’s as a project for UNICEF.  There’s this Dutch singer,  Herman Van Veen, who was a UNICEF ambassador, still is, and UNICEF approached him to collect some money for a water project with the Masai tribe.  So he wrote this stage show, because he’s a singer, and he wrote it as a duck because it was about water.  It was never meant to become a comic strip or whatever.  It was never visualized.  It was just him, on stage, and he would be all the characters very much like Danny Kaye.  I met him backstage one day, and he liked my stuff that I was doing, then he gave me a phone call one day and said, “We need you for a poster, for the Duck, for a stage show we’re doing in Germany.”  So I did the poster, and the poster became a comic strip, and then a second one and a third one and then it became a TV series.   So we still kept the UNICEF going, and the Duck himself now is UNICEF ambassador for children’s rights.

Right now we’re building a house close to the Dutch border in a very beautiful landscape.  It’s a house where children can go on vacation when they normally can’t afford a vacation – be they sick or poor, whatever.  So they can apply and then they can spend a week or two with their parents or their doctor in that house.  Right now we’re collecting money through the Duck for that house.  I just did a cook book with the Duck, and different recipes.

I’m working on a TV special, a little bit of animation for TV.  And I did some character designs for a commercial for America, again with Rune Bennicke.   He’s in Brazil now, and he’s freelancing from there.

RW
Will the book be published in German, French, English?

HS
German, it’s very small project.  But it’s very dear to my heart because it’s a charity thing.

RW
I hope you’ll let the CTN family know when it’s published because there a lot of people who would like to have one, and to contribute by purchasing one.  When is it due out?

HS
Somewhere this year.  It’s so small that it didn’t even have a deadline.  It’s just finished when it’s finished.

RW
That sounds like heaven!

HS
(laughs) Yeh!  Because it’s just within that town – the Mayor, the fire brigade, the kindergarten…everybody contributes a recipe and then we illustrate it with the Duck and then we sell it for charity.   Who knows where it goes from there.

Another thing that I just did, I don’t know if you’re aware that this year, 2009, is the 2000th anniversary of the battle between the Germans and the Romans, and the Germans won in the year Nine.  The Romans never got any further north than that in Europe, apart from England.    The place where that battle was, there is a great statue of a German warrior.  Of course this has always been misinterpreted all the time, because it was always a symbol for national movements, especially the Nazis.   It was always “Defend Yourself Against Your Enemies!” and that guy, that statue, is still looking towards France.

RW
Eeek!  How unfortunate!

HS
Yes, so the community of that town, they’re afraid that in connection to that anniversary that a lot of national movements, and Nazis and such,  will march and be there.  So what they are trying to do is reinterpret the whole thing and go more in the direction of “Understand Your Neighbor” and globalism and   the European Community.   So they invited a lot of schools to come there, and they’re taking walks around the battle field and they teach them about what really happened, because a lot of what is taught is just bullshit.  Actually, that guy who fought in that battle was Roman, himself, but he was of German origin so he fought against his colleagues.

So we did a picture book with a little Owl who lives in that statue, and tells you what  was the story was really like, to get away from all this nationalism and conservative movements.

RW
I remember seeing aa beautiful illustration from the book that shows Alfred J. Kwak looking into an old book that’s opened to a page literally exploding with spears and cannons and flags.

HS
Yes,  it’s all the German History of 2000 years of wars and battles.

RW
I know everyone is looking to seeing you at the CTN conference in November.  What will you be doing there?

HS
I don’t really know, exactly.  I’m hoping to exhibit some of my work that I’ve done over the last ten to fifteen years.  I’m also hoping to get a book finished by then, with my stuff  – a sort of best of.   Since I’m teaching at a number of films schools here in Germany and Denmark and such, I’m trying to put together my lecture that I do on character design.  What I’d like to do is illustrate it, and that will take me a lot of time, I’m afraid, and I don’t know if I’ll get it finished until October.

But I’m really looking forward to come to LA, because I haven’t been there for quite a while.  Because now it’s much, much easier to work with emails and jpgs and Skype and whatever, and it’s not really necessary to go there anymore, so much as it used to be.

RW
Do you miss having the day to day contact with colleagues, the face to face interaction?

HS
Absolutely!  Absolutely.  The last time that I did that was on the Gnomeo and Juliet project last year in London, and then I realized how much I miss it to go to a studio every day and work in a team.  Even if I have just one meeting a week, it’s great to be in a studio and it’s great to concentrate on just your work.  You don’t have to go to the post office in-between, or you don’t have to pay any bills in-between or help with the homework or whatever, which always happens when you’re working from home.

RW
Indeed, it’s so wonderful to have colleagues around you and to feed off of that energy.

HS
Yes, it’s so inspiring.

RW
That’s one of the great things about CTN, it keeps colleagues in touch with each other and allows us to have influence on each other.   CTN’s a pretty extraordinary organization.

HS
Absolutely.

RW
One last question.  Of all the productions you’ve worked on that went nowhere – we’ve all had a hand in one or more projects that got shelved in some way or another – is there one production that if you had the magical power to say “They never made this and they should have” is there one that you’d revive?

HS
Absolutely.  Disney-wise it would be Fraidy Cat.

RW
Oh!  Don’t you wish!!  The movie that got caught in the squeeze.

HS
Absolutely!  It sounded like such a good idea, and it was so much fun just to think about it.

RW
Especially in Ron and John’s hands.  Those guys working on a Hitchcockian ‘Wronged Man’ story.  Man.   Outside of Disney?

HS
Outside of Disney I got a chance here in Germany to work on a project here called Nick Knatterton.  It was a 50’s comic strip, very Dick Tracy like, but more cartoony.  It was almost a parody on Dick Tracy and Sherlock Holmes.  It was a weekly page in a German magazine, and there was a time when they thought about making it into a feature.  I was in charge of the development department.  We put together a wonderful story, and we kept it in the 50’s, and we developed a wonderful style with some great artists here that would transport the style of the 50’s  – you know that kidney shape and such.   When the development almost was done they pulled the plug on it.

RW
Where was the funding coming from?

HS
It was from MTV, that German guy…I knew him because my Duck was his very first job.  He had a licensing company.  He got really, really big.  He made a lot of money with it, and then it became one of those bubbles, you know.  He bought everything – the Simpsons, and the Muppets, and Formula One, the real Formula One, and when he did that it was just a bridge too far.   Then it all collapsed.

RW
So what happened to the property?

HS
I think he still has the rights, or it went back to the family of the artist.  Apparently the guy, Manfred Schmidt, hated comics and he wanted to show how silly comic strips are, but in doing that he created a wonderful comic strip.

RW
There’s so many projects like that.  Is there a property you’d like to get ahold of?

HS
Yes.  I’d still like to do that Knatterton thing.  Right now I’m reading a book to my son when I’m putting him to bed, called Jim Button, written by the same guy who wrote The Never-Ending Story.  It’s never been done properly.  It has been done several times for television and a puppet show, but it could be great.

Indeed, just about anything one could imagine In Harald Siepermann’s hands would be great, that’s only the half of it.

We all look forward to seeing him in November in Burbank.  For more information on the upcoming CTN Animation Expo (CTN-X) go to:

Online Event Registration: http://www.regonline.com/ctnanimationexpo2009
The CTN Animation Expo Event Site: http://www.ctnanimationexpo.com
Online Hotel Reservations: http://www.ctnanimationexpo.com/about/travel-housing/
If you book early the first 100 attendees to book two nights in the hotel receive a 3 day pass free of charge.

To contact Harald Siepermann directly | mail(at)harald-siepermann.com

Copyright © Cinefantastique

In early 1979 I was working at Walt Disney Productions on The Black Hole, a live action film with animated effects. The spectacular success of George Lucas’s brilliant Star Wars inspired Walt Disney Studio’s to do a film which would cash in on that sci fi success. I had just finished working on the hand drawn animated effects for Pete’s Dragon, another live action film. Don Bluth who had directed the 2D animation for Pete’s Dragon was talking about leaving the studio with John Pomeroy and Gary Goldman to do the animated film, The Secret of NIMH.  Don had mentioned that he would like for me to join them as special effects supervisor. Even though I was intrigued by Don’s offer I felt I had a professional obligation to finish The Black Hole and was having a good time doing it. Jack Buckley, a long time Disney effects animator, had retired as effects department head and left me in charge as the animation effects department supervisor. Ted Kierscey, an effects animator, was helping me animate the laser blasts, rocket engine exhaust, and various visual effects that at the time, before computers, only 2D animation could accomplish. Don Paul was just out of the Eric Larson animation training group and he was assisting us. There was even some input from Brad Bird, later to become a successful director for Pixar Studios. During a conversation with Brad he revealed his successful directorial future when he expressed some ideas about how I might animate the laser beams when the actors fire their hi tech weapons. The production designer of the film was Peter Ellenshaw. A successful fine artist who was honored as a Disney Legend in 1993.

Copyright © Cinefantastique

One day as I was exiting the animation building to go across the street to the main studio theatre to see dailies, Ron Miller, the films producer, stepped out of the elevator with the same intention. Crossing the street together forced us to become a social entity. As we walked across the street I made an effort to connect with Ron. I stretched my neck and looked up, way up, for he was way over six feet tall. I raised my voice to reach up where he was and said “Hi Ron, are we going to see some good stuff today?” Without diverting his eyes from his goal, the theatre ahead, and not looking down at me, he replied with an abrupt “Well are we?” It didn’t seem to be a friendly reply and sat me back a bit so I said what I thought could be a positive “hope so.”  We walked into the theater and I sat down in the back as Ron walked on and sat down forward at the control console with a group of his chosen few. Before the dailies started rolling a guy came in and sat down next to me and introduced himself as the director, Gary Nelson. It had never occurred to me at the time but the guy that sat down next to me in that theatre could have been anybody for I had never met Gary Nelson. He made comments that led me to believe that he wasn’t happy with the movie. At the time I felt a kinship with the man for I wasn’t happy with the movie either. I think that Gary was director in name only for Ron seemed to be the actual director since he was producer and president of the company and wanted to do it all. I sensed a lack of unity.

Copyright © Cinefantastique

The Black Hole was finally finished and it was decided to end the movie with one of the six endings which had been written for it. Shortly after the film was in the can I received a call from Ron Miller’s office and was instructed to be at a sweat box screening room in the animation studio at 7:30 AM the next morning. I was to view the film with Ron Miller and Eustace Lycett, the composite opticals photographer, Art Cruishank, director of miniature photography and Bob Broughton, optical photography coordinator. Early on in the production Bob had come to me and ask if I could make some diffusion filters. He said the studios commercial filters weren’t in good shape and I could make some by spraying clear lacquer fixative on cells. He wanted me to cut cells into squares that would fit in his optical printer. Then grade and number them 1 through 10, from slight diffusion, number 1, to a barely able to see through, number 10. All of the hand drawn effects we had animated for the movie, the varying glowing softness of the rocket engines, lasers, and various effects  were created using Bob’s “home made” filters that I had constructed for him. Years later, in 2001, Bob was honored as a Disney Legend for his extensive camera and optical work on most all of the Disney animated features including Pinocchio and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as well as The Black Hole.

Well there I was with the big guys. In that pecking order I was the lowest of the low peckers. There was no one under me to peck. There was Joe Hale who had worked on the picture as liaison between live action and animated effects but he didn’t show up that morning. He received a screen credit for director of animated special effects  but wasn’t there to support me. Come to think of it he was supposed to be above me in the film’s pecking order. Even though our animation department did the hand drawn animated effects in the picture Joe took all the credit for our work and got his name and picture in the publicity magazines. Ouch, ego damage! The studio didn’t give me my due credit because I had resigned from the studio right after the picture was finished so I could join the newly formed Don Bluth Productions. Walt Disney Studio’s rewrote history for publicity and said Joe Hale had animated the effects. In fact an article about the animated effects for The Black Hole appeared in Starlog Magazine. It had a heading which read “The magic is in the pencil of Joe Hale.” Hey, it was my pencil! Well, a lot of it was my pencil and some it was Ted Keirscey’s and Don Paul’s and a few other people. None of it was Joe Hale’s pencil.

The morning of The Black Hole screening I was very nervous because I was the only peasant in the screening room and wondered what I was doing there. The lights went down, the movie rolled and we all sat quietly as the film fumbled it’s way to the end. The lights came up and there was that long awkward pause, everyone waiting for someone to say something. Every one of the big guys looked at me, why I don’t know unless they didn’t want to have to tell Ron that his film was a piece of crap knock off of Star Wars. Ron Miller turned to me, peon of peon’s, and said “Dorse, what do you think of it?” Gee… my mind was going no where a mile a minute. Here I was sitting with the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Walt Disney Company and I thought his film was a disaster. I really thought The Black Hole would be a black eye for the studio. It seemed like forever before I managed to get some words formed in my head. I wanted to weigh my words carefully. I couldn’t just blurt out how I felt for that would have made me sound like a crazy person. Since the film was in the can and I had never been invited to any production meetings I thought I was just there to offer support, a yes man kind of thing. The fact that I had decided to quit the studio to join Bluth was momentarily blocked out by my intense sense of survival. I could have said “Ron, this movie is a classic comic book film adventure and the youthful theatre public who inhabit the movie houses will love it.” But no, I didn’t say that, I didn’t believe that. I finally sputtered something like “Well, the good guys won.” It was a totally inane comment and I was embarrassed by uttering it. Still am. That moment was one of my most uncomfortable moments at the Walt Disney Studios. That experience caused a short circuit in my memory much like blacking out in a car wreck. I don’t recall what happened after that. I just remember it was a great relief to get out of that screening room and be on my way.

I resigned from the studio on November 8th, 1979, to join Don Bluth in his new independent animation effort. One of the first things I did for Don Bluth Productions was make two sets of homemade “Bob Broughton diffusion filters”. Those filters helped to create the magic in the first Don Bluth feature, The Secret of NIHM. The Black Hole opened on December 21, 1979, two weeks after Star Trek: The Motion Picture opened. The Black Hole wasn’t a successful picture but even to this day there are a few sci fi cult fans around who praise the film as a favorite. And the hand drawn visual effects are spectacular.

Click on arrow below to listen to interview

SUSAN MC KINSEY GOLDBERG is a renowned animation Art Director and Designer whose work has graced numerous feature films and theme park attractions in the United States, England, and Hong Kong. Her interest in the medium of animation reflects her encyclopedic knowledge of many other artistic disciplines, including Japanese art and textile design, children’s book illustration, costume design, wildlife painting and drawing, and graphic design for film and print.

In school, Susan won many local painting awards and competitions. Her interest in the animal kingdom (both artistic and conservation-oriented) led her to the Florida chapter of the National Audubon Society, where she served as Editor of their magazine. During her college years she received a scholarship and attended the fledgling Character Animation program at California Institute of the Arts. There she was taught first-hand by several of the great Disney animation artists, including director Jack Hannah, designer and story artist T. Hee, layout artist Ken O’ Connor, concept artist Elmer Plummer, and designer Bill Moore, who was among the first to notice Susan’s flair for design and color. This was followed soon by a stint in New York, working as a Background Artist for legendary MGM animator Jack Zander at his popular commercial production house, Zander’s Animation Parlour. It was during this time that she met her future husband Eric, on holiday from working in London, and since their marriage they have often had the enjoyable opportunity to work as a team on a variety of animation projects.

Susan’s many animation credits include Background Painting and Book Design for the Emmy Award-winning “Ziggy’s Gift” and subsequent vignettes, Background Design and rendering techniques for London commercial houses Pizazz Pictures and Klactovesedsteen, and Assistant Animation on the feature films American Tail II, FernGully: the Last Rainforest, and Disney’s Pocahontas, Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Hercules. Susan also provided Art Direction and Clean-up Supervision for master director Chuck Jones for the animation sequence in the live-action Mrs. Doubtfire, as well as working on Chuck’s last shorts featuring Wile E. Coyote, the Road Runner, Bugs Bunny, and Michigan J. Frog.

It was during her time at Walt Disney Feature Animation that Susan’s flair for Art Direction made a splash on several high-profile projects. On Fantasia / 2000 (as Feature Animation’s first female Art Director), she created the watercolor style for the “Carnival of the Animals” sequence for which she and her crew provided hand-painted watercolor art not just for the backgrounds, but for every animation drawing of the yo-yo aficionado flamingo and his pals. Her background design included radical color shifts that matched and amplified both the music and the storytelling. For the “Rhapsody in Blue” sequence, based on the art of Al Hirschfeld, Susan researched his book illustration work and adapted his use of large color blocks in simple shapes for the big screen, as well as providing period Costume Design for Manhattan’s denizens of the 1930’s. Utilizing a palette almost entirely of blues or blue-inflected colors, Susan created a unique look for Depression Era New York City, which garnered her the animation industry’s highest honor, the Annie Award, for Production Design.

Other Disney projects included Art Direction for “Magic Lamp Theater”, a 3-D stereoscopic attraction for Tokyo Disney Seas featuring Aladdin’s irrepressible Genie, Pre-production Art Direction and Story work for Enchanted and The Frog Prince, Color Design for the façade of the Animation Pavilion at Disney’s California Adventure, and Concept Art for Walt Disney Imagineering, including renderings of beloved icons Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy and Pluto in the styles of Peter Max, Alexander Calder, Roy Lichtenstein, and David Hockney.

More recently, Susan provided the Art Direction for two major attractions: For a Buddhist cultural center in Hong Kong, she Art Directed the 12-minute high-definition cartoon “A Monkey’s Tale”, a whimsical parable about greed featuring three knucklehead monkeys and an impossible-to-attain peach. For Disney’s EPCOT center in Florida, Susan’s Art Direction enlivens the new attraction at the Mexico Pavilion, the Gran Fiesta Tour, featuring boisterous brand-new animation of Donald Duck, Jose Carioca, and Panchito, A.K A. The Three Caballeros.

Susan continues to work on a variety of film, video, and concept art projects that benefit from her unerring eye for color and design.

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Born and raised in Southern California, STEVEN E. GORDON has been a professional in the animation industry since 1977.  He was hired while still in High School by Ralph Bakshi Productions to work on the feature film “Lord of the Rings”. It wasn’t long before Steve was given more responsibility and by 1982 he was Animation Director and Key Animator on the Bakshi / Frazetta feature “Fire and Ice”.  Steve’s next job was a five year stint at Disney Pictures animating on “The Black Cauldron” and other films. For the next 12 years he worked on and off with Rich Animation on a series of direct-to-videos, pioneering character layout – the industry standard, and was Animation Director / Character Designer / Key Animator on “The Swan Princess. He then continued Directing and Character Design on the highly rated “X-Men: Evolution” TV series for Kids WB where he not only directed on the first two seasons, but also did every single character design himself for all four seasons with only the help of a clean-up artist. He then went to Dreamworks and worked in the story dept. and received a credit for his work on the huge Hit Shrek 2. After Dreamworks he went to work for Marvel/Lionsgate Productions as a director and a character designer on the Ultimate Avengers. He also directed a direct-to-video for Stan Lee and co-directed the direct-to-video sequel to “Happily N’ever After” for Lionsgate and is currently a director of the new series Wolverine and the X-Men.

Here is a rare interview with one of the top 5 animators in animation today who has worked with every TV and feature animation studio that is in Southern California.

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CRAIG ELLIOT has been interested in the artistic for as long as he can remember. Born in a farm and air force town in California, Craig’s family moved to what is now Silicon Valley California where he grew up. Back then, most of the valley was fruit orchards and open space.  The experience of walking home from school through a shower of blossoms or playing in the creek as a child fostered Craig’s love of nature. Dioramas with sculpted and painted figures often depicting the nature that surrounded him, along with drawing were Craig’s first art forms.

After attending Art Center College in Pasadena, California, he began illustrating for various clients and started working full time in the animation industry.  He has worked primarily for Disney and Dreamworks, designing their animated films such as Hercules, Mulan, The Emperor’s New Groove, Treasure Planet, Shark Tale, Flushed Away, Bee Movie, and Enchanted, as well as other upcoming features. Craig has also done fully painted comic book and cover artwork for Dark Horse Comics, and has done various Illustration work for many different companies. His work can currently be seen in the books “Treasure Planet a Voyage of Discovery” and “Spectrum 10, 11, 12, 13 & 15 the Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art”, Aphrodisia I and his 3 sketchbooks.

Craig has also been creating a body of personal work for many years.  Craig’s personal works are inspired by his own experiences and philosophies. Craig finds endless beauty in nature and tries to focus that beauty and feeling through his art so the viewer can’t help but have reverence for something so beautiful. There is often much more than just visual beauty in Craig’s paintings and drawings. Themes of body image, environmental preservation, and social and psychological repression are some of the main themes behind Craig’s work. Contrary to many artist’s approach, he tries to relay his message in a positive way by illustrating benefits and beauty of oneness with nature, seeing ones body as beautiful, or the true exhilaration and growth one experiences when free of psychological bindings.

Chris Bailey: 2008 was rollercoater year.  I took some time off after suping the animation on Alvin and Chips and spent a month in Israel doing some story and CG consulting for Animation Lab in Jerusalem. Shortly after returning to CA, I had the opportunity to direct a series of mini shorts for PEPFAR (President Bush’s Emergency Program For Aids Relief in Africa).  http://hivfreegeneration.warnerbros.com/

While at WB, a script page landed on my desk for an animated spot on the TERMINATOR TV series.  It was for an orientation video at a nuclear power facility.  I designed the star, ATOMIC AL and storyboarded the short educational clip about nuclear power.  Todd Bright of Studio Bright animated it in record time and it appeared on the season’s second episode where Sara Conner gets a job at a nuclear facility. The Pepfar shorts came to a conclusion in late Nov.  They were a whirlwind job.  Mainstreet Productions four walled the studio and produced the shorts on the WB lot with 5 months. Since then, I’ve been consulting with Fox Feature animation and pitching projects while rumors of Alvin ll grow.

Nancy Bieman: 2008 was a banner year. I changed countries (USA to Canada) jobs (RIT to Sheridan College) and had my first book, PREPARE TO BOARD! published in Chinese. I am preparing for a second book and second semester at Sheridan, not necessarily in that order. Damon Bard: Besides continuing to look for new projects throughout 08, I was able to do a few jobs for The Orphanage, Art of White, Ugobe, and finish up some character design and sculpture on Coraline. I look forward to a busy and productive 2009. Hope to see you all out there!

Hye Coh: I lived in London most part of 2008. It was about an year and half altogether since Jul 2007, working for “The Tale of Despereaux” with Framstore-cfc, London, as Texture/Matte painter. It was BLAST!! Enjoyed meeting and building friendship with many international artists; British, Scandinavian, Italian, French, German…

The location of the studio was in SOHO, the most lively and contemporary area of London. Without saying major shopping and restaurant, lots of galleries and museums including British Museum, National Gallery were in walking distance. Did lunchtime excursion with colleagues often. . London living has influenced me a great deal; the style of living, my appreciation of art… Learned walking fast with higher heels in a very fashionable way was a bonus I wish this shows through my own creation of art, which I would like pursuit seriously from now on.

David Colman: Got married to Susan Iddings May 24 2008 (Now Susan Colman).  Left Disney Feature and started @Fox Animation on “The Cleveland Show” set to air in fall of 09. Released line of tshirts soon to be availbale on my new site www.davidsdoodles.com. Sold out of my Art of Animal Character Design book @2500 copies thanks to CTN. Redesigned The :Littlest Pet Shop for Hasbro to be released in 2010. Started teaching Animal Character Design  at LAAFA. Shipped next book to printer David Colmans Doodles Volume 2, available for preorder mid Jan from new site; www.davidsdoodles.com. Wife and I started househunting….

Regina Conroy: Yes indeedee this year went fast! And it’s a good thing, too, considering, eh? Whew! Let’s see Magic Mountain come up with a bigger roller coaster! Hopefully things will begin to start looking up once again! There’s so much hope flowing out there among the people, I can’t help but think better days are ahead. Let’s see….goodness – I worked on two films back to back. One is a wonderfully different and very compelling animated feature by Shane Acker called 9 – based on his academy nominated short film of the same numeral! It’s a mature story – one that hasn’t been seen before and I am excited about it. It is being finished now as I write, I believe, and perhaps will be released sometime this year by Focus/Universal. I was lucky enough to work on the film with Shane, Ryan O’Laughlin, Stephan Frank and a host of other terrific talents at Ken Duncan’s studio in Pasadena. What a wonderful group of folks to work with! We all worked at breakneck speed, but when you’re working with people who are nice and whom you respect – who could ask for more? It was an absolute delight. From 9 I was called in to work on CATS AND DOGS 2, the sequel being put out by Warner Bros. Features, with Brad Peyton directing. They just wrapped shooting up in Canada at Christmas. This was my third film with Chris DaFaria and the folks over on the lot and I absolutely adore working with them. It’s my favorite place to work.

First, it’s fun to work on the historic movie lot there, and it’s always a terrific experience, again, because of the talented, down to earth, good folks there who love animation, story telling and make it a good time for all. They truly appreciate their people and the work every one does. Keep an eye out for director Brad Peyton as he has to be one of the most film savvy, naturally gifted directors I’ve ever worked with. And he’s also one of the hardest working, most down to earth, nicest and most collaborative film makers I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. I learned a lot from him. Both films and groups of film makers were exceptional experiences. Working digitally now on the cintiq is a joy (I prefer Alias sketch book pro as it is such a simple, fast little program, adapted perfectly for boarding) and it proved very efficient, as I was asked along with one other animation story artist if I could work from home while they were shooting up in Canada (the script was in changes and they wanted to keep going). It worked out very, very well and I have to say – without the wasted time of commuting, setting up and breaking down equipment, no distractions – I think more work was accomplished as well. It was made simple with their coordinators and an FTP site. In between work on the films, I’ve been developing a card line of my own, finishing a novel, and readying some of my paintings and fine art for a future show – and in the process discovered that I need about two more brains, six more pairs of hands and at least thirty more hours in a day. Here’s to better days ahead for all -

Chris Deboda:I completed work on Rockstar Games’ “Midnight Club Los Angeles” as a 2D artist.  (which is now available)

Ed Ghertner: In a turbulent year that had a lot more downs that ups I found that being a part of CTN was one of the brighter experiences I had. I made a lot of new connections and had a few job offers from people around the world. The website is out there and working! A lot of times we appreciate things people do for us but never express it so I would like to thank Tina Price for her hard work getting the site going, maintaining, and growing it. Here’s to a better year!

Jean Gillmore: I’ve just spent the last 6 months working long-distance (AND a couple of trips thrown in to New York!) with Blue Sky Studios, formerly of White Plains, but now relocated to Greenwich, Connecticut.  The project is in the development stages, and I provided CG costuming for a large “cast” of incidentals, and one of the leads.  Sorry, can’t disclose titles!  Happy to have been able to meet the fine folks there and an exciting work environment, PLUS my first trips to Manhattan EVER. In the process of working with Blue Sky, (finally) picked up a LOT of Photoshop techniques both from friends AND a couple of individuals at the studio, particularly one Sang Jun Lee. Otherwise, moved residence and generally reorganized my studio; began building a website (up in early 2009), and FULL recovery from carpal tunnel surgery at the end of ’07 (as evidenced by the 6-month gig with Blue Sky).  Ready for action and the intention of doing more (personal) painting!

James Hicks: James and his wife finished building their studio on 6 1/2 of wooded acres next to their 200+ year old historic log cabin, and now two years later after retirement James is  getting back into painting and they’re both thankful for 2008.

Carolyn Guske: Though I was laid off Oct. ’08, the past 2 years working for Sony Pictures Animation as their “Vis Dev Marketing Artist” has been a wonderful learning experience.  Thanks to Paul Lassaine’s help my skills painting extremely realistic tight character models have improved  considerably. Thanks Paul! Being responsible for creating much of the marketing art and getting it to various markets (magazines, online, posters) was a fun challenge. Since October I’ve happily been back painting BG’s at home, freelance and have learned “Lectora” a software program to put training materials online for corporations. I hope to pick up more freelance in the new year. Happy Prosperous New Year to all my fellow CTN alumni!

Steve Hickner: 2008 was a pretty quiet year for me compared with 2007 and getting Bee Movie ready for its year-end release. I have been developing some projects for the future, and in the meantime, I squeezed in some time working on “The Secrets of the Furious Five”, the DVD short for the “Kung Fu Panda” home video release.  It was great fun to work on, and especially wonderful to see some new, traditional animation again.  I also helped out on “Mastermind”, a DreamWorks feature for 2010. That’s a snapshot for me.  As a viewer, I really loved the new “Wallace and Gromit” short from  Aardman– how does Nick Park keep doing it?  The guy’s a genius.  Also, I found “Waltz With Bashir” riveting and unforgettable.  After seeing the movie, I was propelled to do some research into that horrific genocide.  When a movie can do that, it is to me– by definition– Art.

Carole Holliday: 2008 proved to be awesome time of expanding.

In April I was excited to pay my taxes-I mean, who’s excited about paying taxes?  Me, when the fee I paid was the yearly one for having my own production company; Crowded Metro Films.
Having always been in pre-production and production over the years, I was delighted to experience the last third of the process when I spent six months in post-production.  While picking up animation storyboard freelance from various studios, I gained a huge appreciation for the work of editors, sound editors, foley artists, and visual effects artists, when I had to do it all on my short film “Witt’s Daughter.” After having worked with a fabulous and collaborative production crew on the story I wrote, produced and directed, I continued to work with wonderfully talented people in the areas of Music, sound mixing and color correction.
September 28 marked the official debut of “Witt’s Daughter” at the Laemmle Grand Theatre to very positive response. I have to admit it was incredibly encouraging for a first film.  So far,  “Witt’s Daughter” has been an official selection in the Hollywood film Festival in October and the Beverly Hills High Definition festival in December and continues to be submitted to festivals across the country.
With God’s continued guidance, 2009 looks to be continually hopeful, as I am working on a feature script for a romantic comedy as well as developing other feature projects.

For more information about “Witt’s Daughter” please visit www.crowdedmetrofilms.com

Niklas Krag Andersen: A promotion to Key Layout artist in the 2d feature “Mullewapp – Freunde für immer ” Motionworks Gmbh and the start of my own company Illustratorslab. www.illustratorslab.com.

Mark McDonnell: This was a great year for me.  I was lucky enough to be involved with many productions and various freelance opportunities.  I started the year finishing up work for Tina Price at Digital or Not working on the 3D feature film, Eshan.  I happily contributed to the film working on character designs, environment/set designs and helped out with various props associated with the sets that I designed.  From here I was rehired to work on the Tinkerbell movie by Disney DTS, also helping out in the postproduction phase of its DVD release.  I had briefly worked on the sequel, North of Neverland, supplying beat boards and layout’s for the final pitches to John Lasseter as he stepped in to look over all the creative work that is now coming out of the Walt Disney Studios.  After finishing up work on Tinkerbell, I worked on various Disney games and projects that are currently in development before moving on to work on some concept design for an up-and-coming stand alone video game for Mattel and their Hot Wheel’s property.  I was there chief designer and acted as the character designer (2D and 3D), storyboard artist, and principle illustrator to help propel the story and look of the game.  While working on this title I was also contracted to work on a Theme Park attraction associated with Avalanche Bay, helping to add to their Christmas themed attractions in the park.

Because of this work, I was hired by one of the talented designers at Disney’s Imagineering group to design a character-based storefront that will be in construction over the next year.  This was a very fun project to work on, as I was able to design the look and feel of the character that is integrated into every facet of the store and all the components that make up various activities as you progress through the environment, in true Disney Imagineering fashion.  As I worked on the store’s designs I was also contracted to help out on Pixar’s Wall-E’s DVD release, helping out with designs and concepts that matched the amazing work done on the film.  And all of this work was done while I was instructing Costumed Gesture Design at the Walt Disney Television Animation division.

As for the New Year . . . I have finally finished working on a book that I have happily self-published.  I am happy to announce that “Mark McDonnell’s The Art and Feel of Making It Real:  Gesture Drawing for the Animation and Entertainment Industry” is finally complete, coming in 2009 in hardback with 208 pages of full color illustrations and instruction tailoring my teachings to those interested in the Animation and Entertainment Industry.  As I was lucky enough to continue on Walt Stanchfield’s teachings at the Walt Disney Company, this book is in addition to his previous words and more focused on tailoring my teachings and words of wisdom to the industry and how it functions in today’s times.  It comes with a foreword by the legendary Eric Goldberg, and contributing words by Andreas Deja, Marcelo Vignali, and industry instructor Karl Gnass.”

For a preview, check out: www.Cre8tivemarks.com. Tom Sito: I spent a hectic year directing a season of TV for PBS. For CLICK & CLACK’S AS THE WRENCH TURNS, I had a chance to work with the Tom & Ray Magliazzi, the Tappet Brothers, Doug Berman of Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me. I also had a chance to direct some great voice talent like Kelli O’Hara of Broadway’s SOUTH PACIFIC, Jim Lehrer of the New Hour and many more. And it’s always a bonus to work with good old friends like Linda Simensky, Bill Kroyer, Stephen Silver, Floyd Norman and Karl Toerge.

One added benefit was I got to travel a lot to Boston, Dallas and New York City to do post. I also spent a lovely day in the Archives of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sub-basement archives doing advanced research for a new book I’m writing on CG.

I also completed the manuscript of the update of Halas & Whittaker’s famous 1981 How-To  TIMING FOR ANIMATION. Thanks to everyone who gave me some input. Look for it for next holiday season.

In the fall Pat and I were invited as judges to the Animatu Festival in Portugal, which was a blast.

Thanks to everyone I got to work with this year, and here’s hoping for a wonderful year in 2009.

Kathleen Quaife: I spent most of last summer writing 15 modules of instruction for an online class for the Academy of Art University on traditional effects animation and am teaching intro animation and life drawing at CSU Fullerton and CSU Channel Islands as a partime adjunct lecturer.

Olivier Tossan: I wish you a lot of success and Happiness for this new year !!!! I am working for Blue Sky Studios now….. Great !!!!

Christophe Vacher: Art Directed  “9″. This movie was a hard and long path that lead us from LA to Luxembourg, to Paris, to Toronto, with a very small budget, and it got really close to being shut down mid-way through. It was produced by Focus Features, the independent branch of Universal. The production went from Attitude studios, in Luxembourg and France, to Starz in Toronto and Ken Duncan studios in Pasadena. So, seeing it finally come to life on the big screen feels really good. Overall, my experience on it as Art director will remain one of the best I’ve had in animation.” Watch Trailer Here.

Ellen Woodbury: I won my second Industry Award from Sculptural Pursuit magazine’s Sculpture-Only Competition, 2008, with my marble sculpture, “Whisper on the Wind.” The sculpture is of a stylized horse looking over her shoulder, looking back at one life and looking forward to the next.  You can see an image of this sculpture on her blog at www.ellenwoodbury.blogspot.com.

Suzanne Wilson: Well, 2008 was certainly an interesting year!  Following upon the Disney Heroes of Imagination exhibition organized by Creative Talent Network at the Van Eaton Gallery, I spent some time researching the early career of Rowland B. Wilson in order to update his biography on the Legends area of the website. A “lagniappe”, (which is a little extra surprise) of doing that was coming upon some early illustrations such as this one from Esquire Magazine which ran all along the top of the double page of an article about  commuting to New York City: It says: “THE SUBOURBONITES: For some commuters, the bar car makes the trip to suburbia worth the effort.

I also learned that one of his early accomplishments was being published in Punch magazine, the epitome of English humor (or I should say “humour”!). That may have accounted for the idea many people had that he was British! It was interesting to find out how many art collections and books his work was in. I remember him saying he was watching television in Texas and Steve Allen called him on the phone and asked him to illustrate one of his books.

Comic-Con in San Diego was a huge event. Amidst the lovable exasperating zoo that it always is I was delighted to find a number of truly creative exhibitors (i.e. members of CTN!). I learned that there was some interest in Rowland as a Mentor. He used to say he didn’t want to solve the exact same visual problems over and over again, so he created some illustrated posters to remind himself of fast and effective solutions. He called them his “trade secrets” and was intending to compile them. My true highlight of 2008 was the opportunity to present these through Creative Talent Network!

Dean Yeagle: It’s been a hectic year.  I was a guest at the San Diego Comic Con in July, and introduced a new book there, THE MANDY PORTRAIT GALLERY, with drawings of Mandy by 30 other artists.  I’ve done work for various corporate clients as well as new cartoons for Playboy, as always.  I was also a guest at the Angouleme festival in France, and had a one-man show at the Galerie Arludik in Paris, and did signings at various Paris comic shops of a book of my work, MÉLANGE. Recently I was invited to speak (and show Mandy on the IMAX screen) at the ’2D or Not 2D’ animation festival in Seattle. I’ve been working on a new Mandy book and a sculpture, and designs for Mandy images in an enameled metal process called Artglaz produced in Belgium.  I’ve been contracted to do a bi-weekly series of pinup cartoons for an international website, and I do a regular series of cartoon illustrations for a Russian ‘lifestyle’ magazine.  And I contributed to a number of book projects by other authors.  And perhaps a few other things I’ve forgotten, too.  A busy and exciting year!